Any disappointment is a more or less painful loss. Understanding its mechanisms will help you transform the experience. This is what you will do with it, which will give it a positive boost in the aftermath.
Realize that your love leaves you, that your fights do not change anything, discover that a friend is not reliable, miss an important exam, be denied a promotion for a less competent one … The disappointment is not always a minor event. A precious good, made of desire and hope is torn from you. It is an extirpation. So how to limit the shock wave?
Reduce the gap between your expectations and reality!
Your vital impulse is nourished by hope and beliefs that allow you to imagine your life, to project yourself into an ideal scenario. You want to believe it, even close your eyes to the shadows on the board. Your convictions, your desires and your dreams are a source of energy but they can also lead you to disillusionment. The larger the gap between your beliefs and your representations, the more you are exposed to disappointment.
In practice: When disappointment occurs, it therefore has a history, directly linked either to expectations or to beliefs. It is this story that you need to question to avoid the repetition of disappointments and the development of a feeling of failure that will defuse any vital impetus. For example, a fusional vision of love where the “couple” entity takes precedence over individualities, or the belief in a professional world in harmony with your skills and aspirations, are, like all idealizations, potential pitfalls. The disappointment brings a lesson: we learn to readjust our expectations.
Learn to modulate your emotions!
The disappointment stuck you in an emotional storm. At the heart of anger, sadness and bitterness, it’s hard to see a breakaway. However, the dominant emotion must be deciphered because it informs you about your “sensitive point”. Already, you get to know each other better, and you see more clearly… An elaboration is done despite everything and draws an outcome.
In practice: Developing your emotional intelligence consists in recognizing your emotions and then modulating them. Understanding yourself also makes it possible to understand others. When the emotional tide “goes down”, you can initiate a disengagement, “pull together”, that is to reclaim your person.
Repair self-esteem!
The people most sensitive to disappointment have poor self-esteem which accentuates their dependence on others, on their gaze, on their presence. It is an inexhaustible source of disillusionment: on the one hand it generates unrealistic expectations, on the other hand it puts you in a position of fragility compared to the other.
In practice: To learn to love yourself enough, it is better to settle a few accounts with your story. For this, psychotherapy is to be preferred. Such as taming moments of “good solitude”: to visit a museum even without being accompanied, to read, to meditate … All this is within your reach. This good loneliness is an inner breath, it widens your space of freedom.
Telling your disappointment: narrative therapy!
Trying to tell your disappointments by writing them allows you to externalize them, to get them out of you. Through the narration, you reorganize the structure of the lived experience. The deep meaning emerges in spite of you? A new coherence is emerging. From then on, you can consider it as a rite of passage which has made you evolve.
Reference: https://blog.iqmatrix.com/overcome-disappointment
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