Don't Let Your Frustration with Being Frustrated Lead to More Frustration
Picture yourself as a mechanic. You snap your favorite tool, the one you reach for constantly, and suddenly the project stalls. You can't finish until you grab a replacement, and every store near you has already locked up for the night. Annoying doesn't quite cover it. Now imagine you lose your temper and hurl the next tool in reach. It ricochets and leaves a dent in the very car you were repairing. A minute ago you had a single problem. Now you have two, maybe three. Then your kid wanders through the garage door and you snap, "Out, before I confiscate your toys." One small snag has multiplied into a mess.
That whole chain is exhausting, and it piles up more trouble than you started with. Stepping away from the problem, when stepping away is possible, often takes the edge off. Walking off isn't always easy to do. Still, a short break lets you cool down before you go looking for a fix. You might ask someone for advice, or simply grant yourself a timeout. A better solution could surface on its own, or you could start listing a few options worth trying. You might even decide the job belongs to someone else, particularly once you weigh the price of that replacement tool against the cost of patching a dent you caused by throwing things.
Women, from what I've seen, tend to respond differently. The reflex is often to turn on themselves, and while they're busy reciting all the harsh things they believe about themselves, the problem sits untouched. That leaves it unsolved. It swells into something frightening that nobody wants to approach. Worry creeps in about what other people would think if they knew about the trouble. Then comes the question of how much it might cost to get help. Underneath sits low self-esteem, anger, the sting of being criticized by someone who offered no help, or the odd feeling of being put down even when help was offered.
A decent rule to live by: don't let one problem breed the next. When frustration takes over, clear thinking tends to go first. People end up saddled with extra problems they never would have created if they had paused and thought it through. Frustration visits everyone, so there's no need to be upset that it found you too. If you're a Christian, remember that things didn't run smoothly for the prophets, the kings, or the disciples in the Bible either. Their troubles were enormous, and yours may look minor beside them. Consider Job, who lost everything and then had it all restored at a point when he'd stopped expecting it.
Sure, you can break things. You can lash out at someone who had almost nothing to do with it, walk away and never return, spiral into despair, end a relationship with a person who wasn't really the cause, wreck the work that barely had anything wrong with it to begin with, and on and on. None of that undoes the first problem.
Take the time off if you're able to, so the situation looks clearer once you come back to it. Reinforce yourself a little by recalling problems you've already solved, and by picturing a person who could lend a hand without making you feel small. Shut down the negative self-talk before it gains momentum. Give yourself the timeout. Keep one problem from dragging the next one in behind it when it never had to.