Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance

[Daniel E.]

Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: Introduction to the Special Issue
by Neil Harrington
January 2011
Journal of Rational-Emotive Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

It has been suggested, that in 50 years’ time, Albert Ellis may be remembered most for the concept of low frustration tolerance (LFT). If so, this special issue [Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance] can be considered a fitting tribute to the wide influence Albert Ellis has exerted upon psychotherapy over the past half century...

Quite simply, frustrating events do not invariably lead to psychological disturbance. Rather, as Ellis argued, it is our beliefs about frustration that are central to psychological disturbance: the belief that frustrating or discomforting events absolutely must not exist and cannot be tolerated. Other cognitive-behavioral models, such as Beck’s Cognitive Therapy, also emphasized the importance of our appraisal of events, but focused more on beliefs related to self-esteem. Likewise, emotion regulation theories have suggested it is threats to self-esteem that are often central to self-control failure: with aversive self-awareness prompting a switch in priorities from long term goals to the relief of immediate emotional distress.

However, Ellis theorized that psychological disturbance arises, not only from threats to self-worth (ego disturbance), but also from intolerance of discomfort (discomfort disturbance). Such discomfort not only refers to negative emotions, but includes effort, everyday hassles, and a range of other frustrating events). The alternative to frustration intolerance is the acceptance of reality, whilst retaining the desire for change. Other therapies in recent years have also emphasized the importance of acceptance. Thus, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) has focused on distress tolerance, particularly in regard to borderline personality disorder. Similarly, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), has argued that psychological disturbance arises in large part from counterproductive control strategies resulting in experiential avoidance...

 

[Daniel E.]

Re: Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: An Introduction

Four Main Steps to Build Frustration Tolerance
Dr. Bill Knaus, Science & Sensibility

You can achieve more accomplishments and psychological wellbeing by acting to increase your frustration tolerance by:

1. Build your body to buffer the stress effects of multiple frustrations. You do this through maintaining a consistent, moderate, physical exercise program, healthy diet, and by getting adequate sleep. The physical exercise phase of this stress buffering process helps decrease depression and boosts your immune system for better health. This is the physical way.

2. Liberate the mind from consistent errors, such as conning yourself into thinking that you can normally escape consequences for delays. This is the cognitive way.

3. Work to boost your emotional resilience by exercising restraint against malfunctioning discomfort-dodging impulses. This is the emotive way.

4. Change negative patterns that you associated with needless frustrations, such as letting work pile up. You can meet this on-going challenge when you dedicate yourself to a lifetime of producing positive results in a reasonable way within a reasonable time. This is the Do it Now behavioral way.

My colleague Tim Pychyl has a blog on frustration tolerance development I recommend reading:
Discomfort intolerance: Why we might give in to feel good

If developing frustration tolerance proves challenging, End Procrastination Now (Knaus, 2010. McGraw-Hill) can help. As an alternative, download How to Conquer Your Frustrations for free . I describe how to boost frustration tolerance. I wrote it without using the verb "to be" to help you reduce overly generalized distress thinking.

Dr. Bill Knaus, Ed.D., is the author of more than 20 books; one, Overcoming Procrastination, was co-authored with Albert Ellis.

 

[Daniel E.]

Re: Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: An Introduction

from The Three Majors Musts:

[The third "must":] Life must be easy, without discomfort or inconvenience.

1. Summary
   1. Inflexible and unrealistic
   2. Over-estimates one's right to a trouble-free life
   3. Under-estimates one's ability to cope with adversity
   4. Non-accepting of life's vagaries
2. Sub-beliefs
   1. Things must go the way I want them to go.
      1. I need what I want.
         1. It's awful if I don't get what I want.
   2. I must constantly worry about life's predicaments.
      1. I must control, avoid or change life's predicaments.
      2. I must make myself upset over life's predicaments.
         1. Making myself upset gives me the power to control, avoid or change life's predicaments.
   3. I must avoid, rather than face and deal with, life's difficulties and responsibilities.
      1. I must not be inconvenienced or made uncomfortable.
      2. I cannot discipline myself.
      3. I can't stand the present pain that is necessary for future gain.
   4. It must be easy to change things that I don't like.
      1. Difficulties must not exist.
      2. I am powerless to change my circumstances.
         1. Any effort to change my circumstances is pointless because it is doomed to fail.
   5. Justice, fairness, equality, democracy and other "right" values must prevail.
      1. I can't stand it when my values are trodden on.
   6. All problems must have a perfect solution.
      1. The perfect solution to all problems must be found.
         1. It's awful if a perfect solution can't be found to my problems (or those of people I care about).
   7. I must not die prematurely.
      1. I should be able to live forever.
      2. It's terrible that I will one day die and no longer exist.
      3. It's terrible that people I love will one day die and no longer exist.
   8. My life must have meaning and purpose.
      1. a. If I can't create meaning or purpose for myself, the universe or something supernatural must provide it for me.
   9. I must not experience depression, rage or anxiety.
      1. I must not have psychological problems.
         1. I must not be institutionalized.
         2. I couldn't stand to be institutionalized.
         3. I could never recover if I went "crazy."
3. Emotional Consequences
   1. Low frustration tolerance
   2. Self-pity
   3. Depression
   4. Discomfort anxiety
4. Behavioral Consequences
   1. Procrastination
   2. Shirking
   3. Drug and alcohol abuse
   4. Overindulgence in "feel good" behaviors (e.g., overeating)

 

[Daniel E.]

