Frustrations are a diagnostic into those neglected corners of the soul in need of care and tending. Ostensibly, what is felt as an annoyance, an irritant, whether in the form of a prickly place or personality, is actually often a trail of breadcrumbs leading us inward to abandoned hopes and dreams big and small, or aspects of self that might have flourished under different circumstances if cultivated, now marooned in a dark oasis where no eyes can peer save for our own. Following frustration’s clues to their source is not for the faint of heart. No matter how thickly we have clad ourselves with imperceptible masks and armament, if there is anything that can cut us to the core and with the greatest of ease it is the intimation of why, really, we are frustrated by this or that external element, the form of the frustration a superficial dressing painfully pointing us back to the crux of the matter buried within the one frustrated, through shame, accident, or any number of other reasons. Resentment is frustration’s uncomely cousin, a bitter spawn cocooning a person in what feels like righteous indignation toward an irritant though in reality nothing more than a seedbed of sacrilege breeding distrust and disconnection from those who might otherwise help. To begin to see a frustration for what it is, a mirage cloaking an internal aching crying out for care, can be a vital first step toward not only healing but waking. “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart,” Carl Jung observed. “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Frustrations ultimately are an invitation to look within and to mend through self-compassion the fragmented factions of our being.