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about disappointment
Coping with disappointment is part of life. It's something we all have to do. And it never gets easier to deal with.
We just get more practice at it. There'll never be a time when any of us get past the point of being open to disappointment.
The reason is simple: the
potential for disappointment surrounds us constantly, no matter how
young or old we are, whether it's other people, our own performance or life itself that lets us down.
You
can use disappointment to improve your life if you:
- Practice flexible thinking to help you "roll with the punches."
- Look at your expectations and make them
realistic.
- Choose activities which make your life more satisfying.
- Share your feelings with someone else or write them down.
- If you can't influence an event, accept it. If you can,
work hard to make your dream a reality.
- Learn from your disappointments, then move on.
"There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations
are always on the good side."
George Eliot
Coping With Disappointment
By Eric Butterworth
Unity minister Eric Butterworth, 86, Theologian, Lecturer and Author of 16 books died April 17. He inspired hundreds of thousands with his message that positive attitudes create personal renewal.
His congregation
was Unity Center of NY; his pulpit, New York's Lincoln Center.
I love the story
Charles Edison, former Gov. of New Jersey,
tells of his father, Thomas Edison. He says in 1914 when the Edison Industries of West Orange, New Jersey were practically
destroyed by a great fire, most of Edison's life work was going up in flames.
So the young man, concerned, looked about for his father and he finally came upon him. The man's face was ruddy in the glow of the flames.
 
He wrote,
"My heart ached for him, no longer a young man, everything being destroyed." Then he says, "My father spotted me and he called out, Charles,
Charles, run get your mother. She will never see anything as beautiful as this fire as long as she lives."
So, even in its destructiveness, Edison saw the beauty of the fire because,
you see, he was a researcher. He'd spent all of his life learning how to cope with disappointment.
The next morning, walking about the charred embers of all of his dreams, Edison said," There's great
value in disaster because all of our mistakes are burned out. Thank God we can start again!"
Three weeks
later the Edison Company delivered the first phonograph.
You might say,
But Edison was an unusual man.
He was different. He was special.
Or, we say of Jesus,
But he was the son of God.
But Jesus said, "All that I do you can do too."
Each of us has the God potential within
to rise above any and all disappointment. In life you'll have many trying times, but there is a tremendous capacity within us to
rise above any situation, any challenge, any limitation.
Always we must know that if I'm discouraged or disappointed it's
not because of what happened, it's a result of my own consciousness, my own negative awareness.
You can decide that you're going to
meet all things from the highest possible perspective. Your job isn't to *set* things right but to *see* them right.
The problem of disappointment always - comes from neglect of ones spiritual life. I'm
not talking about going to church or worshipping God in a formal way. I'm talking about his awareness of his own wholeness, the awareness of his own God-Self manifesting within him.
So if he listened more to the inner voice and less to the clamorous voice of the external world, he would find a strength and
a courage that would insure him against discouragement.
The sad thing is that most persons are obsessed by the pessimistic wailings of hearsay and they say and what they read in the papers and the worlds tragedies and troubles.
So they have little time to listen to the voice of the infinite within themselves. In a sense, as the Christmas story reveals, they had no room in the inn to
receive the creative flow.
Now of course we should understand that if you love your misery and you want
to nurse your discouragement and your feelings of failure, it's your privelege.
Anyone has a perfect
right to stew in his own juices if he wants to. But remember, you're in your cave because you want to be there. When you're
sick of being so negative you can open the window and turn on the light at anytime. Anytime you can overcome. The disappointment
is
a result of your own consciousness. Your own negative awareness. Unity Center
of New York , (212) 582-1300
213 W. 58th NY,
NY 10019
"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere,
and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first
calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere . . . "
Jane Austen
Coping With Loss and Disappointment
Nancy Recker, Extension Agent, Family & Consumer
Sciences, Allen County
Loss touches all of us and death isn't the only cause of our losses. Losses and disappointments
happen throughout the life span and affect personal and family lives. We lose our health, good friends who move away, jobs
and spouses through divorce.
We suffer the disappointment of missed promotions, the loss of financial security, loss of our children and grandchildren through family disputes and the list could go on. We may face loss and
disappointment regularly and never really stop to consider what's happening to us.
Have you ever suffered from a loss or disappointment? Maybe you have and don't even realize it - you just thought that was how life was supposed to be.
Learning to recognize your losses and learning to deal with them can help you throughout your life as you face additional losses.
You can find meaning in your losses and in spite of the pain, learn from your experiences.
Recognizing Losses
Many research studies have been conducted on the grieving process and handling death, but few studies have focused on managing the change brought about by disappointments and losses.
Whenever we experience a change that requires giving up familiar patterns, we suffer a loss or disappointment. In a
research study conducted by Family and Consumer Science Extension Agents, over 500 people were asked to tell about their losses
and disappointments, rate the severity of them, what feelings they had and what helped them to cope with or get over them.
Most of us recognize the obvious losses such as death, divorce, or loss of a favorite possession. But it's important to realize that the less obvious losses and disappointments can also be very significant.
Losses
- Health: physical and mental illnesses, injuries, chronic diseases
- Relationships other than divorce: siblings and family estrangement, unhappy marriages, problems with children, grandchildren, co-workers, friends
- Work / financial: jobs (loss
of a job, downsizing, changing jobs), businesses, homes (moving, fires,
etc.)
- Divorce
- Death
- Pregnancy issues (unfaithfulness,
unexpected children, miscarriage, abortion, infertility)
- Losses from violence (rape,
sexual assault)
- Loss of a dream or vision
- Loss of independence and self-esteem
-
The most
shocking experiences of loss are those that alter the structure and functioning of our personal and family life.
These kinds of
losses and disappointments can have lasting impacts.
Much of the grieving we do comes from those losses that are easy to identify. The source of grief is obvious when someone dies, we experience a divorce, or we move away from our family and friends.
The not-so-obvious
losses and disappointments are more difficult to identify. An exciting event such as the birth of a baby may bring the loss of independence. Or a job promotion may bring the loss of valued clientele.
Grieving Is an Individual Experience
Grieving is an individual experience. A major loss for one person, may be only a minor disappointment
to another. The intensity of the loss or disappointment is often dependent on the significance of what was lost.
The
time span for recovery is also very individualized. For some, recovery may take only a few months, but for others experiencing the same or similar loss, it could take years.
Every
person works out his or her own method of surviving or coping during times of loss. Some people turn to friends while others like to be alone. Some seek out support groups and counselors while others stay at home and cry.
Physical
activity, reading, working, talking, writing and praying are all coping mechanisms that people use to cope with losses and disappointments.
Healing
from a loss or disappointment is a process. All of us know that it takes time to get over
something that overwhelms us. Time, together with a change in attitude are the most helpful things to help you recover.
Primary
support, such as family, friends and church, along with time are also helpful. It's important
to move on, talk with others and let others help if you're to recover from your loss or disappointment.
Give yourself time to grieve and to heal.
Disappointment is seen in the face of the little boy who's
been promised that he'd get to play in the game but at the last minute the coach changes his mind and decides to keep him
on the bench and let someone else play.
