When you’re frustrated, it’s delicious to justify it. To make your frustration right. To fantasize about revenge or striking back.
And to some extent, acknowledging your anger is appropriate. It’s a valid response when something isn’t going right.
But dealing with frustration means pivoting as quickly as possible into a larger understanding. Because staying in the justification keeps you stuck.
The One Thing Frustration Means
There’s only one thing frustration ever points to: you’re misperceiving reality.
That sounds harsh. But here’s what it actually means: there’s a solution available that you can’t currently see. Your decision space has narrowed. Fear has taken over, and you can only see a few options, and they all look bad.
Dealing with frustration is about widening that decision space again.
Ground to Balcony
When you’re frustrated, you’re on the ground. Embedded in the situation. Fight or flight mode.
The practice is moving to the balcony. The 100,000 foot view. From up there, you can see patterns you couldn’t see from the ground.
Train yourself: ground to balcony, ground to balcony. The more you practice, the faster you can make the shift.
Why Projection Keeps You Stuck
When you justify your frustration, when you make yourself right about it, you’re projecting that energy forward.
And the universe only knows inputs. It doesn’t recognize that you don’t want something. It just sees you focused on it.
It’s like hate-commenting on social media. The algorithm thinks you want more posts like that. Reality works the same way. If you’re constantly projecting frustration, reality gives you more situations to be frustrated about.
The Somatic Practice
Instead of projecting frustration outward, bring it into your body.
Notice where it lives. It’s usually a heat. A flame that wants to destroy everything. Let it be there. Don’t act on it. Just feel it.
The number one technique in anger management is count to 10. You might need to count to 100. Or 1,000. Sit with it until it works itself out in your nervous system.
Underneath anger, there’s almost always grief. Some sadness about the past. When you touch that deeper layer, that’s when real release happens.
What Happens After
When you feel through the frustration, something shifts. Your decision space opens. You can suddenly see options that were invisible before.
The solution was always there. Dealing with frustration is just clearing the static so you can perceive it.
This collapses time. You get to your desired outcome faster than if you stayed in reaction mode, slogging uphill.
This is shadow work in action.
If you’re ready to process what’s been running your life, explore the Shadow Work practices.
The Summary
Frustration means you’re misperceiving reality. A solution exists that you can’t see.
To see it: stop projecting the frustration outward. Bring it into your body. Feel through the anger until you hit the grief underneath. Let it release.
Then ask to be shown the solution. It will come. It always does.