Caroline asks:

"I have intense feelings of frustration when things happen that are beyond my control. It seems to tap into prior frustration and feels so overwhelming. I just scream at the top of my lungs when I am alone. I then feel fed up with anything else that is remotely frustrating. How do I handle this?"

Like all feelings, frustration is letting you know that your inner child needs your loving attention with an intention to learn about the good reasons for feeling frustrated.

Frustration is generally a feeling we go to when we want to avoid our feelings of helplessness.

Caroline states that, "It seems to tap into prior frustration and feels so overwhelming." This may indicate that there was much helplessness in her childhood, which is overwhelming for a child.

Caroline’s inner child needs her compassion for both the current helplessness and the past helplessness. Helplessness, and the resulting frustration, are not feelings you can manage without the help of your higher guidance. When you open to learning with your higher self about what is loving to you, and you invite in the love, kindness, tenderness, understanding, gentleness, and compassion of spirit, then you can bring this love to your inner child so that he or she doesn't feel so alone and overwhelmed inside.

It's hard for all of us to accept that which we cannot control, but it's especially hard if we were controlled and/or abused as children.

It's vitally important to validate for yourself what went on for you as you were growing up.

When children are frustrated and feeling helpless and out of control, they need their parents to lovingly hold them, which is what helps them learn to self-regulate. But when parents don't know how to self-regulate their own feelings, and when they are the ones exerting the control and abuse, the child is left with no way to manage their own very painful feelings. This is why Caroline screams at the top of her lungs when she is frustrated and alone. She not only didn't learn how to manage her painful feelings from her parents, but they were likely the ones causing the pain.

But screaming at the top of her lungs may not what helps her inner child. In fact, this likely makes her inner child feel abandoned and alone inside, because there is no loving adult to be there with her with love and compassion. It's all her wounded self knows to do, and she is doing the best she can, but if she were to learn and practice Inner Bonding and develop her powerful spiritually connected loving adult, then she could bring genuine comfort to the little girl inside who is suffering. She might still need to scream in anger for how she was treated as a child, while be conforted and validated by her loving adult.

When you feel frustrated, take a breath, and then lovingly embrace your frustration.

Find the place in you that wants to take responsibility for learning about and managing this feeling. Move into your heart, inviting in the love and compassion of spirit and choosing the intention to learn. Ask your inner child to tell you about what is getting triggered by the current situation and let him or her tell you about what you went through as a child. Hold your inner child and bring much love within as you are healing the pain. While you allow yourself to be the child speaking, you also keep your connection to spirit so that you can be a loving adult with yourself. Honor the intense feelings of helplessness with much kindness toward yourself, and release the anger in a healthy way, such as the Inner Bonding Anger Process. Stay with this until you feel some relief, and then allow the feelings to move through you to spirit.

The more you practice Inner Bonding each time you feel frustrated, the easier it will become to manage feelings of anger and helplessness.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

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