Disappointment is heard in the voice of a little girl that's been saving
her allowance so she could buy the doll that she saw in the toy store last month. When she returns she discovers that the
dolls have been sold and there aren’t anymore in stock.
Disappointment can be felt in the shaking sobs of a loved one that hears
the doctor say, “I'm sorry, we did everything that we could."
Regardless of who we are and regardless of our social status in life
all of us experience disappointment in life. None of us are immune to disappointment. We never become so calloused and tough that we can't be touched by it. All of us have and will
continue to experience disappointments in life.
Allow me to make some
quick observations about disappointment. We can call these facts of life.
- There's always some level of disappointment, even in the best of circumstances.
- Circumstances are rarely at their best.
- Life is often blatantly unfair. We often say that life dealt me an unfair hand or the deck is stacked against me.
The first thing
we need to do is try and understand what disappointment is. The dictionary defines it as a failure to meet the expectation and hope of.
Many of us have a certain
expectation of life in general and when those expectations aren’t met then we're disappointed or let down. We expect certain things from people, places, things and events and when our expectations aren’t met we're devastated by disappointment.
Another way of defining disappointment is to say that it's an undoing of an appointment. Disappointment is
the opposite of appointment. An appointment is the aligning of our plans and future with a desired event.
If you make an appointment
with a doctor to see him in his office you have to align your schedule with his schedule. You may have to put off having lunch
with a friend in order to make this appointment. You may have to take off work early to make this appointment.
In other words we have to make adjustments
in our schedules to make these appointments happen. But when the doctor fails to keep that appointment or he notifies you that the appointment has to be canceled, do you know what you have? A disappointment.
When we apply this to our lives it means that we
plan & arranged our lives in such away that we expect certain things at a given place & time in our lives.
Disappointment comes as a result of the break down or the undoing
of our appointed plans, hopes, dreams, goals & ambitions in life. We've planned & put all of our energies & efforts to accomplish a given task only to be disappointed when things don’t turn out the way we wanted
them to.
Example: Godly parents raise their children in church. They pour
their heart & soul into the lives of their children with dreams that they'll one day do something great for God. Only
to be disappointed when the children don’t turn out the way that they planned.
Disappointment comes when things fail to live up to our expectation.
There are there areas of our lives that I believe that we experience disappointment in more then any other area in our lives.
- We are Disappointed
in Ourselves
- We Are Disappointed
in Others
- We are Disappointed
in God.
These are the 3 areas that I want us to look at.
We are Disappointed in Ourselves:
There isn’t much in life more difficult to deal with than when
you're disappointed with yourself. We become disappointed
with ourselves when we choose to walk the wrong pathway or we choose the wrong course of action.
Life is full of choices & when we fail to make the right choices we suffer the consequences.
Disappointed with others.
All of us here this morning have been disappointed in someone.
It may be a friend, a family member, a spiritual leader or a political leader.
Someone, somewhere a long the way has disappointed us &
let us down. We expected more out of them than they gave. We expected them to accomplish more than they promised. We become disappointed with others when they turn their backs
on us or when they turn away from the gospel. We're often hurt & disappointed by the one we love & admire the most.
Disappointed at God:
Not many people
will admit that they're disappointed with God. In fact some would say that it's blasphemy
to even think such a thing.
But the fact of the matter is, there are people that are disappointed
with God. I don’t mean to be negative but I do want to be realistic.
It's easy for us to be disappointed when our prayers aren’t
answered the way we'd hoped they would be. Maybe God didn’t meet your need in the way that you wanted Him to. However you look at it, it comes out disappointment.
But remember
this God knows His thoughts toward you & He knows His Plan for your life, just trust
Him.
There are some things that we'll never understand
about God. We just need to know that He is sovereign & in control of the events of our lives. He has our best interest at the center of His heart. Our disappointment
with God is a result of our misunderstanding of God.
Dealing With
Disappointment:
Again
all of us will face disappointment in life. There will be times that we'll be disappointed with ourselves. Times when we'll be disappointed with others
& as hard as it is to admit, times when we will be disappointed with God.
WHEN YOU'RE DISAPPOINTED...Things
not to do:
A. Don't retaliate. Don't try to get even. Don't strike back. The Bible says in Romans 12:14
“Bless those who persecute you; bless
and do not curse.”
It's the typical reaction for most people in this kind of situation to retaliate.
B. Don’t Rehearse It. Sometimes we'll dwell on the disappointment
going over it in our minds & eventually it'll get the best of us.
C.
Don’t Nurse It. That is don’t feed it. If
you feed it'll grow & eventually take over your life.
What you can do:
A.
Make Things Right With God.
After you've made things right with God then you have to Trust His sovereignty (He is In control), Trust His Timing (My times are in the
hands of God), Trust His Purpose (God has a reason for allowing
this disappointment to come into my life). Let me suggest a few reason
as to why God allows disappointments to come into our lives.
1. Disappointments are good teachers. Learn form the experience.
2. Disappointments are times of adjustments. What an opportunity to realign
your life & will with God’s will & purpose for your life.
3. Disappointments are indicators of problems that need to be dealt with.
4. Disappointments are necessary for you to be fully
developed. The greatest test of your character is what it takes to get you to quit.
B.
Make Things Right With Others. When someone has disappointed us it is easy to give up on them without resolving the problem. Disappointments don’t have to destroy your relationship with others.
Recognize that all of us are different & that we all have likes & dislikes that are different than someone else’s.
God’s word say’s that we're to show respect to all men. When you're disappointed with others it proves that they're just as human as
you are.
C. Make Things Right With Yourself. I once & prayed & ask God to deliver me form my worst enemy.
The Lord then asked me if I knew who my worst enemy was.
I replied yes,
Satan. The Lord said no, your worst enemy is you. Over the years I have found out that no one can be harder on me than me.
When
I’m disappointed with myself I usually walk
around for days beating myself up. When we fail to live up to our own expectation it's usually due to an inflated ego. We hate to admit that we're limited in our abilities, our knowledge & our strength.
Many
people are living a life of self-condemnation because they failed to live up to there own expectations. They refuse to forgive themselves & that makes it hard to forgive others. Forgive yourself & pick up the remains of your life & move forward with God.
If God has forgiven you shouldn’t you forgive yourself?
The world is filled with obstacles & critics. When we try
& fail, we feel sad. Failure is often a defeat - a loss of status in the eyes of others &/or a loss of a wish or self-respect.
The more ego-involved we are, the more bitter the loss.
Generally speaking, if you don't try, you can't
be defeated or feel defeated - you haven't played the game.
Also, any life challenge or test has to be reasonable before we feel like a failure, e.g. most of us could fail a test in advanced calculus today & say, "So what?" It isn't reasonable to expect us to know calculus without the course.
Disappointment means
falling short of achieving one's goals or wishes. This is clarified by William James's 1890 formula:
Happiness =
But the formula also suggests that unhappiness may result in two ways:
The latter
is a complex problem. Our society encourages aiming high - "try to be the best."
