Why Do I Have Less Patience Every Day?

Why do I have less patience every day? The world seems to advance before me with the slowness of a pachyderm and that parsimony makes me desperate. Nothing I hope happens, the goals set on the horizon are rarely met and what is worse, I feel trapped in a vortex in which everything revolves around negativity and frustrated expectations.

Do you know this feeling? You are not the only one. There are many people who experience this psychological reality, who complain of that pain in the jaw when containing the tension, who feel an emptiness in the stomach and the mind more nervous and pensive than usual. Impatience, Kafka said, is the fruit of all human errors. However, sometimes, this reality is motivated by triggers as complex as they are particular.

Sometimes you can define yourself as having a patient and relaxed personality, but suddenly, due to certain circumstances, that focus becomes distorted and exhausted. It is then when the uneasiness and that discomfort in which the endurance, hope and even optimism already fades. For what is this? What explains this situation?

Reasons why every day I have less patience

Defining what impatience is is quite easy: it characterizes the person who is unable to wait for something without getting nervous. Also to those who lack the ability to carry out tasks without losing their cool. Now, who else and who less already knows what it feels like and what happens when this dimension takes control. What is no longer so clear is why.

Why do we get impatient? Why are there times when it is more difficult to tolerate waiting, accept other people’s hobbies or assume that things do not always happen as we wish? It is true that there are purebred impatients. People who always show this pattern of behavior. However, at times, we find ourselves feeling that we are missing this dimension.

We analyze why .

Stress and an overactive amygdala

There are times when external demands far outweigh the psychological resources available to us. Work or the lack of it, family, the weight of uncertainties, frustrated goals, etc., put us in a state of high stress. In these circumstances, the brain amygdala, that region linked to emotional processing, begins to be more hyperactive than normal.

This results in having a constant sense of threat. In filtering each event, circumstance and stimulus from distrust, and we could even say from fear. All this causes our mental focus to be tinged with anguish and not calm, the need for haste and not a relaxed look.

Depression and a lower level of serotonin

Why do I have less patience every day? What also makes me more irritable and has a hard time finishing things or even getting on with them? Many times, after this psychological state a depression can creep. Thus, a research paper published in the journal Current Biology showed something interesting about it.

Dr. Zachary Mainen and his team at the Champalimaud Center of the University of Lisbon (Portugal) discovered a relationship between low activation of serotonin neurons and lack of patience. As we well know, these nerve cells and their neurotransmitter are related to well-being, motivation, the ability to achieve and happiness.

Thus, a low level of this neurochemical component is mainly associated with depressive disorders. Therefore, if we perceive that we are increasingly lacking patience, that apathy eats away at us, and sleep or eating disorders appear, it is advisable to consult a professional.

Why do I have less patience every day? Accumulation of frustrated hopes

There is an undeniable fact that we will all have verified on our own skin: today, we need to be more patient than ever. Today, reaching a goal requires much more perseverance. The achievement or realization of our projects takes more months than a few years ago. Also affective relationships and social life in general are more challenging.

And that vision, that panorama often fills us with bitter frustrations. Thus, when one carries more than one failure, more than one goal lost along the way or a vanished dream, it is common to wonder inside “why do I have less patience every day?” The accumulation of frustrated experiences ends up damaging the muscle of calm, of tolerance, of that internal balance that gives us measure and reflection.

Reversing the process, that is, going from impatience to patience is not easy, but it is not impossible either. Because the good news is that the art of patience can be trained. Thus, something we must understand is that we cannot advance time so that things move faster. Nor is it possible to manipulate reality, events or people so that everything is as we want it to be.

We are first forced to assume that we are not in control of almost anything. Also that the world is fallible, as are those around us and in turn, ourselves.

For this reason, learning to be more patient is to feed hope, to assume that although things sometimes are not as we want or expect, this does not mean that in other future circumstances, they will become so.