Many foreign words in our language are used right and left, although their meaning remains obscure for the layman. This happened with the word “frustration”, even some psychologists practice it very much, and without any explanation. So what is frustration?
The definition sounds like this - "an emotional-sensory reaction to unexpected environmental resistance." Of course, this is a very general definition. Under the resistance can be understood various circumstances - other people's reactions, unpleasant events. That is, if there is a certain discrepancy between expectations and reality and a person gives an emotional reaction to it, this reaction will be called frustration. In Russian, the word closest to this word is confusion.
Of course, by definition it is clear that this condition is very unpleasant. Frustration in psychology is an often used term because it accompanies us all our lives. It is classified into internal and external frustration by the source of the conflict. The inner one may be due to the fact that a person has set goals for himself, but they cannot be achieved. Often frustration occurs when unsatisfied strong desires and needs, as well as instincts. A person is often lost if what he usually gets suddenly stops working. Also, the source of frustration can be the conscious presence of any complexes, for example, fear of speaking in public or fear of communication. Then the situation of failure has to be faced more than once or twice. Also, internal frustration in psychology is considered a consequence of an internal conflict of goals, when the realization of one dream interferes with the realization of another, this is called cognitive dissonance.
External frustration in psychology is confusion caused by factors that are outside the personality. That is, if you get stuck in a traffic jam - this is the source of external frustration. Or, suddenly, the boss strictly demands to complete an assignment in which the employee is completely unaware. The first condition that such a person will feel will be frustration. Although it can turn into aggression, and aimed not at all at the source, which provoked confusion. This is how the textbook situations appear in our lives: a man is tyrannized by a boss, then this man breaks away from his wife at home, the children inherit from his wife, and domestic animals become the last in the chain of aggression. It all started with the frustration of one person.
This condition can cause different reactions in different people. How are frustration and protective mechanisms of personality connected ? If the intensity of the former is at least average, the latter are included necessarily. The first mechanism is not known to everyone as the term repression. Unpleasant circumstances are thus forgotten, but continue to live in the unconscious and disturb the individual. Regression is a “return” of an individual to an earlier stage of development, which is also a reaction to frustration. And the third common defense mechanism - transfer, this is exactly the situation that you saw above - when a person expands the collapse of his hopes on his relatives (and not only).
Of course, to a certain extent, frustration is normal and becomes the reason that we are improving ourselves, but if it drags on for a long time, the effect of constant stress can undermine our health. Particularly often, diseases associated with frustration are found in middle managers. Their work is quite responsible, in addition, they have to answer to superiors of a higher rank. Of course, there are individual characteristics of the response, and the barrier can be overcome, but this requires additional time and effort. If a person learns to solve a problem, next time there may not be any confusion. Frustration in psychology is understood precisely as a reaction to difficult to overcome, so if a person is faced with a difficult, but overcome from the point of view of skills, this will no longer be frustration.