Anger vs Frustration

- Subachani

Whether 8 or 80, you cannot say that frustration hasn't knocked at the door of your mind at least once.

First and foremost, what we need to clear out is that 'anger' and 'frustration' are NOT the same, though used synonymously. Anger is often a more intense, immediate, and explosive emotion, while frustration is a more gradual, simmering feeling of being unable to achieve something or feeling blocked. Anger is extroverted and frustration is introverted.

Frustration arises from a number of factors - failure to attain a goal, tumultuous disbalance of hormone, self-consciousness regarding identity, peer and family pressure, academic rat-race.

Teens and new-adults are not equipped with anti- frustration strategies and hence succumb to it more than people above 30. Let's be honest, we don't always eagerly pour out or want to pour out what's going on in our heads to either parents or even friends. This bottling up leads to intensification which ultimately manifests as either 'hard-form' (violence) or 'soft-form' (social isolation). Neither is better than the other.

In everyday life we casually slip in the word 'frustration' into a conversation without actually stopping to think whether the person opposite to us is secretly going through it. Yeah, it’s that hard to actually figure out who is going through what.

- Sampurna