Morning Meditations: Anger/Frustration (Thought Dump #1)

For years, I’ve been familiar with the phrase “All frustration comes from unmet expectations.” I don’t know if he coined it, but my exposure to it comes through John Lund, a marriage educator and author who lives in Utah.

I think I’m going to meditate a bit on that phrase and my own anger/frustration issues that have become quite significant over the last handful of years.

This post is going to be somewhat of a free-flowing thought dump on the subjects in an effort to find the core cause for what it’s all rooted in in my life. Perhaps later, after a few thought dumps, I’ll coalesce them into a usable whole.

First off, I’m gonna try defining for myself what frustration is and if it’s really any different from anger. Merriam-Webster defines frustration in the following way: “feeling discouragement, anger, and annoyance because of unresolved problems or unfulfilled goals, desires, or needs.” Okay, so they use the word “anger” as a means of defining frustration. Honestly, I tend to think they are quite similar, just to different degrees, such as “like” and “love,” maybe?

The last part of the definition is key to me–“unfulfilled goals, desires, or needs.” Desires being what catches my attention most.

Okay, so the same dictionary defines “anger” in the following way: “a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism” (which is itself [antagonism] defined as “actively expressed opposition or hostility.”

I don’t know why, but that definition (of anger) doesn’t do much for me. When I think about getting mad, I think it’s pretty much because I’m not getting what I want: it’s about desires. As I write that, the phrase I quoted at the opening of this mental exercise comes back to mind… “unmet expectations.” Could I add desires to that? Unmet desires?

I can definitely see that my anger is related to unmet expectations. With cars, for example, I think I pretty much nearly always expect things to go smoothy (which is ridiculous because that’s rarely the case), and I choose frustration when I feel I’ve gone beyond what’s reasonable to have to deal with from a given car, be it because I feel the system is poorly designed or because things break or just go sideways, or because unexpected things pop up again and again, and I just want to be done with the job and be on to the next.

One of the most common precipitating events where I choose anger is when things go sideways when I’m in a time crunch.

Yeah, I think for me frustration and anger really are the same–perhaps just different degrees? Or maybe just the same… or maybe I skip frustration and go right to anger? 😬

So… I want to eliminate anger/frustration from my life.

I’m sure some people will say that it’s healthy and one simply needs to manage the expression of it in more healthy ways, but I don’t really feel like anger needs to have any place or space in a healthy life. I could be wrong, but I’m going to be the perhaps naive utopian optimist and look for a life free from anger/frustration.

I feel like there are many other emotions and responses that are much more effective, not to mention constructive. But let’s dig in some more and try to flesh some things out…

So do I think frustration and anger come from unmet expectations only? Or desires as well? Those two can be quite closely related… but also not. Let’s see, can I be angry and not have had an expectation first? Let me use my own experience. Yesterday, I pretty much had an emotional meltdown/tantrum/rage at the 4-hour battery/oil change job. I was already short on sleep, which didn’t help, and I do believe wholeheartedly in biological factors here, and I’m already a perpetual emotional wreck from the events of the last handful of years. I have a very short fuse both for anger and just general melting down (not so much in public, but in private. I’m remarkably adept at not losing my mind when people are around…)

But why did I get mad/livid during the oil change/battery job?

Thinking through it, it started quickly (the anger). Like I had no patience at all yesterday (perhaps lack of sufficient sleep for so many days in a row). The first part that I remember starting to feel my fuse getting lit was trying to take the air intake housing out (the battery is buried behind there). I started getting frustrated quickly because what I expected should be a very quick removal process ended up taking maybe 20 minutes, fighting with tight spaces, poor designs (according to my viewpoint), and just generally being harder than I think it should be. That’s super common as a trigger to anger for me, something being harder/taking longer than I think it should.

Part of the equation is definitely how much I feel I have on my plate and the relative stress level of trying to get the thing of the moment figured out as well as all the other people who need/want my help.

I hope it’s not too boring for you as the reader reading my brain dump.

I would say, yes, it’s unmet expectations that I’m angry about. But there’s something deeper, I think. My gut says it’s core is about desires, that the unmet expectations don’t induce the anger on their own. There are corresponding desires that are being… frustrated 🙃 (threatened). Honestly, I think the core of a lot of things comes down to desires, but I’ll write about desires in greater depth another time–unless it turns out to be this time. 😁

Yes, I expect X to happen (the battery job going relatively simply), but it’s only a problem that it doesn’t happen the way I expect it to go if I feel like it’s impacting what I want I think. I expect the job to go relatively smoothly, and I’ve planned my day and my life accordingly, and it’s a problem because (and not necessarily in order of importance)

#1. I want happy customers, and I’m afraid that their getting pushed to later will anger them, and I don’t want a bad reputation because I want everyone to like me, because because because, and on and on.

#2. I want to maximize my financial income, and I don’t get paid any more for jobs when they go sideways (I don’t charge my customer anything additional most of the time),

#3. I have a busy life and a million things to do, and I don’t want to waste my life on something that shouldn’t be this difficult.

(I’m multitasking a tiny bit, so sorry if this gets a little disjointed.)

So… I think a lot of it boils down to this: I get mad in large part because I want to use my time for things that I find worthwhile, and once it gets past a certain point of elapsed time/degree of difficulty, then I feel like it’s taking my time from me, which time represents life, money, opportunity, reputation, etc. It’s delaying me reaching my precious goals, etc.

So… basically I have a tantrum because I’m not getting what I want (or I’m afraid I’m not going to get what I want, or it’s gonna delay me getting what I want, etc.).

It’s all about what I want.

Simple, right?

And what I want is all about who I am. I’m a firm believer that I am, in large part, what I desire. But often times what I want most is clouded by what I want now, so I lose sight and react out of touch with what I want most.

So… this all leads me back to the post that I remember now was going to be my first non-journal, non-autobiographical/historical sketch post. It was going to be the “Who Am I?” post.

So… with that in mind, I’m going to finish up this anger/frustration meditation, with this potentially temporary but currently personally satisfactory conclusion.

My getting angry/frustrated is highly correlated with me not getting what I want, and if I peel back the layers each time I choose anger and frustration, I believe I’ll find the desire that is being threatened, and understanding and recognizing that desire will allow me to place it in broader context (e.g. what I want most vs. what I want now), educate it, change it, etc.

I suppose this is all relatively simple and obvious, but I want to work through it right now, so it’s not just a simple concept that’s obvious but not really pondered, and is thus taken for granted and never really understood because it’s never effectively applied.

So… thanks, for reading anger/frustration thought dump #1. Next up…

Who Am I? (what do I want?)

Lift the World.

~ Stephen