Many people want to be better than average, certainly not be "below average."
Yet, by the nature of mathematics, exactly 1/2 of us must be below average in intelligence, looks
& income as well as height.
No wonder
some of us "below average" people withdraw from the competitive "rat race." Sometimes it's wise to lower our expectations & avoid unreasonable demands, but when?
It isn't a simple matter of lowering our sights so we never
fail & consequently, become blissfully happy.
First, some accomplishments (relative to your potential) are necessary for self-esteem.
Second, some people take satisfaction from having
a dream -some inspiration - & striving for it day by day, even though they never reach their goal.
Others have a lofty dream - being president, an
astronaut, a professional athlete - but neglect the detailed, daily work of
accomplishing that dream.
Having the dream
provides some payoffs. Dreamers run the risk of being disappointed & self-critical
later.
Fred Astaire was told
"he can only dance a little..."
Beethoven - "hopeless
as a composer..."
Caruso - "he can't sing..."
Disney - "has no ideas."
Great talent may often go unrecognized.
Garcia
(1971) contends that happiness shouldn't be life's main goal. He claims accomplishments - seeking knowledge or helping others - are far more important goals and more realistically satisfying in the long run than happiness.
Fourth, the facts are that some unhappy people have given the world great accomplishments - Lincoln, Gandhi, Goethe, Luther, Van Gogh, Mark Twain, Beethoven, Michelangelo and many others.
In contrast, a low achiever, preoccupied with avoiding failure, will either choose an extremely easy task or a very difficult one. Neither task puts him/her to a test, both the very easy
and the impossible are cop outs.
The achiever
is "mastery-oriented;" the low achiever is "performance-oriented," i.e. he/she is most concerned with avoiding failure and looking good, not with learning or mastery.
In contrast,
the mastery-oriented person welcomes tough challenges because he/she is most concerned with learning something worthwhile, not building an image. After a failure, such a person would say, "Okay, I didn't win but what a learning experience! I'll practice another approach and then
try again."
After a disappointing performance, it is important to ask yourself,
"Honestly, now, what were the causes? What can I do about each of those causes?" A wise person will guard against assuming
unchangeable factors are the sole causes of his/her problem and learn instead to concentrate on the factors (causes) he/she
is able to change. Almost no complex behavior is totally caused by fixed factors, such as heredity, innate ability, physiological
factors (height), etc. Most behaviors can be improved. Don't discount the importance of learning in any performance. Remember
how many hours goes into making an outstanding star in any sport, often 4 to 6 or more hours a day for years, starting at
6 or 8 years of age or younger. If any of our current "stars" had an identical twin who had never played their sport, no doubt
the twin, like you, would say, "Wow, I could never skate or dive or shoot or hit like that." Humans can learn a lot
more than they think they can (I didn't say easily). Most failures don't prove a lack of ability, they reflect alack of effort or learnable skill. In most areas we will never know our limits because we
will never push ourselves to the limit.
It is obvious that some of the "reasons" above are excuses for
our failures. Self-handicapping is a similar process, except it occurs before the performance rather than after.
Common excuses arranged in advance for a poor performance are: I'm very tired, sick, drunk, anxious, unprepared and so on.
In these situations, the person is using the old TA "Wooden Leg" game, "how can you expect me to run fast when I have this
wooden leg?" Self-handicapping excuses do reduce some immediate anxiety and disappointment after failure, but in the long
run they usually lower our self-esteem and increase our fears. Why? Because we haven't performed very well in the past and
because a part of us knows we are deceiving ourselves and others. Pride is primarily felt when we truly "do our best." See
the discussion of underachievement in chapter 4 and self-handicapping in chapter 5.
In summary, sometimes we are
too hard on ourselves, expecting too much, and sometimes too easy, not expecting or trying to do our best. You may be too
uptight about achieving your dreams; you might not be uptight enough to achieve them. Ideally, I suppose, one would be inspired
by his/her ambitions and visions of the future, but down-to-earth enough to accept (for the moment) whatever he/she actually
accomplishes. All of us need to ask, "How can I do better?" It reminds you that you are in control and don't have to do poorly.
Review the sections on self-efficacy and optimism in chapter 14
. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal,
delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the
cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes
by transformation.
George Eliot
Dealing with Disappointment
Dealing with disappointment can be very difficult. Sure we know that disappointment comes
from an attachment to an unmet expectation and that it may prove to be a great growing experience; but when the emotional wind
has just been knocked out of you, or the proverbial rug yanking has landed you harshly on your tailbone, it can be hard to
deal with disappointment.
There are so many facets of disappointment that it’s sometimes hard to know exactly
what one is feeling. Sometimes the disappointment comes from a singular experience that stings
but is easily dealt with.
Other times, it taps into a fundamental fear or pattern that seems to grow with each additional failure, however slight or inconsequential.
One disappointment may trigger another, deeper sense of rejection and fear. It can
lead to states of helplessness, anger, loneliness or feeling out of control. It’s not a very fun place to be.
As we do our yoga and meditation practice, we begin to see how we set ourselves up for disappointment. We begin to see how we set up expectations for a particular
outcome or response and become disappointed when those expectations aren’t met. We start to
recognize when we're approaching life from an idealized vision of how things should be as opposed to accepting what is. We
notice when we try to force our desires into becoming our experience instead of allowing life to progress as it will.
Yet there are times we forget that we're setting ourselves up. We unconsciously go back to old ways of responding and then find ourselves hurt and confused - not to mention frustrated that we find ourselves suffering again.
It can be especially annoying since after our daily
practice, we supposedly have all the tools to avoid getting ourselves into this mess in the first place! We struggle with moving toward our goals, trying to affect change without getting caught up in the vision itself.
We try to apply our practice to our life, staying with the moment rather than attaching to the past or future. We do all the right things, yet sometimes we slip and fail and find ourselves in pain.
Yet this is exactly when our practice is most needed and most useful. This
is the moment when we can engage our power of awareness to recognize these patterns and to choose to respond differently. This is the opportunity to use the understanding we have gained from our practice and experience as wisdom and truth.
It's the pain from disappointment that can bring our attention into this moment and provide us with the opportunity to change. We move from the effort of trying and doing, to the flow of existing and being.
This pain is perhaps the greatest tool for navigating these troubled waters - it brings our awareness back to this moment.
Forgetting this moment by focusing on what has passed or by worrying about the future is what has gotten us here and remembering
that this moment is really all that is is what will bring us back. When we remember to loosen our grip and take a deep breath,
we slowly let loose the pain of the unmet dream.
When we come back to this moment, we can relinquish the fear of not having our desire fulfilled. When we recognize our conditioned patterns of response, we can begin to choose a different way of existing.
All that you need is in the now.
You may not have the answers you seek. You may not have the experience you desire. But within this moment, is the power of divine love, ready to heal and guide when you quiet your mind and listen.
Within this moment, is the strength and peace to be with sadness and know that it can open your eyes to new and wonderful things. Within this moment, is everything. And when we learn to live only within this moment, we'll discover that we can and do, create
everything, living in peace, dealing with disappointment…from this moment.
