How to Use Somatic Therapy to Work with Feelings of Frustration
Techniques to release tension and signal safety in the brain.
Written by Avi Klein
3 min read
Key Takeaways:
Frustration is your nervous system mobilizing for action with nowhere to send the energy, not a bad mood to talk yourself out of.
Somatic therapy works from the body up, the reverse of CBT’s top-down focus on changing thoughts first.
Frustration often traces back to earlier experiences, and meeting it with somatic awareness can bring relief rather than treating it as a problem to fix.
Three quick exercises help discharge the charge: a longer exhale for a tight chest, a wall push for restless legs, and a low “vu” hum for a clenched jaw.
Frustration is a neuroplasticity signal. It primes the brain to learn, which makes it evidence of growth, not failure.
You feel it in your jaw at the turnstile, or in that sharp breath you take when an email hits your inbox at 5:54pm. Here In New York, frustration can come easily. While New Yorkers are stereotyped as “angry” or “always in a hurry,” what we’re often experiencing is micro-stress. The sensory overload of a delayed subway, a missed bus, or a crowded sidewalk accumulates in the body as chronic tension.
At Downtown Somatic Therapy, we help clients move beyond “venting” toward a deeper understanding of the language of frustration and how it can work as an agent of change.
“While New Yorkers are stereotyped as ‘angry’ or ‘always in a hurry,’ what we’re often experiencing is micro-stress. ”
Is Your Nervous System on High Alert?
In a high-density city like New York, this kind of repeated micro-stress can keep the nervous system chronically activated. When you are frustrated, your body enters a state of high alert. You may notice:
• Your shoulders rising toward your ears
• Your teeth gritting or grinding (TMJ)
• Increased heart rate
• Irritability that leads to you snapping at coworkers or family members.
These symptoms are signs that your nervous system is encountering something that it wants to respond to and attempting to mobilize for action, but finding nowhere for that energy to go. While this state of alertness may feel inevitable, it doesn’t have to be. In somatic therapy, we don’t see frustration as you simply being in a “bad mood” and needing to cheer up or look on the bright side. We see it as an opportunity to regulate your nervous system.
“When was the first time you felt so frustrated that you wanted to explode, or felt helpless and immediately started crying?”
Managing Frustration
Common therapeutic approaches for frustration or anger management, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), are “top-down”: they focus on changing your thoughts to influence behavior. Somatic therapy, in contrast, uses a “bottom up” approach, by starting with the body. Somatic therapies help us get curious about what is happening in our bodies. It can be moving and empowering to learn what your body already knows and seems to be trying to tell you. When anger, for instance, is truly felt in the body for the first time, it can be cathartic. The same is true for frustration, even when frustration can be very physically uncomfortable.
Frustration is often complex because it’s linked to earlier experiences. “When was the first time you felt so frustrated that you wanted to explode, or felt helpless and immediately started crying?,” asks one of our therapists, Lily Meyersohn. With her patients, Lily explores tension and stress held in the body as a result of pent-up frustration, letting it release before it spills out unintentionally.
“Tracing these memories with somatic awareness can bring relief,” Lily notes. “For some patients, that means starting to truly understand that it might not be their ‘fault’ that they started feeling this way all the time. This isn’t a problem to fix.”
The Somatic Shift
Frustration signals a desire for action. We feel energized and mobilized to do something, but are blocked. You can use the following somatic exercises to complete the cycle and help signal safety to your brain:
• When experiencing a tight chest or shortness of breath, try extending your exhale; breathe out longer than you breathe in.
• If you find your legs restless or jittery, push your back against a wall, engaging your muscles to find grounded energy.
• Frustration typically shows up as a clenched jaw. Create a low-frequency vibration in the throat (a “vu” sound) to soothe the nervous system.
Want support putting these exercises into practice? Book a consultation with Downtown Somatic Therapy.
“When you hit a roadblock and start to feel the heat of frustration, your brain is releasing neurotransmitters that prime your neural pathways toward learning.”
Frustration’s Superpower: Neuroplasticity
It might feel hard to believe, but frustration is not a “bad” emotion. Frustration is an inevitable part of the human experience. We all encounter it. Traditionally, we view this feeling as purely negative, a sign that something is wrong. But somatic therapists see it differently: as a signal that something inside you is ready to shift and that your brain is undergoing change.
Most of us find ourselves frustrated when we make an error or run into an obstacle. To avoid the discomfort of failure and frustration, we may want to give up. But by avoiding frustration, we miss the opportunity to understand our growth process more intimately.
Stanford University neuroscientist and professor Andrew Huberman teaches that frustration is a chemical signal that the brain is rewiring itself through neuroplasticity. When you hit a roadblock and start to feel the heat of frustration, your brain is releasing neurotransmitters that prime your neural pathways toward learning. Frustration operates as the signal that something you’re doing is not working for you, while dopamine is the positive reward released to move you towards change and find a solution. Without the initial friction of frustration, though, your brain would never know it needs to adapt. In this light, frustration isn’t a sign of failure, but evidence of growth.
When obstacles arise, our brains respond by forming new neural connections to adapt and overcome them. Frustration is evidence of the brain’s remarkable ability to learn and grow in the face of adversity.
When we notice frustration arising, we can treat it less like a setback and more like the sign of progress and transformation that it truly is. We can even try to embrace frustration as an opportunity to celebrate our brains for their adaptability.
Ready to understand what your frustration is signaling? Book a consultation with a somatic therapist.
Exercise: Lean into “Learning Friction”
To harness the power of neuroplasticity, try this:
1. Choose a challenge. Pick one skill, like a new language or instrument.
2. Practice for 20 minutes.
3. Expect errors. When you feel the itch to quit, stay with it for five more minutes. Remind yourself: Frustration is my brain rewiring.
4. Repeat this process for a few days.
5. Observe positive feelings as you start to find the task easier and frustration levels subside.
Find Relief with a Somatic Therapist
Frustration doesn’t have to be a dead end. If you are ready to take on frustration, irritation, or anger head on, book a consultation at Downtown Somatic Therapy. By working with one of our somatic therapists, you will learn techniques to explore and release tension and stress held in the body as a result of frustration, allowing you to tolerate these feelings and reduce their hold on you.
