Face the frustration with positivity. “Come on, don’t complain so much,” “come on, be strong,” “hold on a little longer,” “things are the way they are, accept it.” Instructions you have received occasionally from your parents/educators to strengthen your resistance to difficulties. Sometimes you would pay anything to wake up being mentally stronger than you go to bed, right? Because deep down, you know that the best resource on how to increase frustration tolerance.
You discover that obstacles appear in your path periodically. Some predictably, others unexpectedly or unfairly. The fact is that they are there, interfering with your passage and blocking you in some moments. That is when tolerance to frustration becomes so indispensable: the art of accepting everything that, being unmodifiable, does not fit your schemes and does not satisfy your desires.
How to increase frustration tolerance?
A skill that can be learned and trained. But how to develop it if it is not through small experiences in which you get frustrated? Although it is paradoxical, the human being can cause situations “artificially” that serve as a test to acquire skills that are then necessary for “natural or real” conditions.
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Tips to increase frustration tolerance
To increase frustration tolerance, choose to expose yourself to some circumstances such as:
# Waiting situations
Learn to endure trouble. How? Selecting a context in which you voluntarily face some discomfort continuously until habituation. For example, you can choose, contrary to what you usually do, place yourself in the longest row of the supermarket to pay. Exercise in tolerating the wait in a more adaptive and bearable way (thinking, singing, watching, etc.).
# Physical discomfort
Another proposal is to wear an eraser for a few hours inside the shoe that you find annoying enough to notice, but without causing excessive damage. You will observe how, after a while, you get used to it and learn to consider it as “something annoying, but bearable.” Facilitate extrapolation to other situations in which discomfort will be imposed on you.
# Learn to postpone
When you make a request, and they tell you that they grant it to you, do the exercise of visualizing us in the opposite situation, obtaining a No by the answer. Imagine the feeling of anger or grief, and feel it as a motivating impulse for action, decisively seeking alternatives to achieve your goals.
# Acceptance of limited control
When events or events occur that do not fit what you expected or wanted, imagine yourself with humor by rubbing the Aladdin lamp, or by controlling the control of the universe. Any comic and absurd symbol that leads you to remember that you are neither omnipotent nor the Cosmos exists only to please you.
# Not overprotect
It is difficult for us to tolerate the negative emotions of the child. We will not tolerate their frustration. To be angry or sad for not getting what you want, be it a toy or solve a task, is not so terrible, your mood will change. Sometimes the intolerance of the child says a lot about that of the elders. Instead of giving everything done, you have to work with them to learn from failures and prioritize desires. Learning to think, make mistakes, and solve your mistakes is a good way to grow.
# Realistic goals
Whether your frustration has to do with not achieving goals as if it has to do with material desires, you have to adapt your expectations to reality. Help you set realistic goals: you may ask the Magi for a very expensive gift that you are convinced you will receive when it is not possible, or you may think you can approve without studying or winning a match without training. It is always necessary to evaluate the failure and find a positive part, but also to try to adjust to their real conditions.
# Persevere
Immediacy, we have already said that it is a characteristic of children. You have to cultivate patience because it is necessary for many things. When we believe that everything should be immediate, we get frustrated if success takes a while to arrive. Carrying out activities with children that require waiting and perseverance teaches them to understand. Grow a plant or an orchard, make a cake that has to be baked, things that can be done with boys or girls.
# Change strategy
When school assignments, for example, or relationships with friends, come out repeatedly, we may be doing something wrong. It is important to accompany the children and help them assess what happens. You don’t have to give up, but if you can take a break and you can also think about what you’ve done wrong and change it.
# Talk about the negative emotion
Being able to talk about the sad ones he had felt when he failed to win the game or the rage that he does not have all the toys he wants at the moment he wants them. Putting words to those emotions helps you not to be flooded by the negative feeling, to understand yourself better and to understand others.
Also, in this way, he acquires perspective and understands that feelings are not perpetual states, now he feels rabid, but that will change, it is a tolerable emotion that will diminish. If in response to their negative feeling, we react with anger, their frustration and anger increase, parents should do everything possible to contain the child and, from their adult point of view, tolerate that emotion.
# Set an example
As always, the best way to educate is the example. A child cannot be demanded to be shouted at control. It cannot be said that he does not get angry if he sees us get on our nerves at any difficulty, even with them. Nor can one teach how to tolerate frustration with punishment. It is always more effective to teach and praise what has been done well. So, when the child is in the same situation, he can resort to that positive experience and do better.