Re: Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: An Introduction

Psychological Pain is Ubiquitous and Unavoidable

Because of the abilities of the human mind, all kinds of external and internal events can become ‘present’ at any given time if their mental representations are activated (T?rneke, 2010). Internal events may have a strong psychological impact if they are perceived as relevant to the well-being of the person experiencing them. Most organisms are biased towards attending and responding to stimuli or events they perceive as dangerous or aversive. For humans, who have minds that can easily make any stimuli psychologically present, the availability of aversive stimuli – in the form of mental representations – is greatly enhanced. Thus, humans often feel distressed because of things that are not happening at the moment. People may worry about events that may happen in the future, regardless of how distant this future is or how likely it is to actually come about. They can also compare themselves, their partner, or the current situation to any kind of frightening alternative or desirable ideal. For example, a socially anxious person may think, “I will be anxious and miserable if I go to the party, so I’d better stay home.” To take a more extreme but unfortunately common example, a depressed individual may say to herself, “I feel sad and hopeless now. If I kill myself I will not feel anything, which is better” (Hayes et al., 1999). Moreover, due the great capacity of the mind to generate arbitrary relations, any person, object, or stimulus can be connected to any negative emotion, irrespective of the original or formal value of the stimulus (e.g., “This party depresses me, because it reminds me of the times before the trauma when I could really enjoy things”).

In sum, the unique ability of the human mind to generate countless arbitrary connections and to easily ‘travel’ the time, space, probability and social dimensions (cf. Liberman & Trope, 2008) is highly advantageous, but it also brings about a great deal of unavoidable pain. Representations and relations generated by the human mind greatly increase the reach of aversive stimuli, thus making mental pain common and intense.

 

[Daniel E.]

Re: Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: An Introduction

The Value of Pain
By Barry Brody, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.

No Pain, No Gain.

How I hate the truth of that saying.

If we can’t suffer pain, then we are robbing ourselves of growing and developing. Of course we all have our limits.

But if we live our lives avoiding suffering pain, never feeling hungry, sad, mad, etc., then how do we learn?

If learning is based on experience, and I am doing my best to avoid experiencing pain, then all I have learned is how to avoid.

 

[Daniel E.]

Re: Frustration and Discomfort Intolerance: An Introduction

FORECLOSURE
by Barry Brody, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.

...We all have things we shy away from. If we get really good at it, we don’t even know that we are doing this. Until something happens out of the blue, and we don’t have time to get our avoidance mechanisms in place. Then we realize that there is something we have been avoiding.

In the consulting room I see this with every patient. They all want to avoid some experience, usually the one that has driven them to seek therapy. Most patients don’t recognize this, but want the doctor to make the experience, feeling or memory to disappear without the necessary confrontation...

 

[Daniel E.]

"A rhythm, back and forth between pleasure-pain, joy-suffering, something good one moment, then something seems to take it away. This inner sequence in normal living is inescapable. Our job with our patients and with ourselves, is to help make room for this sequence, for this inner rhythm, for different transformations of this constant conjunction. Not to get rid of it. We cannot get rid of it. We'd be getting rid of ourselves. Even in nirvana, you will not get rid of it. One has to learn to live with it, have a larger frame of reference, open the playing field, make more room."

~ Michael Eigen, PhD, Eigen in Seoul: Faith and Transformation (2011)

 

[Daniel E.]

An experiential technique for facing low frustration tolerance (LFT)

A six part loop (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3, etc).

1. Write down a frustration you could bear.
2. How does that frustration seem to you now?
3. Write down a frustration you would rather not bear.
4. How would that frustration feel in your body?
5. What part of that frustration might you be able to bear? (This question gently eases you into imagining yourself tolerating part of a frustration you feel you don't want to tolerate. There is usually some part of the frustration that is tolerable. If there is not, that is fine too.)
6. How does that frustration seem to you now? Continue to question one.

Adapted from: A Mindfulness-Based Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

 

[Daniel E.]

“Believing that life should be free of all distress is a national health problem.”

~ Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski

---------- Post added at 03:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:21 PM ----------

REBT for Trekkies: With Absolute Power…Comes Dismal Frustration Tolerance

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