Cause of feeling mixed up, confused, frustrated

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You feel frustrated, confused, mixed up. Why? What can cause these feelings? Trying to do a thing you are unable to do can cause this feeling. If someone were to give you an unsolvable mental puzzle and ask you to solve it and you spent a lot of time trying to do it you might start feeling frustrated and confused. No matter how hard you try you can’t solve it. Result: You begin feeling frustrated, confused.

frustrate. prevent (a plan or attempted action) from progressing, succeeding, or being fulfilled.

Syn thwart, defeat, confound, baffle, hinder, check, foil, disconcert

There were times back in my younger years when I felt very confused, mixed up, frustrated. I didn’t understand myself, didn’t understand why I felt so mixed up and confused. I felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web. Try as I might I couldn’t get out. My natural response was to tackle the problem like I would tackle some mathematics problem. Think my way out, analyze my way out. It never worked. Try as I might I couldn’t analyze my way out. However, the problem did eventually disappear. Usually very suddenly. What happened? What did I do to cause it to disappear? If we have some problem that is plaguing us, tormenting us, and then there is some change in our situation and the problem immediately disappears we immediately wonder what it was about that change that caused the problem to disappear.

Example: My college years were the low period of my life. I now realize that there were a number of reasons for that — having to do with wrong attitudes and habits in addition to my own natural weaknesses and inabilities. A lot had to do with my natural slowness. I always started out each school year feeling very optimistic, feeling I would do well. But soon I was feeling very low and defeated and depressed. Very demoralized. Why? The teachers would assign a lot of homework, a lot of reading or exercises to do. I just wasn’t able to keep up. I was just too slow. In a nontechnical course a teacher might assign several books he wanted you to read. I was (and still am) a slow reader. There was just no way I could read all that and do my other assignments. So I didn’t read them. I was required to take two years of German and learning a language is very hard for me. I remember spending long hours trying to memorize the meanings of long lists of German words. It was very depressing. Understand my situation. I felt that getting that college degree was absolutely essential for me. It was a hurdle that I absolutely had to cross. Yet I was running into huge obstacles. It was a four year nightmare. I clung on. It was a dark period. I felt frustrated, confused, mixed up. My strength was that in spite of all my weaknesses and inabilities, I was good in mathematics and it wasn’t an obstacle. The day I graduated the sky turned clear and blue. All was fine. What happened to cause the big change in my feelings? What was the cause of my disturbed mental state in college? Looking at it in perspective it is obvious.

Another example: Until I met my wife I was a very confused, frustrated, and mixed up person in regard to finding the right girl. I wanted to find the right one but just didn’t know how. I just didn’t know how to meet girls, had never dated, and was very shy around any girl who was attractive to me and interested me. I was just afraid of asking one for a date for fear of being rejected. I didn’t drink, didn’t go to bars. I was going to churches every Sunday hoping to find one there. Meeting my wife was a monumental event in my life. I met her on a Greyhound bus. Immediately on meeting her, my life became 1000 times happier. I was 25 when I met her. Now I am 83. We have had a very happy marriage. My life has been a very good and happy one because of her. She filled a big, empty, lonely space in me. So what was the cause of all my frustration and unhappiness before I met her? I was trying to do what I didn’t know how to do.

I had a lot of emotional type problems in my youth. Those problems all resolved themselves in various ways by the time I got to my early 30's. I have written a number of articles in regard to them. I had set very high goals for myself and spent the first ten years after I graduated from college studying a number of advanced mathematical subjects. All of that high focus study put a lot of stress on me.

9 May 2022