Exasperation: Naming the Feeling So Many of Us Are Feeling

Many of us are familiar with the famous interaction between Charlie Brown and Lucy of Peanuts fame. Lucy is famous for several things. One is her psychiatric advice offered for 5 cents. The other is her ongoing prank of Charlie Brown involving holding the football for him to kick. She convinces him time after time to trust her and to put all his might into kicking the ball that she holds. Despite his protests that, “he’ll fall on his back and kill himself,” he is eventually persuaded by her to give it one more try. The results we all see coming ensue. The ball is pulled. He falls on his back. “Good grief” is a mild expression of the exasperation he feels.

Exasperation is an interesting English word. It describes a state or feeling that results from just this sort of repeated interaction with significant others. It is a mix of several emotions experienced simultaneously, bleeding into each other. It includes anger, a healthy protest against being taken advantage of again. What was confusion, annoyance, or frustration, the first few times this same thing happened, has now grown into something stronger. It also includes sadness and disappointment. You sincerely hoped for a better outcome and it is heartbreaking to see the same sad story replayed again. Your sadness is a form of protest, pleading for the relationship to be as you had longed for it to be. There is also disillusionment or even cynicism involved in exasperation.

Exasperation is . . .

· the feeling you feel when you realize that despite your repeated attempts to gain your parents’ acceptance, you never will.

· the feeling you feel when the organization you work for fails to follow through again on their promises of rewards or advancement connected to your superior performance and results.

· the feeling you feel when the people you vote for become just like those you voted against over time.

· The feeling you feel when the religious institution to which you’ve dedicated your life proves to be perfectly willing to throw you under the bus for the sake of the cause and their bottom line.

Key to the idea of exasperation is the repetition of similar experiences. It builds over time and in response to multiple instances of the same sorts of interactions. The path toward additional exasperation is predictable.

There are several key aspects to exasperation, things that seem to precede its onset:

1. It usually only occurs within what we perceive as a trust relationship.

People who we don’t trust or have no relationship with don’t generally exasperate us. Because of this reality, it is often parents, who children should be able to trust, or employers, whose word should be good, or government officials, who should have nobler intent, or religious leaders, who purport to be connected to a higher authority, who let us down. If we didn’t lean in toward their promises we wouldn’t be on our back now.

2. It involves our perception.

We have to see the person or entity as something we should trust. We have to go into the same thing again hoping for a different and better outcome this time. This is what Einstein called insanity. And yet, we believe in our hearts that the ball won’t be pulled and proceed to run at it with all our might.

3. It often involves the same promises uttered that have been broken before.

We hope, against our better judgment, that the broken promises we have experienced in the past won’t occur this time. We try to trust the word of someone who has been previously proven untrustworthy.

4. We lean in.

We take an ill-advised risk and allow the other person to repeat the pattern.

5. We find ourselves on our back again.

The person who let us down has no empathy for our condition. They may even pile on by pointing out our fall.

Every emotion includes an action-potential. Shame causes us to hide. Fear causes us to fight, flee, freeze or fawn. Sadness causes us to withdraw, protest, or simply grieve. Anger causes us to attack or to seek justice. Exasperation causes us to do one or more of the following. First, it invites us to try harder, to keep fighting for a different outcome. Then it invites us to quit. Exasperation is the net result of this unresolved tension between try harder and quit.

Many of us are feeling exasperated in the wake of people and systems that have strung us along. We’ve tried again and again to find trustworthiness, but to no avail. So, we experience exasperation, the feeling that comes at the end of massive and repeated disappointments and heartbreaks.

What can we do to avoid this feeling in the future?

1. We can be smarter and more honest about who we ought to trust.

Who can you really trust? Listen to your heart and the real history you have experienced with this person or group.

2. We can hear our own wishful thinking and be honest with ourselves.

Can you hear your own rationalizations and self-deception? Can you be honest with yourself to expose this false narrative in your own head?

3. We can be realistic about the promises broken and kept in the past.

What promises have been kept? How many have been broken? Why will it be different this time? Has the person or group changed in a significant way that makes things different this time?

4. We can choose not to lean in.

Don’t run at the football. Decide not to be fooled again.

5. We can stay on our feet, even if we have to walk away.

Move away from the situation that is likely to have the same end result. Stop the insanity.

6. We can grieve the loss of the relationship we wished we could have had.

Feel the pain of the loss of what you wished could have been. Grieve the loss of what could have been.

7. We can find others who empathize with us in our pain.

Find others who get it and will be with you in the pain of your exasperation. Find people willing to be present with you in the midst of a torrent of emotions connected to these exasperating experiences.

Sometimes naming what we are feeling is a helpful first step. What many of us are feeling, in light of many different yet strangely parallel experiences, is exasperation. Now that we can name it, maybe we can begin to make progress moving on.