Suzie Chick

“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.” 

Henry David Thoreau

We somehow find us ourselves at the start of another year (is it just me or has time sped up)? And for many of us, we’ll be experiencing a fair bit of disappointment this month. Whether it’s because the festive celebrations didn’t quite go as planned or we’ve already broken our new year’s resolutions. This is a month for feeling a little flat, they don’t call it the January blues for nothing!

I’ve been quite intrigued by the feeling of disappointment recently. On a personal note, I have experienced my fair share of this troublesome emotion in the past few months in different areas of my life, some big, some trivial. But the whole experience has got me wondering about feeling disappointed and how best to manage this feeling and whether it could ever be a good thing?

What is disappointment?

Disappointment is often described as unmet expectations. We feel disappointed when reality fails to match our hopes or expectations. For example, when a friend lets us down, or we don’t get the promotion at work etc. Our expectations can be expressed (say we tell people we are hoping for promotion) or hidden (we expect our friend to behave in a certain way but don’t tell them explicitly). And so, the disappointment we might feel after the expectations haven’t been met can also been explicit or hidden.

The impact of feeling disappointed

Feeling disappointed can be painful. As Brene Brown explains, feeling disappointment “requires considerable emotional bandwidth”. Something we valued didn’t materialise in the way we had hoped. Disappointment can leave us feeling quite exposed and vulnerable. It highlights that we had hopes and longing, we cared about an outcome, and it’s not come good. Feeling disappointed can be associated with feeling sad, frustrated and maybe even shame or embarrassment (depending upon the situation).

When I think of disappointment and how it feels, the iconic image of England footballer Paul Gascoigne crying at the semi-final of 1990 World Cup springs to mind. He had just realised that even if England made it to the final of the tournament, he would not be playing due to receiving a yellow card. His eyes well up, his body posture slumps, he appears despondent and defeated. His hopes of playing for his country in the final of World Cup had been dashed. His disappointment is palpable. 

Defences against disappointment

It’s no wonder that due to the way disappointment can make us feel, that we create unconscious defences to ensure we don’t experience this painful feeling.  Classic defences against disappointment include:

• Denial – pushing down our feelings of disappointment by pretending that we didn’t care or didn’t have expectations in the first place. Or even we expected things to not work out, as the saying goes “a pessimist is never disappointed”.
• Anger and blame – we skip disappointment and play the angry blame game instead as its less painful and exposing.
• Control and rigidity – If we keep our worlds tightly controlled, and take very few risks, then we minimise the chance of disappointment occurring. 
• Avoidance – completely bypassing situations that may result in us feeling disappointed (avoiding intimate relationships or going for that promotion for example).
• Perfectionism – if everything we do is perfect, then we can avoid ever feeling disappointed in ourselves or having others be disappointed in us.

How to manage disappointment

So, if we’re not going to defend against feeling disappointed, how best can we manage this pretty uncomfortable feeling?

• Acknowledge how you feel – First to acknowledge that we feel disappointed is a key first step. As explained above it’s easy to go straight to anger or frustration and skip disappointment because of how vulnerable it can make us feel. So, to acknowledge I’m upset because I had expectations and they’ve not been realised is not always easy but is important if we’re to make the best use of our feelings of disappointment. 
• Manage expectations – By understanding and accepting that we feel disappointed we can begin to unravel what were our hopes and expectations in the first place. This might reveal that our expectations were a tad unrealistic or provide us options as to how we might be able to realise our hopes in a different way.  Often using language such as “should” or “always” is a good indicator of high expectations. For example, say we’ve decided that we’re going to start going to the gym several times a week as part of our new year resolutions. If we’ve never been to the gym before, or haven’t in a long time, several times a week might be unrealistic, and we essentially set ourselves up to fail. Or if we expect people to reply to our text messages within the hour then we’re certainly going to feel disappointed as the initial hope was completely unrealistic. Doing a sense check on our expectations and adjusting them to something more realistic is a good way of managing disappointment. 
• Don’t take it personally – We often take situations not turning out as planned to heart and feel that it’s something personal about us. We might even moan that of course this didn’t work out, I’m cursed in some way, things never go my way. We take disappointments in the past and project them onto current situations (another method of defence). Our past experiences are just that, in the past and don’t necessarily predict what will happen in the future. Often if we take a step back and really consider the situation, we often find that there were lots of aspects that were outside our control. A classic example is the weather or delays on public transport. 

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting York for the weekend with family. It was a lovely time, but the weather was pretty wet and soggy, and the streets were incredibly crowded. The person who had arranged the trip could not hide their disappointment about things not quite working out the way they had hoped. It was important for them to remember that a lot of the elements which were causing their disappointment were nothing they could have determined or even mitigated for in advance. As the saying (by Scottish poet Robert Burns) goes, “best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. Acknowledging that not everything is personal can help us reduce the potential victimhood we might feel when situations go wrong. 

• Develop self-compassion – Showing ourselves self- compassion is also important when it comes to managing disappointment. We feel disappointment because something hasn’t worked out the way we hoped. And that’s ok. It’s perfectly natural to feel disappointed. I like to try and welcome disappointment as it’s a sign that I had hope about something, and that for me having hope is always a good thing. Hope is a wonderful feeling and an important part of living a full and vital life. Being kind to ourselves in these moments is important as we’re likely feeling a little vulnerable and fragile (handle with care I like to say).
• Talk it out – Talking to someone about how we feel often helps reduce the intensity of our feelings and help us feel less alone. Most of us (if not everyone) have felt disappointment in our lives and so talking to someone else can often help normalise the way we’re feeling. I kept one of my recent disappointments to myself for a while and felt such relief when I shared my experience with a loved one. I received lots of understanding and a hug which was lovely, and it helped me manage my disappointment and progress with the situation in a more pragmatic way.

Disappointment as transformative

To live a full and whole life, experiencing disappointment is inevitable. If we are to hold hope, then disappointment is a possibility (not a certainty). Disappointment allows us to clearly see the line between what we imagined and what is, Disappointment invites us to live in reality rather than denial and fantasy. Disappointment grounds us in truth (whether we like it or not). 

If we pay attention, feeling disappointed tells us about our longing and allows for an opportunity where we might adapt our expectations and actions to achieve our hearts desire. 

So instead of trying to defend against this emotion, painful as it can be, we should try to welcome it as a tool for growth. I will certainly try to keep this in mind and heart as I venture into the new year.

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash