Buddhism Perspective on Frustration I noticed I rarely get mad at people, but when I engage in a task, I get extremely frustrated when things go wrong. My head hurts, I despair (e.g. this is pointless, worthless), and often avoid the task. 

1) What is this? What is it caused by?

2) What is the remedy to such frustration?
From the perspective of training I received, this is a (very) obvious case of "attachment" - to things being "right", and likely also to success and praise.

I suspect, your frustration and anger are your reactions to dukkha generated when in your mind there is a mismatch between your expectation of how the task is supposed to proceed, and how it actually goes.

In my understanding, there are two steps here: one, attachment to an idea of things going perfectly generates dukkha; and two your aversion to dukkha generating frustration and anger. I would not be surprised if there were an element of self-reflection going on as well. As in, thoughts like "why don't other people run into these problems and I do?" or "this is my bad luck". And probably some reverse projection of these back onto the world e.g. "I'm running into these issues because someone else did a sloppy job." and/or "This world is broken! Things never go right and everything is in a mess! It's hopeless!"

From Buddhism's perspectives these are all pathological thoughts rooted in attachment, aversion, and confusion. The root of all this is ignorance - an incorrect expectation of how things are supposed to work, based on an incorrect (overly simplified!) idea of how things work in general.

So, naturally, the remedy is to meditate on how things work!


why exactly things don't go perfectly?
where do the obstacles come from?
if it's the other people who did it imperfectly, why could they not do it perfectly?
what are all the factors at play?
can things ever be perfect?
what is "perfection" anyway, and does my mind play the role in defining it?
is my definition of "perfection" truly objective, or is it partially biased and somewhat one-sided?
aren't things already perfect in some global sense?
does my attachment to idea of how things should be, that leads to frustration, does it help me or others?
does being in a frustrated state lead to my long-term happiness?
when things go different from my idea of how they were supposed to, can I learn to not lag behind reality in my mind and to keep updating my idea to always match reality?
if I learn to stay in sync like that at all times, would I not be stable and at peace?
could it be that this is what Buddhism is actually about?


The last question is obviously a leading question on my part, sorry about that ;)

But yes, analysis like this, and resulting change in perspective is how these things are to be resolved, in my opinion.