We can’t get everything we want . This simple sentence expresses a fact which can be extremely hard depending on how much we want it. Sometimes circumstances don’t help, sometimes we create excessively demanding goals for ourselves or even sometimes we are asked to reach a level that, at least for the time being, we can’t reach.

This occurs throughout the life cycle, from birth to the grave, and is the source of varying levels of frustration that we must address. And frustration can be difficult to deal with.

Each one of us has a specific capacity to tolerate it, and there are people who have a high tolerance to getting frustrated and for whom it does not generate an impediment but a simple annoyance, and other people with a low tolerance to frustration who, when faced with the least difficulty, paralyse themselves and abandon the action. It is about the last of the cases we are going to talk about throughout this article.

A natural emotion

Before assessing what a low frustration tolerance is, it is necessary to consider what such a concept implies. Frustration is a feeling of aversion in which there is a mixture of sadness, anger, and disappointment at the failure to achieve an objective or the impossibility of achieving a goal or desire. It is not really necessary that it is a desire of our own, but also it can appear before the break with the expectations and demands placed on us.

It is a natural feeling that has nothing pathological about it (although depending on how it can become pathological), and as we said before, it is present continuously throughout life whenever situations of denial and impossibility occur. At the beginning and throughout childhood we usually have a very low tolerance to frustration, but throughout development we gradually learn to control it, manage it and generate alternative responses. But what does low frustration tolerance imply?

Low frustration tolerance

It is understood as low tolerance to frustration or intolerance to the absence or low level of capacity to endure that set of events or circumstances that can frustrate us. Low tolerance to frustration means that when we are faced with frustration we are not capable of reacting, we abandon our actions and are incapable of persevering and fighting against the difficulties . In other words, those who have a low tolerance to frustration have great difficulty in managing negative feelings such as stress, discomfort or the failure to achieve their own desires.

Usually this inability to manage oneself causes behavioural manifestations in the form of sullen, irritable and hostile behaviour. Failures are often seen as being caused by others or by circumstances, usually appearing to be a tendency to feel victimized and to project blame onto others. They are used to being people who tend to give up quickly when they perceive possible obstacles, focusing on how difficult things are and not seeing or believing in the possibility of solving the problem and managing to overcome the difficulties on their own.

They focus on emotion, suffering and pain and their avoidance. This can result in the subject becoming impatient, dependent, demanding and even extremely passive. In some cases it can trigger impulse control disorders, such as kleptomania, or aggressive and violent behavior towards those who do not fulfill or hinder one’s desires.

A low tolerance for frustration also affects the ability to wait for delayed gratification, which may be necessary to achieve greater than immediate rewards. It is therefore associated with the need to get their needs met at the very moment they appear. This makes it difficult, for example, to do a necessary task in pursuit of the gratification that generates rest or fun. In turn, both the difficulty in completing tasks and the very perception of this lack of capacity can be perceived as frustrating, worsening the situation and increasing the person’s situation of discomfort .

The low tolerance to frustration also has great consequences for the subject in many areas of life: at a family and social level, personal relationships suffer, sometimes generating a distance from the rest and dynamiting their relationship with their environment. At a labour level , it is linked to a lack of flexibility and to a lack of response to unforeseen events , something that makes hiring and productivity difficult. With regard to self-realization, a low tolerance to frustration tends to generate severe difficulties to achieve great long-term objectives and this may also generate a decrease in self-esteem and self-concept or the appearance of utilitarian, narcissistic or histrionic behaviours.

Causes of this low tolerance

We have mentioned before that tolerance to frustration is something that is acquired throughout development, with almost all children having very low capacity for it. Whether or not this tolerance develops correctly may depend on a large number of variables.

Firstly, although it develops throughout life, there are differences at the biological level that facilitate this. This can be observed at a temperamental level , where young children are able to endure frustration and wait for a better future or even generate strategies to achieve their final goal. Others get frustrated and give up at the slightest difficulty, and many others even generate disruptive behaviors such as childish tantrums as a result of their inability to control their anger.

Experience is one of the main factors explaining differences in frustration tolerance. To have a high tolerance it will be necessary that throughout life we have seen that our goals and desires are achievable but that this requires an effort, having seen an association between effort and the achievement of goals both in the short and long term. Also the awareness that waiting and not seeking immediate pleasure can lead to greater rewards over time.

Linked to the previous one, one of the reasons that can lead a person to be intolerant to the fact of getting frustrated, even in adulthood, are the educational models that we have had. Parents who are excessively permissive and who respond quickly to any demand from the child encourage the child not to have to make an effort and to learn that the things we want are achieved quickly. Once this pattern is established, the subject will not be able to react to the presence of difficulties and what could be a mere discomfort or obstacle becomes an impenetrable wall that contradicts them and awakens their anger.

Another reason for low tolerance to frustration is the existence of expectations on the part of the subject that are too high to have any real possibility of fulfilling them, so that his efforts never reach the required or desired level and he learns that it is not possible to achieve his own goals. A continuous fear of failure appears, and with time the capacity to tolerate it is extinguished. This can result from learning, either from over-demanding parental models or from excessive social demands.

Improving the Ability to Tolerate Frustration

As we have mentioned, low frustration tolerance can be extremely limiting. Fortunately, we can train our stamina and our skills to become more resilient and tolerant of aversive and frustrating situations.

Probably the first aspect to work on is to analyze the frustration in an isolated way, recognizing which is its origin and why it is so unbearable for us. Once this has been done, we can move on to using different methods to resolve the situation.

One of the strategies is to restructure personal beliefs regarding levels of demand and what we can achieve. It will be important to train ourselves in proposing realistic goals , whether they are ambitious or not, and to appreciate that in all cases it will be easy for unforeseen events to arise. It is also useful that if we have very high goals we try to divide them in such a way that we make intermediate objectives that will lead us to the final goal, without trying to achieve our objective immediately from the beginning. The generation of alternative strategies to the original one is also essential.

Likewise, we must also work on the relationship with failure and frustration, not seeing them as synonymous with defeat but as learning that will lead us to achieve our goals.

Another element to train could be to submit to exposure to frustrating situations with prevention of responses . Training in stress and anger management and training in problem solving become essential. If the problems are linked to the social environment it may also be necessary to work on social skills.

Bibliographic references:

  • Jeronimus et al. (2017). “Frustration”. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, Edition: 1. Springer, New York, Editors: Virgil Zeigler-Hill and Todd K. Shackelford, pp. 1 – 8.
  • Miller, NE (July 1941), “frustration-aggression hypothesis”, Psychological Review, 48 (4): pp. 337 – 42