Disappointment, now that’s a difficult feeling!
Disappointment
The catchy list of feeling words that most of us learned in childhood is “mad, sad, glad”. In reality, though, there are many feeling words in the English language. If you Google “feeling words list” you will find quite a few specific words. I often recommend to my clients that they pick out words that match what they are feeling to help them better understand, accept, and honor their feelings.
A big feeling that often gets overlooked is “disappointment”. Disappointment happens all the time such as when a friend cancels your plans, you don’t get that job, it rains on your graduation day, etc. So, what is big about the feeling of disappointment?
Let’s take a closer look
What I have noticed in myself and others is that disappointment is often responded to with anger toward someone. It’s almost like the feeling of disappointment is so hard that we’d rather blame someone than feel it ourselves. For example, let’s say you love looking at ice sculptures and finally have plans with three friends to go see them on Saturday. That morning, you get up and it is below zero outside. One by one, your friends cancel due to the cold. You are still willing to go because you subscribe to the philosophy that “there isn’t bad weather, just bad clothing”. But unfortunately, your friends do not. You become angry at your friends and think things like “they are such wimps, I need new friends, they don’t care about me”. You are tempted to tell them this or beg them to go but instead, you isolate and stew about how bad your friends are. This keeps you from doing something else and results in you having a bad day.
It’s vulnerable to feel disappointed
In this example, if I were to ask what the feeling is underneath the anger, you would say disappointment. You might then ask yourself “why am I angry and blaming my friends when I am actually feeling disappointed?” How I make sense of this is that feelings like disappointment, sadness, and hurt are vulnerable feelings that many of us have a hard time feeling and accepting. So, we unconsciously bring out our anger to protect this vulnerable side of us. I like to label these vulnerable feelings as the “under” feeling and the anger as the “over” feeling.
Some people are good at feeling disappointed; navigating right through it. But not all of us are. It may be that we were not taught how to manage our “under” feelings. Or it may be that we were hurt by someone requiring us to draw on our protective self to get through it, and now our protective self thinks it still has to take over. Whatever the reason, we can get better at it.
How to get better at disappointment
Next time you are angry at someone, ask yourself if you feel disappointed. If you do, say to yourself “I feel disappointed” and then notice where you feel it in your body. Sit with the feeling for a minute to really feel it. You might also say something like: “rats, this really sucks, I really wanted to do that thing!” Don’t blame anyone, stay with the feeling. You might also be tempted to think on the bright side such as telling yourself “there will always be next year” or “things don’t always work out the way you want them to” but resist that and stay with the feeling. Even cry if you need to. Then, after you’ve sat with it for a minute or so, go and do something that you care about. Practicing this will ultimately teach you how to tolerate and honor the feeling rather than pushing it away or denying it.