So what’s the purpose or advantage to feeling frustrated? Evolutionary biologists look at individual processes in nature and they try to understand why one trait evolves rather than another over time. They question, what is the advantage of developing a physical trait, how is it serving the organism. The shape of a bird’s beak helps to define its function: insect eaters vs. Seed eaters. The overall shape of fish allows them to move more easily through water, being streamlined.
You can use this evolutionary lens to look at various characteristics of our bodies. For example, you can ask the question, why did certain emotions evolve? What’s their purpose or advantage?
Last week we looked at the perspective of stuckness and how we can feel frustrated when we’re stuck. Even though frustration is not a pleasant emotion, it has a very important function, especially when we’re stuck.
Actually feeling frustration can be the doorway through which we can grow out of our stuckness. Frustration is an energy that as it builds, becomes the fuel for us to take action. The more stuck we feel, the more potential energy we have to move out of stuckness.
Different ways of dealing
We have various strategies to deal with emotions such as frustration. We can ignore it. We can go into our heads rather than feeling it in our bodies. We may project our frustration onto others. An extreme example of this is road rage, but often there are less dangerous ways of projecting onto others. We’ll use the perspective of relationships and apply a cause and effect to how we’re feeling. We’ll blame others or look to others as being the cause of our frustration.
We’ll somehow or in some way try to mute the feeling of frustration through taking medication, using drugs or alcohol or food.
The only way that I know of to deal with frustration in a productive way is to allow ourselves to feel it in our bodies as much as possible. Remember that this feeling of frustration is coming from when we ignore our inner needs. We add insult to injury as we deny our innermost feelings when we don’t act on them.
Feeling the frustration as much as you can leads us to face the fact of how we’ve let ourselves down over and over in our lives. Feeling the frustration leads us to a place where we can decide to not tolerate this behaviour within ourselves anymore. If we can feel the pain of self-neglect and self-denial, this will naturally prompt us to feel like we deserve better for ourselves, from ourselves.
The frustration turns to anger which turns to resolve. We find the courage to take a stand, draw a line, to not let ourselves down anymore, especially our inner child.
We can learn to realize how we’ve been giving our power away and how to take it back. It might be that you’ve been putting off changing a habit that you know is not healthy for you. It could be a level of relationship that you have been tolerating. It could be a way that you are thinking about yourself or life, that is disempowering you. If you’d like to learn how to take your power back, I am offering a workshop on Saturday, June 1st from 9 am to 12 pm. If you’d like to register or have questions, please let me know.
When we start to take our power back, we learn to use that power to help ourselves heal, to take more self-responsibility, to create more alignment of mind/body/spirit. And stress starts to become a thing of the past.