Well, what kind of a psychological animal is Frustration? Is it a cognitive and somatic ailment such as anxiety or a mental disorder such as depression?
Those exposed to your expressing the frustration would like you to think that there is definitely something wrong with you. But no, feeling frustrated because of legitimate agitating factors doesn’t mean that you are ill and need to seek medical attention.
As the matter of fact Frustration is nothing more than a normal emotional reaction to opposition, restriction, obstacles – anything that we perceive to contradict with our will, goals, purpose, plans, schedules, etc. It is sometimes referred to as problem-response behavior. There is a problem and the frustration is the first-response signal.
Sometimes we are frustrated with ourselves. Procrastination and indecisiveness are the biggest causes of self-dissatisfaction for most people. However, overachievers who reach top level positions in corporate finance and accounting, the CFOs, Controllers, VPs, Directors, especially in smaller companies, are unlikely candidates for lazy postponements. And even if, for whatever reason, it happens to us, we are usually capable to control it and use the frustration with ourselves as a motivational tool.
No, our causes of frustration are primarily external. When you have allocated your already extended working hours to 10 urgent tasks that must be tackled today, and then your Boss wanders into your office and you have to listen for 2 hours to his blubbering about his workout regimen, the time loss is beyond your control and the frustration is further intensified by your inability to throw him out.
When you give an urgent assignment to your employee, explaining its importance and value to the company’s big picture, and an hour later come over to check the progress and provide further advice only to see her scrolling through boots on Zappos.com, the frustration makes your blood boil in your veins.
When you schedule a meeting with the VP of Sales to discuss the failure to meet volume targets for four months in a row and he is not there 30 minutes past the appointment, evil scenarios invade your frustrated mind.
So, feeling frustrated is natural. However, the way we act while frustrated depends on our personality, self-awareness, self-control and our psychological makeup.
The most frequent reactive mechanism is aggression. Whether we immediately explode at the source of frustration, or wait until we are alone and transfer our anger on an inanimate object, or get home and take it out on the innocent members of our families – it’s pretty much the same response.
In some cases frustrated people engage in a passive-aggressive behavior. You’ve seen it many times over: a person puts on a sullen expression and starts procrastinating, obstructing, failing to meet the expectations, etc. I am sure most of us not only observed it, but also had an episode or two ourselves.
It takes a lot of experience, self-control and tremendous will power to resist this behavioral patterns related to frustration and force yourself instead into constructive removal of the obstacle or resolution of the irritating circumstances. And, unfortunately, even if we can function reasonably on the outside, it doesn’t mean that the psychological disturbance inside goes away.
In the next couple of posts I hope to share with you few coping devices that I have accumulated over the years myself as well as discuss the relation of frustration to anxiety and stress conditions.
The Frustrated CFO 