When My Kids Disappoint Me, Do They Have to Earn Back My Love and Approval?
One of the ways we convey to our kids how much we value them is the way in which we respond to them when they have disappointed us.
When
we send the message that they must somehow earn back
our love and approval because they have in some way disappointed us, we give them the impression
that there are strings attached to our acceptance of them.
Such strings attached to our acceptance of them is likely to give our kids the false impression
that they must also live up to the expectations of others around them in order to earn their acceptance and approval.
A likely
outcome of such a conclusion then, is the self-defeating behavior of pleasing others for the purpose of being liked and valued by them.
The
need to please others and to be accepted by them aren't necessarily unhealthy needs. But when gaining approval and avoiding disapproval become our motivating pattern of behavior, then life becomes an ongoing process of wearing the "right mask" at the "right time" and
for the "right person."
When this happens, we place what we do for others, in order to gain their acceptance, ahead of being authentically who we are. In time, kids who develop this lifetime pattern of wearing "acceptable" masks, lose track of who they really are and instead, become shaped and designed by what others expect from them.
Does
this mean, then, that we parents must never disapprove
of our kids' behaviors or attitudes? Certainly not.
Our
kind and guiding corrections are a major force in
their learning what's right and what's wrong, what's acceptable and what isn't. And it's our responsibility as parents who strive to raise great kids, to challenge and correct in order to help them develop a healthy conscience.
It's essential, though, to show and express
disapproval, without rejection and to be appropriately angry, without being disgusted with them as a person.
Consider the following possible responses you might have after discovering that your son or daughter has been stealing money from your wallet. It'll no doubt be clear to you which ones send the message that they must somehow perform for us to once again be approved of and which
ones are healthy and corrective responses that help us in our efforts to design great kids.
"I've always wondered if
you were an honest person. Maybe when you've proven to me that you are, I'll be able to forgive you". Or, .................."Your actions aren't consistent with the kind of person I know you are. We need to talk about why you did this".
"In case you've been wondering why I haven't
been speaking to you the last several days, I'm waiting for you to show me that this stealing will never happen again". Or,
......"I'm very disappointed in you and to tell you the truth, I'm angry as well. Regardless of what you've done, I love you anyway. What do you think your consequences should be and what do you think can be done to prevent this from happening again?"
"I've wondered lately if you could be trusted. Now that you have shown me that you can't be, don't expect me to give you the benefit of the doubt anymore". Or, ......"You're better than this and stealing is just not like you. Let's try to understand why you did it and what should be done to prevent your doing it again".
It's once again important for all of us to be reminded of that "sponge-like" brain that
all young kids have inside their heads during their early years of development. Inevitably, they'll either live up, or they'll
live down, to the messages about themselves that they consistently hear from us.
Among
the many important responsibilities that we parents have if we're going to raise great kids, is the task
of showing them over and over again, that there's simply no way that we'll ever abandon them physically or emotionally; that there's simply no possibility that their disappointing us will ever push us away.
They
can disappoint us, they can frustrate us, they can make us angry, they can make us cry; they can even push us to the brink of despair, but they can never push us away. We must show
them that there's simply no way that their attitudes and behaviors will make us not love them, cause us to reject them, or make us want nothing to do with them. Such strong and "no strings attached" love and acceptance will serve them well as they grow and mature and it'll serve us well, too, in our efforts to raise great kids.
It's an awesome task, but an exciting one, indeed!
Mother of Misery or Detour to Discovery?
Everybody has met the ugly idiot called ‘disappointment’ and nobody really likes him.
No matter how many bad names they call him, he keeps showing up on their doorstep again and again.
People move - change their address and get an unlisted phone number, but disappointment
still tracks them down and messes up the playhouse of their ideal fantasies and carefully laid out plans.
You can file for a divorce and he still keeps coming home to you when you least expect him. You can try to put a restraining order on him and he sneaks past the deadbolt locks of life and plops down
in your living room anyway.
Disappointments are going to be a part of your life till the day you die. Your only choice is to decide whether
your reactions are going to contribute to your misery in life or add to the challenge and excitement of living.
Disappointment is the mother of misery and the grand-daddy of heartache. Think about it. Consider the various negative responses people have toward disappointing situations. They get angry, upset, lose their temper and go into a rage.
They whine, wheedle and pout, trying to manipulate disappointing decisions away.
They wallow in regret, remorse, self condemnation and self pity. They feel let down, dejected, depressed and go into despair - even to the point of considering suicide.
They feel hurt, betrayed, or rejected. They harbor unforgiveness, resentment, hatred and thoughts of revenge or even murder. They find fault, criticize, blame, accuse and even slander those whom they think are responsible.
Is there any end to the variety of miseries that people allow in their lives simply because they're disappointed with themselves, with others or with the uncontrollable circumstances of life?
The crazy part is - these reactions don’t affect just the person who is disappointed.
The ripple effect of one person’s misery can mess up a whole family, ruin a marriage, destroy the kids and set up a domino effect of evil that passes from one generation
to another.
If a person is really serious about wanting to increase their happiness quotient in life, they must learn how to deal with disappointment constructively.
What is Disappointment, Anyway?
"Ment" has to do with Mental - or - the Mind. We simply "Point our Mind" in a direction in which we want
to go. We make an "Appointment" to fulfill a wish or a desire of our heart. We set our heart on obtaining a cherished item or reaching a certain goal.
We have expectations of what we think could or should or will happen. Our emotions see the direction in which our thoughts are going and they come along for the ride.
Pretty soon, our emotions are in the driver’s seat, pushing the accelerator to the floorboard as though there are no speed limits,
speed bumps or dead-ends in life. That’s about the time you hear the sirens wailing, feel your head hit the roof or
cringe while you cream the barricade that has been put in your way.
When our expectations aren't based on reality and when they don't line up with the other laws of nature, we set ourselves up for disappointment.
Yet, no matter how carefully we try to avoid disappointments, they eventually tap on our shoulder and slap the fire out of our happiness.
The curse of disappointment is seldom in the events themselves, but rather in how we react to the
events.
Has disappointment ever put you on a merry-go-round of adverse reactions?
Have you ever re-played the scene a hundred times?
Have you let your mood spiral downward another notch every time you rehash the details of ‘why your happiness boat got tipped over’?
Has that ever landed you in the basement of depression?
What did you expect? Base thoughts always lead to basement experiences. Bad emotional reactions always lead to the darkness and dampness of ‘cellar’
living. Being ‘down’ on yourself, or ‘down’ on others or ‘down’ on life is a choice -
a choice which keeps you down.
Your initial reaction may be automatic and totally involuntary. Maybe you can’t keep from having some bad first
reactions to being scared, shocked, or disappointed.
But, from then on, you have the power to choose whether you want to hang on to those misery causing reactions or not. It’s your mind, your life and your decision.
Maybe you can’t keep yourself from being bruised by a flying rock. But, do you have to keep picking the
scab everyday? You may not like the unexpected harm that someone caused, but do you have to keep ‘nursing’ the
grudge?
