How to Handle Getting Angry

Afifa Rehman
6 min readMar 16, 2024

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One kind of emotional stress response is frustration. When you deal with everyday stressors at work, school, home, and in relationships, it’s normal to feel like this.

For instance, you could feel irritated when your significant other neglects to run a crucial task, or you could become irritated at yourself for your reaction to your significant other’s error.

This irritation is usually limited and goes away when things get better. However, there are instances when it can be more severe and have a longer-lasting effect on your health and well-being, such as when you see yourself falling short of your ambitions or goals.

Everyone has periodic feelings of tension and frustration, but you don’t have to let them rule your life. You may lessen the effects of stress and frustration and enhance your general well-being by controlling how you react to them.

Signs of Frustration

Anger might express itself in a variety of ways. Even though everyone’s displays of displeasure differ, some typical ones are as follows:

1. Keeping your distance from those who irritate you Changing the way you eat

2. I’m irritated

3. Being tense or uneasy

4. Being overburdened and abandoning projects

5. Having problems falling asleep or seeing additional modifications to your sleeping habits

6. Intolerance

7. Using nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs as a coping mechanism

People frequently use physical acts as a means of expressing their frustration. They may express their frustration and anger by sighing, frowning, tapping their foot, or using other repetitive body motions.

Why do we become frustrated?

It’s common to become frustrated when your expectations or goals don’t meet. You may be putting in an effort or action that isn’t effective or yields the desired outcomes.

Typical sources of annoyance include:

1. Everyday annoyances

2. Money

3. Conflicts between people

4. Connections

5. Tense current affairs in the world

6. Issues about the workplace

7. Disagreement from Within against Without

These sources of annoyance may have internal or external origins.

Internal frustration:

Feeling dissatisfied with any part of oneself, be it your actions or your efforts, is known as internal frustration.

External frustration:

Being stressed out by something in your outside world is referred to as external frustration. One example is when you are rushing to get to work and get stopped in traffic.

Effects of Frustration

Apart from the short-term manifestations of frustration, such as anger and irritation, it can also lead to longer-term consequences for your overall health and wellness.

According to research, people experience a range of lasting feelings following an unpleasant incident, such as stress, fury, despair, and anger.

Other issues might also arise from frustration, such as:

1. Aggression:

Anger-related feelings can result in aggressive behavior, either towards you or other people.

2. Depression:

Dissatisfaction and disappointment over time might exacerbate depressive symptoms.

3. Low self-esteem:

Being frustrated might also make you lose faith in yourself, especially if your emotions are primarily internal.

4. Unhealthy habits:

It is not unusual for people to use unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with frustration, such as abusing alcohol, drugs, food, or engaging in other unhealthy habits.

5. Emphasise

Frustration and stress are related. Stress and frustration have reciprocal effects on one another; stress can lead to frustration, and frustration can lead to stressful situations.

Stress can lower your tolerance for annoyance and increase your emotional reactivity to things that often wouldn’t bother you. Little setbacks can seem far more serious and annoying. Persistent stress can make you feel as though you don’t have control over your life, which can exacerbate irritation and possibly even depress you.

Improving your tolerance for frustration may help you reduce stress, and managing stress might help you feel less frustrated.

There are several ways that stress and irritation interact with one another. Feeling overwhelmed by stress might make you believe that you lack the capabilities to overcome obstacles, and a major source of dissatisfaction is the inability to accomplish your objectives.

One typical response to a persistent, unresolved stressor is frustration. Aggression, anger, impulsivity, and defensiveness are frequently present when frustration strikes, and if you don’t healthily handle these feelings, they can cause stress on their own.

Burnout is characterized by elevated levels of irritation, sensitivity, and annoyance and is frequently brought on by ongoing, unrelenting stress.

How to Deal With Frustration

Frustration tolerance is the capacity to tolerate frustration. A high frustration threshold suggests that you can handle difficulties well, but a low tolerance suggests that you could become upset over small annoyances.

There are techniques you can employ to enhance your response if you have a low threshold for annoyance. It’s also a good idea to get expert help, particularly if you have an underlying medical problem or your low tolerance is negatively impacting your life.

Associated Conditions

Your ability to tolerate irritation may be diminished by illnesses including borderline personality disorder (BPD), autism, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as by feelings of stress, exhaustion, or self-doubt in unfamiliar circumstances.

1. Develop Higher Emotional Intelligence

Managing frustration is correlated with emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify, assess, and control your own and other people’s emotions, as well as how you express them.

Your emotional intelligence can be raised by:

1. Controlling your emotions when you’re angry and holding off on expressing yourself till the right time

2. Empathy is a virtue to cultivate, even for those who irritate you.

3. Keeping in mind that all feelings, including frustration, are transient

recognize your emotions so you can respond correctly

2. Put Yourself Apart

It may even make you feel worse if you focus on the cause of your annoyance. You can give yourself the room you need to process by briefly diverting your attention. Pick an enjoyable pastime, such as working out, creating something, watching a movie, or listening to music.

Still, it’s crucial to prevent distraction from turning into a habit of avoiding it. Eventually, you should go back to the root of your annoyance and see if there are any tactics you can employ to fix the issue.

3. Put mindfulness into practice

Being fully and nonjudgmentally aware of the moment, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells around you as well as your feelings and experiences, is the practice of mindfulness. You can use mindfulness as a type of meditation or as a daily practice.

Being mindful is essential to managing stress and frustration since taking action to address a problem requires you to be aware of how you’re feeling.

Additionally, practicing mindfulness can help you maintain an attitude of acceptance rather than resistance or judgment, which can have a good effect on how you handle irritation.

4. Adopt Different Methods of Relaxation

There are a few things you may do to feel better if you discover that you are becoming less patient, more irritated, emotional, and less able to handle stress. In addition to increasing your ability to tolerate frustration, stress management is crucial to preserving your health.

Instead of acting in a way you might later regret, you can reply more composedly if you can interrupt your stress response early.

Rapid stress relievers, such as progressive muscle relaxation or breathing exercises, can help you relax, feel less irritated, and be better capable of handling whatever comes your way.9. The next time you’re feeling stressed out, be ready with some quick stress relievers.

5. Modify Your Viewpoint

Our ingrained cognitive processes and the way we interpret our environment greatly influence whether or not we perceive something as stressful. People who believe they have control over their circumstances, for instance, typically experience less stress because they believe they always have options for change.

Being optimistic has positive effects on one’s health and well-being.10 Resilient thinking and an optimistic outlook can help you feel less anxious and irritated.

6. Modify Your Way of Life

You probably need to make a change in your life if you feel tense all the time. Reducing your responsibilities, taking good care of your health, and adopting other healthy lifestyle practices will help you deal with stress in general and improve your ability to handle it when it arises.

Reducing stress can be achieved by regular exercise, healthy eating, and restful sleep

Setting aside time for hobbies and artistic endeavors is equally important; relaxation is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle rather than an extravagance. Both artists and non-artists can find relief from stress through creative pursuits.

Consider regularly partaking in stress-relieving pursuits that complement your lifestyle and personality. People who practice frequent stress-relieving activities, such as walking or meditation, report feeling less stressed overall and reacting less strongly to different stressors that come up during the day.

7. Utilize Your Social Network

Speaking with close friends, relatives, or loved ones about your problems can also be a release and source of support. While complaining all the time is unhealthy, sharing your grievances with a trusted friend on occasion — and doing the same by listening well—can help you analyze the situation and generate ideas for solutions.

Thanks for reading!

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