The frustration spiral will continue until you untangle it.
When you’re in a frustration spiral, sucked down in its swirling power, it feels impossible to get out of it. You feel worse and worse as your confidence shrinks and your frustration grows.
Here’s the trick.
In every frustration spiral, there are hidden handrails.
But how do you find them? In this short post, I am going to show you the first step to untangle any downward frustration spiral by finding a handrail to grab on to.
Start here.
Close your eyes.
I know. This feels a bit squishy; counter-intuitive. But stay with me. Because I’m going to tell you why closing your eyes is so important.
Because when you’re in a downward spiral, you’re overstimulated. Why? Because when you feel off balance, your natural tendency is to open your eyes wider and try desperately to grab on to something. Which is natural. The problem is, when you’re in a frustration spiral, the thing you need to grab on to isn’t in the outside world. The handrail you’re looking for is inside of you, in your own inner core.
So ask this question.
With your eyes closed, ask this question: “What am I angry about?”
And you might be thinking, “Whoa, hang on. Angry? I thought we were talking about frustration.” But what you may not realize is that saying “I’m frustrated” is just the nice-guy way of saying “I’m angry.” And the longer you play the nice guy, calling anger by its nicer name, the longer you will extend your frustration spiral.
Did you find it?
Did you find what you are angry about?
This is the first step. This is first handrail to hold on to as you begin to untangle your frustration spiral. And yes. There may well be more than one thing you are angry about. There may be any number of unresolved angers within you: anger at your boss or partner; anger at the general unfairness in the world; anger at yourself.
But the sooner you identify at least one anger handrail to hold on to, the sooner you will begin to untangle the frustration spiral.
The takeaway:
To untangle any frustration spiral, grab on to a handrail. Begin by asking yourself what you’re angry about.