If you didn’t like the drunk that staggered onto your porch in the middle of the night, why did you invite him
in?
Why are you feeding him in the day and bringing him whiskey at night?
Why are you complaining about how much his unexpected arrival is costing you?
It’s not his arrival that’s costing you - it’s all the decisions you’ve made since he arrived
that’s causing you misery.
You can blame people, God and circumstances for messing up your schedule and shattering your expectations. But, you and you alone are responsible for the direction of your life thereafter. There is no law in the world that says you can’t choose to
have good reactions to bad circumstances.
If you were born with a bad eye, it’s your decision as to how you're going to view life with the one good eye
you have left.
Helen Keller was both deaf and blind, but that didn’t keep her from enjoying
life to the max and accomplishing much more than many of her ‘hearing’ friends and her ‘seeing’ peers. Some of them could
have accomplished more, but they were too busy feeling sorry for themselves.
Some of them could have enjoyed their ability to hear and see, but the truth is - they wanted to be miserable. If they didn’t, they'd have chosen not to be.
Maybe you want to be miserable too! If you weren’t miserable you couldn’t keep blaming your misery on someone else. You probably don’t even realize hat your misery is a choice.
25 years ago, a man was mugged and knifed on a subway. His fractured rib healed
up nicely and so did the knife wound. My question is:
- "Why does he keep plunging the knife of bitterness back into the emotional wounds of that hour?
- Why has he chosen not to forgive?
- Why has he chosen to hang onto blame and hate?
- Who is really responsible for those 25 years of misery?
- Inner healing is just as possible as physical
healing if we seek for it.
Your
parents may have ruined your childhood, but who is responsible for all the years you have lived away from home?
You
may still be disappointed in their looks, their personalities, or their attitudes - but why not accept things in life you don’t like and keep trucking?
Your daddy may have put you on the wrong train heading the wrong way when you were a kid. Every time the train
stops at another station, you keep wailing - "My daddy put me on the wrong train."
Someday, a nice old lady is going to bend over your sweet 67 year old frame and whisper, "Honey, if you don’t
want to ride this train, why don’t you get off?" And you'll look up at her in shocked amazement while you dry your tears
and ask, "Do you mean I have a choice?"
It’s still not too late to find the right train and change the direction of your life. Why should 20 year old disappointments control your future.
Are you tired of this morbid dialogue yet?
I am! Let’s get on with some cheerful thinking! Let’s choose to play around with ‘happy words’! Let’s grab hold of an upbeat mood and ride it to the end!
No matter how this article started out - we can change the ending! We can change the ending! Did you hear what I said? No matter how morbid the story has been - we can change the ending!
Disappointment: The Detour to Discovery
Let me tell you about the man who was in a mad dash to get where he was going. He had
an important appointment that could seal a ‘twenty thousand dollar’ sale! His part of the take would be ‘seven
grand’. Seven thousand wonderful dollars to enjoy!
Halfway
to his destination, he came to a barricade across
the road. The bridge was out. The only detour available was a dirt road which wound around & around in the mountains for
76 miles.
He couldn’t
believe it. He didn’t want
to believe it. His competitor was supposed to be at the same meeting, showing his side of the story. Now, the other salesman
would have the potential client all to himself.
The client was flying in from New York and only had an hour to hear what these
guys had to say. The meeting would be completely over by the time he arrived and the client would be on another plane heading
for Los Angeles.
Talk about disappointment. He had pointed his mind, heart and soul toward getting that $7,000 dollars. He'd already planned on how he was going to spend most of it. Now, he was in danger of going thru a ‘roller coaster ride’ of negative emotional reactions!
This
man was no dummy, though. He hadn't gotten where
he was by being stupid. He'd tangled with life and it’s disappointments before. He'd long ago
decided how he'd react to things beyond his control.
1st order of the day was to 'relax’, which he did. The second rule of success was to ‘think the matter through in a logical manner’ and explore all the alternatives. He did that. The third option
was to create a good result out of a bad situation!
So, instead of going through sixteen negative emotional responses he decided to use this time to enjoy a little ‘mini-vacation’.
He'd been living with schedules, deadlines, pressures and extreme stress. This was a perfect opportunity to relax and enjoy life. No one expected him back at the office for a while. His wife had made plans to visit her sister while he was gone. No sense in going home.
He took the detour as slowly as he could, stopping many times to enjoy the sight of scurrying wildlife, towering cliffs
and acres of beautiful flowers. The trees were so majestic and the breeze was so refreshing.
At one point, he stopped his car and hiked along a mountain stream, listening to it’s bubbling story of "Happiness in a rugged environment."
Somewhere along the way he noticed specks of what he thought was ‘gold’. He panned for gold in Alaska one summer and was sure that’s
what this stuff was.
To make
a long story short - he followed that stream up the
mountain until he found a place where a rock slide had changed it’s course. As the stream ate it’s way through
new territory it was bringing up bits and pieces of gold.
The man ran home, gathered up his savings and all the money he could borrow and came
back to buy up as much of the mountain as he could. He panned and prospected until he discovered a small vein of gold. It
wasn’t much, but he did make a net profit of many thousands of dollars.
He discovered other minerals there and sold the mineral rights to a mining company
and made even more.
His disappointment became
a detour to discovery. He made more money from his detour experience than he would have made from his original plans and expectations. Besides that, he had a lot of fun and excitement in the process.
Hundreds of impatient and angry people had taken that same detour. Their complaints and negative reactions mounted up hour by hour. But, only one man had taken a potential "Mountain of Misery" and turned it into a personal, private ‘gold rush’.
He enjoyed the ‘rush’ of excitement he got from the initial discovery and the fun of milking that experience for all it was worth.
Maybe your circumstances won’t turn out to be so lucrative or profitable. But, there’s no reason why some of your disappointments can’t end up with some tremendous creative results.
There’s no reason why you can’t enjoy life in spite of those disappointments, if you
really want to and if you dare to choose the good reactions over the bad. Don’t let life run over you and don’t
let disappointments drag you down.
Understanding Disappointment, Disillusionment and Discouragement Robert Elias Najemy
A wise teacher once said,
" no appointments - no disappointments".
This is a part of a series of articles with questions, which will help us understand our emotions and how we can free ourselves from unwanted ones.
The questions that interest us here are:
1. "What were you expecting here (from yourself, the other person,
from life, from God)?"
2. "Why are you expecting that? Do you feel that you need it? Why exactly do you need yourself, others, life, or God to be that way? "
3. "What do you lose, if things aren't as you expected.?"
4. "What will happen if you yourself don't live up to your expectations?"
5. "Whose expectations are these? Do they remind you of anything you heard as a child?"
6. " Can you think of a way to internally create what you need even when you or others can't be what you expected?"
7. "Can you accept that you, others and all of creation are in a process of evolution and thus, while it's useful to have the image of
how you want us all to be, that it's also useful to have patience concerning the gradual manifestation of those ideals?"
8. Which beliefs do you need to change in order to feel safe and or worthy when you &/or others can't live up to your expectations?
