Dealing with disappointment

I decided to take a poll on social media to see what people wanted me to blog about this week and majority ruled that we should chat about dealing with disappointments this week. By no means am I an expert on how to deal with disappointments, but I certainly have had my fair share of them. I assume we all have. Disappointments exist because we have expectations, right? We expect something to go one way and it goes the complete opposite and we feel disappointed. Our expectations were not met and therefore we feel let down. Disappointment and the feeling of failure go hand in hand. The bigger the expectations, the bigger the disappoint.

Whenever I think about disappointments, I think about this one relationship I had. I was dating someone who meant the world to me. Let me preface this story by saying, I go above and beyond for the people in my inner circle. If you are allowed a seat at my table, I will move mountains for you.

My partner at the time's birthday weekend was coming up and for about a month before, I had started planning how I could make his day super special. I spent hours and hours researching the perfect gift, even joining a Facebook group of awesome nerds who helped me make the right choice. He had to work on the day of his birthday, so I organized a lunch to be delivered to his office for him and his co-workers. I bought all his favorite foods so I could make him a special breakfast in bed. His favorite cake is carrot cake, and even though I despise baking, I baked a cake with homemade cream cheese frosting that I was planning on dropping off at the restaurant before his birthday dinner to surprise him. I got balloons and cheesy birthday tchotchkes, the whole nine yards. Not to mention, at the time, I was battling this awful cold that had kept me up all night the night before, so I only slept two plus hours. But even with that, I was super excited to celebrate him. And this is where the problem began, I was expecting to make him feel awesome and loved and happy. I was expecting this amazing weekend together. But like all disappointing stories, it had a terrible ending. While I was planning his special day, he was secretly planning on having a girl- supposedly a friend- come and stay the weekend at his house behind my back. Friends- regardless of gender- I can completely understand having them stay at your home, but as a committed partner, I always expect to be informed. I also would hope that most female friends would make an effort to get to know their guy friend’s partner prior to spending a weekend with them. But alas, I found all this out when I went to surprise drop off his birthday presents and her clothes, make up and overnight bags were all over his living room. I was stunned. Shocked. How could this person I love and care for, just bold face lie to me? I felt like I had been dating a stranger for a year. How could this weekend stray so far from what I had expected? My heart broke. I was devastated. I was beyond disappointed. I was broken. I walked into that weekend thinking about how awesome things would go and how much love would be surrounding us and it turned into lies and betrayal. And not only that, but I had expected him to be a safe haven for me and he choose to put me in a situation that made me feel horrible. Double disappointment. So how did I deal with that disappointment?

The first thing I did was bawl. I cried so hard driving home. How could I have been so stupid? I had been spending all my free time trying to make his life special while he was spending his time making plans with her. And here’s the thing with disappointments and in this case, trauma. Whether it’s lowercase t or capital T trauma- you have to face it. You must sit in it. It effin’ sucks but you have to figure out a way to confront it. And when confronting trauma and letdowns, you seriously have to feel all the dang feelings. I went through a range of emotions from sad to angry to bitter to resentful to regretful. I was grieving. Trying to avoid your feelings will get you nowhere. Because feelings have a sneaky way of creeping into other parts of your life. You may think you can compartmentalize emotions and life’s grand disappointments, but you simply cannot. So step one in dealing with disappointment is facing the music and going through the emotions. It’s a crazy rollercoaster but it helps further the healing process.

The second step for me is perspective. Now situations are subjective, but you have to ask yourself these types of questions. Will this matter to me in a week? In a few months from now? Years from now? What can I extract from this experience that will benefit me? How can I learn from this? When confronted with these situations, how can I lower my expectations? How can I work on having zero expectations? (Legit, a life goal of mine!) How can I reframe my mindset so this situation becomes more palatable? What will help move my mental and physical state from dysregulation into calm? Our entire goal when confronted with disappointment aka the uncomfortable state that makes us reel into the “what could I have done” mode, is to regulate our entire system. A return to normalcy, if you will. Because disappointment brings up a lot of other icky thoughts about worthiness and failures and it makes us question our intuition. It is definitely a blanket emotion for a lot of other issues. And stopping the mind from creating a false narrative and focusing on just factually answering questions like these will help you to frame a better perspective. Your goal is to move your mind outside of the situation and look in, like seeing animals at the zoo. Look at the letdown with a clearer vision and from all sides of the issue without being bogged down by the heavy emotions you are carrying around. Better yet, remove emotion all together and revisit the situation or person. How can you reframe this situation, without creating false stories, to make yourself feel more settled?

I am not a fan of when people tell you to “find the silver lining in things” but try to assume a positive position about the disappointing situation. For me, I look at the birthday fiasco and know that I am a caring and loving person. I tried my best to make someone feel special for a day and although it blew up in my face, that does not negate my character. My silver lining is that I can love and love hard. I was proud of everything I had planned. I was thoughtful and was doing my very best to boost someone’s spirits. And even though it had the opposite effect, my intention was pure, kind and filled with love.

At some point in your journey, if you’re working on actually healing, acceptance should arrive on your doorstep. Now acceptance of a disappointment does not invalidate the situation, but it means that you have grown beyond it. You can look at it in a different light. You can see it from all angles and realize that the past cannot be changed and you can breath a little easier. I will repeat this because it is important in the healing process- acceptance of a disappointing person or situation does not mean that you agree with everything. It means you are on the right path to healing. Once we can get out of the way of our “but why?” attitude, typically acceptance is waiting on the other end.

Lastly, attempt, although difficult, to make this disappointment just a small part of your story. If you make it all consuming, it will only hurt you more. Do not put your time and energy into something outside of your control. It happened. It is over. Stop giving it power and control of your current life. Easier said than done, trust me, I know. But life is filled with an incredible amount of chapters and when your disappointment focus stops being all encompassing, you will begin to actually live again. Try to place your focus on taking care of you and your needs and not how to fix or change things. You are your biggest cheerleader and if you aren’t, then that’s a whole other complex issue to work on. Do not let the outside world and the things outside of your control ruin the beauty of your insides.

It is not easy to reset after disappointment. It takes time, patience, self-compassion, self-love and self-forgiveness. It really hurts your heart when disappointment sets in. And a hurt heart just makes every little thing in life a lot more difficult. But as the cliché goes, there is light at the end of all dark tunnels. You may not see it, but it sees you and it is waiting. You just have to be willing to take these steps to get there. To everyone dealing with disappointment, a hurt heart and more, I hope you know you are not alone. I see you. I feel you. I would hug you if I could. Always remember that you are loved, even on your worst days. Sending you all beautiful energy today!

All my love, Jamieson