Why frustration is actually a good thing

Ahh frustration my old friend.

I used to think that I was a bad person whenever I got frustrated. Through my early years of training in Yoga and various spiritual paths I'd managed to interpret the teachings as ‘all challenging feeelings = BAD’

Not surprising really as this is often a narrative we hear in many forms. We're not really taught to see the good in our ‘bad’ feelings. Hopefully in this post I can encourage you to see things in a different way (if you aren't already) and specifically today in relation to frustration.

Because its actually a REALLY good thing.

Let me set the scene - imagine this, you’ve decided you want to make a change. Maybe you’re working on recognizing and changing a bias you carry. Or you’re trying to learn a new skill. Of course with doing things differently we'll get it wrong to some degree, we'll mess up a little.

Now, how many times of getting it wrong does it take before you feel frustrated? And what happens next? – do you give up? (SPOILER - that frustration you feel is the body's way of telling us we're on the route to change)

It's widely understood that every time you choose to do something your “habitual way,” you reinforce the likelihood that you’ll do it again the same way next time, overall, this is a good thing.

These shortcuts in our brain (central pattern generators) minimize the effort we expend so that we can easily (and mindlessly) do things the way we always do.

Imagine if every time you had to accelerate or slow down your car, you had to stop and think about how you did it, just like when you were a new driver. That would be exhausting, right? So it’s good that our brain has these reflexive shortcuts.

So when we’ve decided that we need to change our habitual ways of being or learn that new skill we have to create a whole new pattern and divert away from habit - and this illicits a certain amount of stress in our system.

When we want to do something differently or introduce something new, our brain has to engage in top-down processing. This means that our big, smart human forebrain is suppressing the automatic response from the limbic system to do things the same way. (and this is hard work!)

When this happens, adrenaline is released in the brain. This makes us more alert– it’s a way that our body gets us to pay attention to what’s going on. However, we tend to experience this as agitation and stress (hello frustration!)

At the same time, our brain is also being flooded with another chemical, acetylcholine. This has the effect of increasing our focus so that we can pay closer attention to whatever is happening and make corrections as needed.

So, let me give you a silly example; imagine you’ve decided you want to hoover your house with your non-dominant hand and you quickly discover that you don’t have the same amount of dexterity or strength that you typically do.

That feeling of frustration, irritation or stress that comes over you– that’s just these neuromodulators (chemicals) doing their job to say, “Hey! Pay attention! We’re trying to do a new thing.”

At this point, you might make a second decision, which is that you don’t care about being able to hoover with your non-dominant hand, and you give up. But maybe, just maybe you don’t have a choice– perhaps your dominant hand is injured and it is imperative that the house is cleaned (ok maybe I'm regretting my hoover analogy).

So, you continue to hoover in your clumsy way. And then, something interesting happens. As you persist with the task, you begin to improve.

Here’s where it gets super cool: When your brain recognizes that you’re starting to be able to do the task better, you get an infusion of a third chemical– dopamine. That’s right! Now you get a shot of feel-good hormone.

You start to think, “Hey, maybe I’m pretty good at this after all.” That dopamine is your reward for sticking with it, and it keeps you on target to continue the effort. BUT– and this is key– the frustration was the gateway to getting you there in the first place.

You see we need to experience that stress or agitation of being really awful at something before we get the bliss of a dopamine hit. If we walk away when we become frustrated, we’re re-wiring our brains to both continue our habitual/reflexive habits, and to give up the next time we become frustrated.

So you see stress and frustration - thay aren’t always a bad thing, especially if we want to continue to learn and grow and if we can familiarize ourselves with frustration as the precursor to change, we might even come to welcome and appreciate it.

Creating more capacity for frustration (and any/all of the more challenging states) is one of the ways we encourage more flexibility an buoyancy in our nervous system. We want to be able to hold a certain amount of challenge - this is the way we expand and grow as a species - and actually its the reason you're sitting here reading this today.

I'd love to know what your realtionship with frustration is - do you avoid it like the plague or is it something you've accepted as part of the process.

Let me know in the comments below ❤️