19/02/2025
How long can you stay on hold without getting frustrated or emotionally dysregulated? A silly question but it also a practical example of a boring, and inconvenient thing that everyone has to deal with. Some people can last for 4 or 5 hours but eventually everyone is going to freak out. Everyone has important tasks that need to get done. Mine is about 30 min to 1 hour on a good day. If I am in my office with the phone on speaker and I can do other things I might get a bit more. If I am at the store because my bank card just got declined. that is going to be a lot less.
Why is that?
Because I am under a different level of pressure and at a difference state. If you meet someone who is at a simmering 7 all the time in terms of stress; they may not be able to wait very long before getting angry or lashing out or bubbling over because they have less frustration tolerance. Is that good? No. Is that relatable? Yes. Frustration Tolerance is often lower in individuals with ADHD. Why would this be?
The first reason is that difficulty with impulsivity and self-regulation also impacts emotional regulation and impulsively doing the thing your emotions are telling you too. Second is that chaos creates stress and if you have difficulty organizing your life you are going to have more chaos and more stress which often gives you less capacity for handling frustration.
Why does this matter?
Petty frustrations are all around us. It we can’t tolerate the frustration than we probably will be more likely to put things off or give up sooner than we should. Here are some example’s. A client in a homeless shelter gets a job but has to call a cab to get to work. Gets up early to call but waits for 7-8 minutes before hanging up and going back to bed. I see this and call the taxi and have the hold music on for 15 minutes while I am taking my notes. the Taxi answers and the guy makes it to work. Banking, Google account Passwords, A presentation slideshow that won’t load, booking a time to do taxes, driving behind a slow driver, calling to get the cellphone bill corrected. We get frustrated and how capacity to solve the problem is diminished because we got overwhelmed.
What can I do?
Here are some quick and simple solutions to increase your frustration tolerance. to better increase your situation.
1. Laugh. Frustration is a tension. The tension between our expectations of the world and the obstacle to that expectation being met. Tension wants to be released. Anger, laughter, crying are all ways to try and release the tension and find a resolution. Laughing, even a fake laugh, can diffuse the internal tension.
2. Observe/Detach. Our minds and bodies are funny things. we can be in the moment or we can observe ourselves in the moment. try and take a moment to watch yourself get tense.
3. Breath. When our nervous system gets activated we actually can control it. We can bring ourselves down off the ledge.
4. Distract. if you are on your phone put it on speaker and play a game. or talk to someone around you. Make a game to see how many seconds there are in one round of the song or between the voices coming back on. If you are dealing with a tech problem think about it like a puzzle and you are a hacker. get focused on solving the puzzle.
5. Check your Ego. Often when we get the most frustrated is when our Ego is threatened. This computer makes me feel stupid and incompetent. Waiting makes me feel like my time is not being valued and that I don’t matter. Is that the truth or are you just telling yourself a story because you are worried about getting this done before your kids practice.
6. Disengage. If you notice you are passed reasonable. If you have lost your cool and are going to be rude to the call center person, or the waitress. Abort mission. Don’t give into the sunk cost fallacy. the time is already gone. you aren’t going to get the technical problem solved if you want to throw your computer out the window.
Emotional Circuit Breakers
Sometimes this is the most difficult. It can be helpful to have a preset cue that has a very specific action involved. This is my break in glass Commandment rule. Make this very specific, direct, simple and don’t ever break it. If you break the rule once it is very easy to break next time which loses it’s power if you have anger issues or difficulty with emotional regulation. These rules are like electrical breaker. so the breaker is flipped instead of your house burning down. If I start to bang my controller, I am not allowed to play videogames for an hour. If I start to curse at the voice recording and pacing. I need to call back or give it to someone else. If I start to bang my keyboard I need to leave the room. Being out of control is dangerous, destructive, humiliating, and not where anyone wants to be. Create an emotional breaker switch and practice it so you can act despite your emotions.
Doing hard things gets easier
I have found that as I try and face the thing that gets me frustrated and practice these exercise to increase my frustration tolerance I have been able to get more done, and solve issues before they become problems. It is not easy, and it is situation dependent, but it is important to learn how to manage it when you have to make the difficult call, or fix the tricky problem without giving up.
A signal of emotional self-regulation
