What Does it Mean to Have a Low Frustration Tolerance?

More importantly... why should we care?

I’m sure you’ve been there. It’s a Friday night, it’s been a long week, you’re tired and all you want to do is sit down and watch a movie or a show. You’ve been looking forward to it all day. You pick the movie, grab a drink and snacks, and start watching… but about ten minutes in, your Wi-Fi starts buffering. You get the spinning loading icon as your movie stops. You wait. It’s restarts in about five seconds, but only for a moment, and than stops again.

How do you react to something like this?

Do you wait patiently for it to start up again? Try to troubleshoot by refreshing or restarting the device? Do you give up altogether? Or do you shout at the heavens, “WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?!”

Because how you react to relatively common barriers like this is indicative of your overall tolerance for frustration. All of us encounter obstacles in our daily life:

• traffic

• long lines

• misplacing things

• poor customer service

• technology glitches

They slow us down or even prevent us from meeting our goals completely. And while it would be easy to say, “well these sorts of things make everyone angry,” that ignores a really important element of the anger experience.

There are individual differences in our ability to stay calm in these situations.

Even if we would all eventually snap, how long it takes to snap differs by person.

One more example

Imagine you have reservations at a restaurant you’ve been excited to try. You get there right on time and they tell you there’s a problem, they are sorry, but your table isn’t quite ready yet. So you wait. How long would you have to wait until you got angry? Five minutes? Ten? Thirty?

For some, it’s zero minutes. They would have been angry the second they learned their table wasn’t ready? For others, it might be 20 or 30 minutes? And some others might simply never get angry about it (which might be a totally different problem).

If we were to actually test this situation out with a couple hundred people, the results would probably land in a fairly normal distribution with people who would snap right away on one end and people who wouldn’t snap for awhile on the other end.

Where you fall on this sort of spectrum is indicative of your frustration tolerance.

Having a low frustration tolerance (i.e., being on the far left side of this distribution and snapping after just a minute or two) means you have difficulty in enduring frustration, discomfort, or distress. People with a low frustration tolerance often struggle to cope with situations that don’t go their way, exhibit impatience, and may become upset quickly over relatively minor setbacks. It’s commonly associated with an inability to delay gratification and a perception that frustrating situations are unbearable, even though they are not necessarily dangerous or catastrophic.

So why should we care?

This concept doesn’t mean much if frustration tolerance is static and unchanging. If there’s nothing you can do about it, who cares? We’re stuck.

But there are things we can do to improve our frustration tolerance. Here are five of them:

Increase exposure to minor frustrations: Gradually expose yourself to small, manageable frustrations in everyday life—like waiting in longer lines or handling minor technology issues. Over time, this practice builds your ability to cope with bigger challenges without snapping.

Break down problems into manageable steps: Frustration often comes from feeling overwhelmed. Break large tasks or issues into smaller, more manageable steps, and focus on completing them one at a time, which helps reduce feelings of stress.

Reframe your thinking: Try to view frustrating situations as challenges rather than insurmountable problems. Changing your mindset to see setbacks as temporary and solvable can help you build patience over time.

Develop realistic expectations: Frustration often stems from unrealistic expectations. Adjusting your expectations for how things "should" go can reduce disappointment when things don't turn out perfectly. Accept that delays and setbacks are a normal part of life.

Strengthen problem-solving skills: Improving your ability to solve problems can reduce frustration. When faced with challenges, think through possible solutions systematically rather than reacting emotionally. The better equipped you are to handle obstacles, the less frustration you’ll feel.

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