9. "Which beliefs do you need to change and/or actions do you need to take, so as to more actively insure that you and/or others are more dedicated to fulfilling your expectations?"
10. "Have you clearly communicated to the others what you expect of them and why you need that from them and how you feel when they don't give this to you?"
11. What would you like to communicate to those with whom you feel disappointed?
Now you may like to describe how you'd like to think, feel and respond in future situations. You may find it more powerful to write your description in the present tense as if it's already a reality.
1. Understand that we're all in a process of evolution and that no one is perfect.
It's unreasonable to expect of demand perfection from ourselves or others. We wouldn't be here in this evolutionary process if we didn't have much to improve.
2.
Faith in the flow of life.
There
is a wisdom greater than ours. We usually want to get our desired results immediately if not "yesterday". We need to learn that change, manifestation and creation are usually slow organic processes like a plant growing. There are, however, moments of quantum
leaps.
3. Confidence that with patience, practice and perseverance, we can manifest the changes we seek.
We can develop greater trust in our ability to manifest our goals and life purpose with or without the help of specific person.
4. Greater
self-sufficiency will allow us to need less from the other and thus not be so dependent on them, expecting so much from them. When we feel secure, worthy and fulfilled within our selves we need much less from others and experience disappointment less frequently.
5. A
larger sense of time, in which we realize that, any efforts made for less than 50 years, are actually small in relationship
to the immensity of our being.
It's important that we don't allow such feelings of disappointment to diminish our efforts towards creating a better life for ourselves,
our loved ones, society and the world as whole.
Understand and accept the present limitations of your universe as you use them as a stepping stone to move out of and beyond them.
One cannot have everything the way he would
like it. A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to
make up his mind to get even.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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How To
Deal With Disappointment
When things don't turn out the way you hoped, it may seem like the end of the world. Here are some things you can do to keep disappointment
from getting you down.
- Stop. Calm Down. Give yourself some time. Things might not seem nearly so bad tomorrow.
- Get your feelings out in a way that doesn't hurt you or anybody else.
- Talk about it with your parents or a good friend.
- Ask yourself if this is really worth getting angry or upset about.
- Think about what you can learn from the experience and how you can do better next time.
- Don't judge yourself. Failing at something doesn't mean that you're a failure.
Here are some things you can do to help your child learn how
to keep perspective and handle disappointments in a positive way.
1. Stop the "I'm a
failure" syndrome before it starts. Don't let your child feel like a complete failure because something didn't turn out well. Make it clear that a defeat or loss isn't the end of the world and doesn't mean he or she's no good.
2. If your child experiences a disappointment, talk about it and
help him or her learn from the experience. Emphasize the importance of having a positive attitude and not giving up or feeling like a failure because of one experience.
3.
When your child is suffering a disappointment, remind him or her of other times when things
went badly but turned out okay. Let your child know you've felt that way too.
4. Tell your child about times when you've had a similar experience.
We realize being parents it somewhat
difficult at times, so we've put together some of the most common issues that make parenting a handful. Take a look around
and learn about some ways to approach situations such as communication skills, drug use, understanding your adolescence and much
more.
Here are a couple of tips
to help you get started towards a healthy relationship with your child.
1. Start early.
2. Initiate conversations with your child.
3. Even about sex and sexuality.
4. Create an open environment.
5. Communicate your own values.
6.Listen to your child.
7. Try to be honest.
8. Be patient.
9. Use everyday opportunities to Talk.
10. Talk about it again. And, again.
read
more
about
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Managing
Disappointment
Disappointment is an ongoing
feature of life that seems heightened in today’s world of uncertainty, rapid change and diminished trust. I talk to many people who carry disappointment over a wide range of issues and they end up feeling powerless and sometimes bitterly unhappy.
Lost jobs, failed relationships, chronic illness, messed up kids, unmanageable
work challenges, financial losses - these and so many other difficulties
of life create disappointment. Learning to manage
disappointment, then, becomes an essential life skill.
The 1st step
in managing disappointment is
understanding it. Think about what disappoints
you.
Often, it’s a combination
of these things that creates disappointment.
Take people, i.e., People mess up. They make promises they don’t always keep, even if they
intended to when they made them. They say one thing and mean something
else. They don’t do what they said they would do. They change their minds abruptly. They forget to mention things. Sometimes they just don’t pay attention.
Our disappointment in people is probably the most difficult to manage. We expect certain behaviors like honesty, integrity and follow-through and when people don’t behave in
ways that we expect them to, we get disappointed.
Depending
on how close we are
to the person who has disappointed us, we may also feel things like anger, sadness, confusion, even betrayal.
When these feelings arise, you may be more interested in showing the person why they're wrong and demanding retribution than in
managing your letdown.
Events
can cause disappointment, too. The downturn in the market, new regulations, changes in leadership, secret meetings, unforeseen project
impediments. Accidents. Injuries. Acts of nature.
Circumstances may be the slipperiest of disappointment factors. You’re in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time.
You miss an important conversation and the opportunity that was discussed. Your flight - the last one out - departs on time for the first time
ever when you’re running 3 minutes late.
All
kinds of things happen in the course of daily life that cause disappointment.
At the base of disappointment
is expectation. That’s where you’ll find the biggest clue to first understanding your disappointment and then managing it.
Instead of thinking about all the things in your world that create disappointment and enduring the frustration and sadness that go along with it, there are several effective ways to manage your disappointment.
1st, be clear about what your expectations are. In every case, what you want sets a basis for measuring what happens. If your expectations aren't reasonable - you can determine this based on recent history, the current environment, your own experience and feedback
from others you trust - find a way to bring them more in line with reality.
I’m not suggesting that you adopt a position of never
expecting anything in order to prevent yourself from ever being disappointed. That would be foolish and unnecessary.
I am, however, recommending that you find ways to reality check
your expectations.
2nd, be aware that what you expect from yourself isn't necessarily what you can expect from others. Always be sure to clarify your expectations. If, i.e., you expect people to tell you when they're having trouble with their work, regardless of whether that trouble
has something to do with you or not, you must outline specifically what you expect.
-
Do you want a phone call, an email message, a white paper?
-
Do you want to hear about family troubles, medical worries, pet anxieties?
-
How much information do you want & how often?
This may seem like a silly thing to be advising, but think back to last week & how many times you were disappointed by people who did or said
things you’d never consider doing or saying.
3rd, be aware that what you expect from the world is sometimes wildly wrong. I'm always amused to read headlines, whether electronically on Reuter’s news
service, in the Wall Street Journal print edition, or in my local newspaper. Today’s cataclysm is often tomorrow’s
shrug. Headlines exist to grab our attention, not necessarily to reflect the real information of a story.
If you don’t read further than headlines your understanding of
anything whatsoever will be badly skewed. Setting your expectations based on "expert opinion" is a dangerous, though often unavoidable, practice. Be clear when you do it that that’s what you’re doing.
4th, understand that regardless of what happens, you have
a choice of response. This is a critical part of managing disappointment. You don’t
have to react with surprise or anger. You don’t have to find someone to blame. You don’t have to do anything until you're ready to understand what happened & what
it means to your choices going forward.
