Why Masking Your Despair Is The Most Destructive Experience Of All
In day to day living, we hold a certain set of responsibilities from as early as childhood. Learning manners, how to make the bed, and cleaning up our mess is just the beginning. As adolescents and adults we continually make choices… to step up and show up within our relationships, studies, careers, and personal interests or we step down and avoid as much as we can. In both cases, their is frustration. Whether it’s the role of being the responsible adult that everyone else seems to lean on or the adult that hasn’t emotionally progressed passed age 15 and feels helpless.
The thing about frustration is that when we deal with ourselves and others, we may not know which natural step to take next in order to relieve and remedy the situation. We may know that something doesn’t feel right inside and is causing us more harm than good, but there are many questions that we may ask internally or outwardly with responses that may or may never come.
Life presents a range of opportunity for growth and discovery. When we are confronted with a set back or something that feels impossible or cruel, we make a choice in how we react and decide to face it. We show up or we avoid. Coping mechanisms come to the surface and we want to scream, cry, and/or retreat into silence.
But something incredible happens. Our varying degrees of strength allow us to carry on, giving us solutions in the most unexpected ways, and it reveals to us that in order to understand the ease we have in some areas of our life, it is balanced out by areas of struggle. This is why frustration is ok. It lets us examine the parts of our life that need re-evaluation. It propels us to make changes and seek balance that feels more settling. It’s also good because it serves as an indicator that we need to give ourselves (and others) the attention we deserve. For too long we may have been crying out for help introspectively or making our frustration the frustration of others who would listen. We may find comfort in faith or self destructive behaviors; one that gives us hope as the other is a masking of despair. But at the end of the day, we are allowed to say we hurt, that we’re scared, and that we’re pushed to our limits. We’re allowed to say “I don’t know” and “I can’t deal with this right now.”
In adulthood, we are still learning manners; to be kinder to ourselves and others. We “lay in the bed that we make” and continuously clean up the messes we and/or others create in our lives. But if we accept the fact that frustration is a natural part of life, we can also accept that it’s temporary and will pass if we let it. Frustration is what leads us to the next natural step, equilibrium, and greater inner peace within our day to day living.