Dealing With Frustration: Lessons from a highly sensitive person

By now, you’ll know that I’m a highly sensitive person and a crier. I’ve always been quick to cry, especially when I’m frustrated. One of my core values is persistence, so I don’t know how to give up. I think I struggle with dealing with frustration because it feels like I’m failing. Like letting something else win. Not that I’m an overly competitive person. But if something stops me from achieving something I want to do - it’s now my enemy. And I need to defeat it.

I spent most of my life feeling this way. I felt that stopping when you hit a roadblock is bad because it’s giving up. Now, though, I see that the stops don’t have to be forever. Sometimes there’s magic in the pause.

My first big memories in dealing with frustration

I started learning how to play the piano when I was 4. My older sister had started taking piano lessons, and I wanted to be able to do whatever she was doing. Motivated by stickers, I diligently practiced every day (mostly) and started to progress. However, as you continue to learn something new, the work gets harder and more complex. Multiple times over the years, I got stuck on a few bars of music that I couldn’t learn right. I just couldn’t convince my fingers to do what I needed them to do. I kept making the same mistake. Being the super type-A high achiever from a very young age, I would pound away at those keys for hours, trying to deal with the frustration by overcoming it.

Then, because I’m a highly sensitive person that’s quick to cry, I would often start crying while still practicing. I remember crying multiple times over the years as I was trying to learn something hard. My mom would come over, take my hands off the keys, close the lid, and say, “It’s time to walk away.” I thought she did this because it was annoying to hear the same bit of music. Especially because the music being played wrong over and over again. Now I know she was trying to show me, in her own way, the power of the pause in managing frustration.

What the lesson really was

Fast-forward thirty-some years, and I was writing in my journal, just rambling and processing whatever came up. All of a sudden, the clouds parted and I realized that she wasn’t closing the piano for me just because it was annoying to hear the same bars being reworked over and over. She knew, maybe on a subconscious level, that my nervous system was activated, and I wasn’t able to access the part of my brain that I needed to make progress. So she essentially forced me to take a pause, allow my nervous system to calm, stop pounding against that proverbial brick wall, and allow myself to come back to it with a more calm approach in dealing with a frustrating experience.

The truth about frustration

You see, frustration is an emotion associated with our stress response. Our stress response was designed to keep us safe, not help us learn a new skill. We see something dangerous coming at us, and we either fight or flight away to safety. Now, of course, there is the freeze and fawn response, which have come about from living in this dumpster fire of a world that we live in and the trauma (both big and little 't' trauma) that we’ve experienced. Regardless, in response to stress, we’re wired for survival, not complex thinking.

When you’re running away from a dangerous animal, contemplating the meaning of life, or solving a complex problem - not a priority. The same goes for when we get so frustrated because we’re stuck on something and can’t find the way forward. Our stress response can kick in and shunt blood, oxygen, and nutrients away from our prefrontal cortex, our higher level thinking, problem-solving brain. So when we keep pounding away at those piano keys when we just can’t seem to figure out the correct way to play the song - our stress response makes it harder or nearly impossible to figure it out. Dealing with frustration in this way only exacerbates the problem.

Frustration activates our stress response, making it harder to be curious, flexible, and think outside the box. Which is the exact opposite of what we need at the times when we’re frustrated.

Applying the lesson in dealing with frustration to a more recent experience

I had a really interesting experience with this very concept just a few weeks ago. I went roller skating for the first time in over 20 years earlier this year in March, and right away after putting on my skates, I stood up and promptly fell over backward, landing right on my tailbone. You know, when your arms move in a windmill to try and catch yourself, but your feet just keep rolling out and eventually go up in the air, and you land down on your butt. It hurt, but I couldn’t help myself. I just started giggling right away thinking of how funny it was that I couldn’t even stand up. The night went on, and I continued to fall all over the place with a little bit of skating, but I was hooked. Thankfully, so was my partner.

We went the next week to get our skates, and we’ve been back to the rink almost every week since then. He’s started getting into roller derby, but I want to be able to dance on my skates. One week we went to an intro skate-dance lesson, and even though I had been good about not falling as often, I fell oh so very many times. Usually right on my tailbone. I was getting really frustrated and just couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.

I left that skate night hella sore and covered in bruises - but determined to get these moves down! We’ve cleared out some space in our home for roller skating practice, and so I was trying these new moves at home…still consistently landing HARD on my tailbone. I started to cry - not because it hurt, even though it did, but more because I was so frustrated that I just couldn’t figure this out. However, unlike what I did when I was younger, I didn’t keep pushing through. Instead, I sat down on a cushy chair and just had a good frustration cry. I let the stress, the frustration, the emotions out. I gave myself permission to stop pounding against that proverbial brick wall in my way, and instead just leaned against it to rest and regroup rather than continue with the frustration.

How the pause helped

On our next trip to the roller rink, I decided to just listen to the DJ playing all the fun tunes, and just simply skate around in circles. Nothing fancy, nothing new, no pressure. My only goal was to try and make it through the night without falling over backward. And I got it! I didn’t even fall once! I took the break that I needed, to calm my nervous system, to start problem-solving, and to realign with what I really wanted for my new hobby.

I needed to be more gentle with my expectations for myself. So, I took a step back and realized that I wanted roller skating to be fun. This was supposed to be something that I didn’t have to push myself on. Sure, I do want to get better - but I don’t have a timeline for that. It’s not like this goal needs to be achieved by a certain date. I know a couple moves, I’m learning how to fall so it doesn’t hurt too much, and I like the people I meet at the roller rink. Maybe, at least for now, that’s enough.

It’s only because I took that little pause, rather than continuing to push through, that I gained this clarity and saved myself a whole lot of bruises.

So friend, I have to ask you: What have you been really determined/stubborn about lately that maybe you need to take a little pause from? You know, just enough of a pause to gain clarity and allow your stress response to calm down so you can think outside of the box.