When you can accept the truth of this, you'll be far more capable of dealing with disappointment of every kind.
Recognize that people will always make mistakes. Even when they try with all sincerity to do the right thing, their definition
of the right thing & yours will not always match. That’s okay.
Unless you're dealing with a sick or dangerous individual, most mistakes can be corrected or at
least forgotten. Yes, it’s a big task sometimes, but it’s doable. Any time you're dealing with a disappointment caused by other people, you can choose your own actions in response to it.
Rather than focusing on what was done & how it has hurt you, you can concentrate on being the kind of person you want to be at all times.
When
it comes to events that cause disappointment, remember that many, many opportunities will
come along in a lifetime. Missing one doesn't mean the rest will disappear as well. When timing is wrong for something you
hoped for to happen, recognize this for what it is. The wrong time, period.
That doesn’t mean that what you wanted will never happen, just that the timeframe &
your expectations may need to be adjusted. If in fact you missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, don’t worry. There will be others just
as compelling. Maybe better.
Each time you feel the darkness of disappointment,
take time to consider it. What is causing it?
Can you change anything about the situation to diminish the sting & to prevent it from happening again?
Be realistic about this particular assessment, neither overly pessimistic nor naively optimistic. If you need another pair of eyes or a different perspective to help you be clear, seek out a friend or trusted adviser.
Check your assumptions. In fact, it helps to write them down. Were they inflated? Misplaced? Completely
out of line with reality?
Did you hope for the impossible & then somehow convince yourself that it could happen? Being realistic in approaching situations is a key factor in managing disappointment.
It isn't unusual to feel & act dramatically when facing disappointment.
When you’re hurt or scared, emotions tend to run hotter & colder than usual. Be keenly aware of this & manage your reactions with this awareness in mind.
You’ll notice that I didn't suggest that you could do away with disappointment or that in time disappointment will no longer
hurt. That’s not true. As long as you're active in a fast-changing world, all kinds of things are going to disappoint you. You'll sometimes disappoint you!
Disappointment comes with living an active, hopeful life. Learning to manage it is a great way to appreciate the shadings of life, the times that add depth & character & color. By learning to manage your disappointment, you'll also be in a great position to help others manage theirs.
People who are clear about their expectations & graceful in dealing with disappointment create the most effective & successful
working environments imaginable.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed
love.
Jane Austen
life without santa, the tooth fairy & the easter bunny....
imagine living life without the anticipation of christmas morning, santa claus making his
once a year vigil...?
or losing teeth without the ritual of placing the plucked out tooth beneath your pillow, trying
so desperately to fall asleep - in anticipation of finding money instead of that useless tooth when you awoke...?
or what would life be without waking up on easter morning without finding your favorite kind
of chocolate shaped into a bunny, jelly beans & my personal favorite, those coconut bird nests with 3 tiny jelly beans
placed carefully inside...?
in my almost 49 years of life, i've heard that there are parents out there who refuse to begin
those traditional rituals because they don't want to have their children find out that it's all been a big fat lie.... and
that their own parents perpetuated a lifetime of lies to their own dear children.
i wonder sometimes, what's worse? what if you go ahead with the same ritual everyone else's
kids believe? what if you choose at the beginning of your child's life or even pre-conception - that you'll follow in your
parents' footsteps by instituting the concepts of santa, the tooth fairy & the easter bunny just like when you were a
kid...
and then one day, all the kids at school tell your kids that there isn't a santa claus. they
tell your child that there's no such thing as a tooth fairy. and those nasty little kids will keep on until there's no belief
left for the easter bunny... then your children suddenly come face to face with a christmas without the anticipation of santa
claus...
they come to the realization that there isn't going to be anymore free money for those extracted
molars...
and there will be no more chocolate rabbits to pull off that nasty plastic grass off of before
biting off the tail or the head...
i call that stage: pure disappointment.
or, do you stay honest, completely honest with your children
- right from the beginning? do you tell them straight up, at age 2 or 3 when they begin to notice that big fat red suited
jolly man, who is supposed to have a big sack full of toys that he fills with toys for all the children of the world to have?
do you prepare them for the inevitability that someday people will be asking them, "what do you want santa to bring you for
christmas this year?" do you tell them how to tactfully squash the fun of the season by teaching them to say, "my parents
chose to tell me the truth in life. i know there's no santa, tooth fairy or easter bunny. you'll have to ask some other sucker!"
or do you think that never being able to have the fun in believing in santa, the tooth fairy
or the easter bunny like most other kids, might trigger some resentments, some jealousy or some anger in kids. kids don't
always care about the truth. kids can give up moral values in a heart beat when there are toys to be given, money to be received
and candy to eat before breakfast. do you think that kids in this position are the most disappointed of all kids?
do you think that they secretly wish their parents were liars just like the rest of the parents
in the world?
personally....
i didn't get disappointed with the whole effort until i
was a divorced single mother with no money on the holidays. it caused me a great deal of stress, upset, worry - feelings of
great inadequacy & reason to learn how to bounce checks. i got disappointed when i couldn't just settle for my children
receiving one or two toys, they needed a whole bunch of fun things from santa.
i didn't get disappointed until when i finally did get some
money, someone else's kids parents had so much more money, and my children came home crying because their toys were "generic,"
& the kids at school made fun of them.
i didn't get disappointed until the stores started playing
christmas music the day after Halloween.
it took me awhile to get disappointed about not having a
tooth fairy visit us anymore.... my daughter just held out her hand, standing there, waiting.... rolling her eyes.... then
she'd say, "so what if i know the truth about the tooth fairy.... that doesn't mean you don't need to still pay up!" it was
the "sense of entitlement" that disappointed me the most.
i got real disappointed when i realized that parents thought
their kids were better than mine because they played baseball in a different zip code than mine.
the disappointment was oozing from the parameters of my
heart when i found out how prejudice those catholic teachers are in private school.... when your child isn't catholic.
and most disappointing of all... the people who think that
they're too good to help other people. those people who need help, they disappoint me sometimes as well... those hurricane
victims who aren't helping themselves now, they're just complaining about the government not helping them... that disappoints
me - big time... & even more... it disappoints me that the government is too afraid of ratings to tell those people so...
i've experienced a whole bunch of personal
disappointments as well, for instance, i've been writing books for most of my life, but i've been too insecure to try
to get them published. the old script from my father keeps running thru my head....
".....women are supposed to get married, have kids, be a wife.... not go to college,
not make anything of themselves, because actually, what could a woman make of herself anyway?....."
in my recovery i've
seen the absolute nonsense of this statement that rolls over & over in my head day in and day out, but still..... it's
something i know in my head, my heart still hasn't caught up with my head.... i still truly believe what he said to me although
i know it's all nonsense. i think that there are so many people out there that feel the same way.
it's the self disappointment that
seems to hurt the most. but ask yourself, what would the world be like without santa claus, the tooth fairy and the easter
bunny? would it truly be a disappointment or would true love & understanding have to take their place? would money somehow
disappear from the quotient? would greed & expectations suddenly disappear? it's an interesting point to ponder...
thanks for stopping by the disappointment
page!
kathleen
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College rejections: coping w/disappointment
By Barbara F. Meltz,
Globe Staff, 02/11/99
In the moments after Ben Flaim opened the oh-so-thin letter from Dartmouth College that told him he hadn't been accepted, he remembers being hit with a second disappointment.
