Tolerating frustration

I don’t know how good you are with tolerating frustrations.  I know for myself that lately I seem to be on a pretty short fuse.  I lashed out last night about the military deployment situation with Scott.  Military deployments can be extended at any time, his current one started in January and was due to finish in August but then they extended it for at least another 7 months and that is what he is trying to get out of and its been a long drawn out process and things aren’t happening.  So last night I really let it rip.   Its fair enough to be frustrated and angry, I got onto google and checked out a few prevalent sites on coping with an extended deployment.  My heart goes out to partners of military personnel left behind for such long periods, and the emotional roller coaster that goes along with it is pretty understandable all thing considered frustration and resentment were prevalent emotions they mentioned as being perfectly natural in the circumstances.

Last night I didn’t think to use the serenity prayer before I said my piece though.  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.  Either I accept the situation and suck it up or I decide I cant and take steps to end it and I don’t want to do that yet, so I am stuck between a rock and hard place.  Bottom line is I am not getting what I want and its no point having a dummy spit about it I guess though saying all of that its perfectly understandable.

Lying in bed last night unable to sleep for an hour or two I kept thinking of David Richo’s writing on the F.A.C.E. acronym of ego which erupts in response to not getting what our ego wants.  F stands for Fear, A stands for Anger, C stands for Control and E for a sense of entitlement..  Feeling frustrated or hurt can lead to fear and then we may get angry rather than feel scared and powerless or impotent.  We may then try to control things by threatening to do something stupid we may later regret or that proves to be counterproductive or we may try to throw our weight around to try to get others to change.

Entitlement means we feel a sense of entitlement when really we aren’t entitled to receive certain things from others.  We are only ever lucky if we get them.  That said it would not be healthy to stay with a partner who rarely is able to give us what we need along with the Five As that David Richo addresses in several of his books.  These are Attention, Affection, Appreciation, Attunement and I forget what the other one is at present (sorry). …

It takes some engagement with the adult part of our brain to reflect and see when our frustration is triggered how we then go about dealing with it.  I appreciated my involvement in Al Anon and AA for a time as there if you had a recovery buddy who goes through similar things or has a more evolved wisdom you can share your frustrations and have some containment and a mirror to work it through instead of lashing out.  That said we are all human animals, we have needs and desires and hopes and dreams and wishes its just we cannot always hope others can meet them for us.  If were consistently denied the five As in childhood we are not used to receiving them anyway and we may not know how to give them either.  An abusive or emotionally barren partner may be more of what we are used to and receiving love may feel alien and scare us even more as well as bringing up unresolved pain from the past at that lack of love we were denied and may have erected defences against.

Anyway I am lucky that my Scott never shames me when I lash out or get frustrated.  He always tries to understand my point of view and I feel sad and guilty when he feels hurt and sad by my reactions (especially when I swear and call him names which is not very mature or loving at all really).  All I can say is I am learning.  I never saw my Mum and Dad resolve conflict at home growing up and when I was shamed it was just dumped into and on me and that led me to hide and become surreptitious with emotional needs and I am sure also led me to turn to substances and activities instead of people.  Now I have a therapist too which helps but its just this week she is away and so I am struggling a bit more than usual.  I ended up with a big lump on my head from all of the emotional pressure this week as well as a result of my accident anniversary.  Having to clear up Mum’s place made things harder too so its no surprise my frustration level and neediness is a lot this week.   I am doing the best I can but that said I also want to keep learning and finding better ways to deal with my frustrations.  I don’t like hurting people and last night I hurt Scott a lot with my frustration when he is stuck in a pretty dire emotionally barren circumstance himself.