"The first thing my mom said was,"
'Don't worry, it's not the end of the world' ,'' says Flaim. "To me, it was a big deal, a very big deal, & here she was
discounting my feelings."
Flaim is now a very happy junior at Boston University. That he remembers his mother's words 3 years later highlights
a developmental need that often escapes parents:
A child who experiences disappointment can't get past it unless she has the chance to face it. Our first
job is to acknowledge the loss, not try to cheer her up.
"When you don't validate feelings, you negate them. It comes across as a lack
of understanding: 'Mom doesn't get it,' " says developmental psychologist John Dacey of Boston
College.
This is true for any age child, for any disappointment, but the advice is especially relevant for parents of high school
seniors.
With some time yet before college envelopes arrive, Harvard developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat urges parents
to set the stage for the possibility of
disappointment.
It's not that you need to be a pessimist - "I don't think you're going to get in'' - because a child hears that as, "Dad doesn't believe in me.' But, says Bempechat, "You could say, 'This is a great thing to try for, but you'll still be the same
great person even if it doesn't work out.' "
That reality dose is as important for parents as children.
"Sometimes the problem for the child
isn't her own disappointment, but the parent's," says Karen Levin Coburn, assistant vice chancellor
for students at Washington University in St. Louis.
She urges parents not to be overly invested
in any one college, or for that matter, in anything a child strives for, from private school to a slot on a sports team.
teens & disappointment
Fortunately, not many teens carry out their thoughts
& commit suicide. Thoughts of
suicide may be a sign a teen is feeling disappointed
or frustrated, depressed, or cut
off from others. Teens sometimes have unrealistic ideas about
suicide & death.
Usually one problem or difficulty may be the final straw that leads a teen to attempt suicide. It may be breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or not making a sports team. But remember,
teens who attempt suicide have had trouble coping with many problems & disappointments for a long time.
"My dad is always angry with
me. He sort of gets off feeling like
he is
all powerful & all knowing, like he has
all the answers & I'm incapable of deciding for myself what my life should be like.
It's my life I'm supposed to be living, not his; but he doesn't get it. I think if he'd just lighten up & let me be me I'd be a lot better off. I don't really want to disappoint my parents but sometimes they just control me so tight that I feel like I have to do something drastic to get out & breath on my own."
annonymous teen...
Teach your teenager how to handle
failure,
let-down & disappointment, to be
sure that you're equipping them w/a vital skill they'll need
to use frequently, no matter how successful they become, for as long as they live.
"....if he listened more to the inner voice & less to the clamorous voice of the external world, he would find a strength & a courage that would insure him against discouragement."
I've dreamed many dreams that never came true.
I've seen them vanish at dawn.
But I've realized enough of my dreams thank
the Lord,
To make me want to dream on.
I've prayed many prayers when no answer came,
Though I've waited
patient and long,
But answers have
come to enough of my prayers
To make me keep praying on.
I've trusted many a friend that failed,
And left me to weep alone,
But I've found enough of my friends that are really true,
That will make me keep trusting on.
I've sown many seeds that have fallen by the way,
For
the birds to feed upon,
But I've held enough golden sheaves in my hand,
To make me keep sowing on.
I've drunk from the cup of disappointment and pain
I've gone many days without song,
But I've sipped enough nectar from the Roses of Life
To make me keep living on!
'Roses Of Life'
by Ron DeMarco
The Burden
of Failure
"It's a terrible burden when a child thinks he has failed you,''
says Coburn. She is author of "Letting Go: A
Parent's Guide to Understanding the College Years"
(Harper Perennial).
For a teen, rejection from your first choice is more
than a
horrible disappointment. "He truly thinks his life is ruined," says psychologist Frances K. Grossman of Boston University. Dacey says, "He feels like a nonperson,
a nobody."
Our first instinct is to take that
pain away & let them know they're still a somebody. That's an important message, but not just yet, says Grossman.
"Starting when they're young, we
tend to shield them from disappointment. We distract them, we make something not happen. That's a disservice," says Grossman. "It doesn't give them the coping skills they need for life's daily
disappointments."
Begin the training early. "If a
4 year-old isn't invited to a birthday party, instead of saying, 'We'll go skating that day & have a better time than
all those kids,' acknowledge that it feels lousy. Help her to sit with the feelings & digest them: 'You're disappointed, aren't you?' "
Even if that's all you say, you've
done something important: established credibility. You're saying to your child, "I know how this feels, I understand you."
Unfortunately, many parents
are
afraid to do this. "They think if they support a child's feelings, she'll think it really is a catastrophe & not get beyond it. But kids don't work that way," according to Dacey; "they need to experience the present before they can look to the future. There's also a difference between saying, 'Yes, you're right, this is as bad as you think it is,' & 'I can understand how you feel. ' "
"It's subtle, but they hear it," Dacey says.
Controlled empathy
The more you tolerate your child's sadness, the more you enable them to, too. There are pitfalls, though. Empathize, but not to the point of taking over the disappointment.
"Don't go on & on about how awful you feel," says Coburn. "You rob him of his right to feel badly." If you have a pattern of overreacting, he may not even tell you he's upset.
"Your response can be frightening or just plain aggravating," she says.
This doesn't mean you
can't be honest. "It's OK to share your disappointment as long as you do it in a way that also shows how you're coping," says Grossman. In the case of a college rejection, i.e., she
might say, "I was hoping you could
go there because it's where I went, so I'm sad. But I'll get over it & help you figure out the next step."
The way we handle our disappointments is critical, says Bempechat, who is author of "Against All Odds: How 'At-Risk'
Students Exceed Expectations" (Jossey-Bass).
"We're helping a child develop a coping repertoire," she says. "Whether we lash out in anger or sit with
a cup of tea & talk develops a different mind-set in our children."
Dacey tells parents to be prepared
to stay in the empathy mode longer
than we expect. "It takes as long as it takes," he says, 2 hours or 2 days. "Don't be in a rush." If you've been impatient in the past with a child who you
think is too easily crushed by setbacks, this strategy may enable
him to move on more quickly.
A good rule of thumb is to wait
until he's no longer furious or crying. Crying, Dacey adds, is something parents
should
encourage, even for boys. "Tears are literally
loaded with adrenaline. The crying expels the excess adrenaline so you can think clearly again," he says.
Physical activity helps, too.
Once she's calm, encourage her to talk: "How are you feeling?"
"What
are you thinking?" "I know you're not ready to talk now, but whenever you are, I'm ready to listen."
Be prepared for some pretty strong, even dramatic answers,
including from young children: "My life is ruined!" "I'll never have friends!" "I'll never go to college!"
Whatever the feelings, rephrase them without judgment: "You're worried no one likes you, huh?"
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