Marcia's Musings: Bone-Deep Disappointment
/By Marcia Appel — Last Updated: April 16, 2024
Lately, I’ve been fighting off feelings of disappointment. It’s the one emotion most difficult for me to process. How about you?
So many things cause disappointment that the list seems endless when it hits. The toughest for me? Disappointment in myself, disappointment in someone close to me, disappointment in a business dealing. In March, all three collided and whomped me. I did literally feel it in my bones, and I ached with tiredness.
The details of these disappointments, though helpful to identify, make no difference in what I am writing. They are appropriately private. The challenge for me lies in feeling the sadness and sometimes ickiness that accompanies disappointment. This really is why I’m sharing with you.
Different people feel anger, grief, revenge when disappointment hits. Others cope with shame, embarrassment, or denial. However disappointment affects you, it requires careful inquiry to process, release, and learn from it – yes, learn from it.
In my case, as I worked through this entanglement of three bone-deep disappointments, I used some aids. Here they are:
Stay with the Feeling of Disappointment
The teachings of yoga, mindfulness, and modern psychology encourage us to invite our feelings in and not push them away. This includes disappointment. We know this. Knowing it, though, doesn’t make it easier. Given the trifecta of my disappointment, I needed to call in my observer, that part of me that is awareness that doesn’t hold attachment to my thoughts, feelings, or emotions.
The observer steps in when the mind wants to explode, wander, or push away feelings. The observer uncovers messages and shares them in such a way that the calm awareness of reality appears.
Eventually, acknowledging disappointment and the feelings it creates in your body helps us to tame it, to understand it, and to move on. Remember that, as with all emotions, disappointment comes in waves. You will have to ride the wave of disappointment as it ebbs and flows, roars and calms.
Discovering Appropriate Action to Take When Disappointed
As we become aware of what is real, we can decide what actions to take. We base any actions on the concepts of kindness and compassion, not always easy when we feel disappointment in a friend, colleague, child, life partner, or business associate.
We know which actions to take when we consider them and feel them in our bodies. I ask these questions – The Big Four – when considering an action:
Is this the right time?
Is this the right place?
Are these the right words?
Will they make a difference?
Almost always, asking The Big Four creates a roadmap for me to deal with disappointment and prevents me from “beating my head against a wall.”
Adjust Your Expectations
The Big Four Questions help so much with this. If you think you or someone else should be able to accomplish something in only a few tries or even the first time, you set yourself up for more disappointment. Someone who is close to me used to face such disappointment if the kids didn’t answer a text in a few minutes, resulting in constant disappointment and feelings of disconnection. By adjusting expectations to reality – the kids are busy – fewer feelings of disappointment occurred.
Or, if you or others have spoken to a business associate or colleague multiple times about something as personal as tone and as complicated as business ethics, sit with that until an action emerges, including inaction or doing nothing, which paradoxically is still an action.
Remember, deciding that major shifts are needed in a relationship or situation, including ending them, is sometimes the answer. Nothing lasts forever, and some things cannot be fixed. Consider all the actions based on reality, kindness, and compassion.
And then there’s disappointment in ourselves, which most frequently results in feelings of sadness and grief. In a culture that prizes near-perfection of performance and image, self-disappointment will be a constant companion. I’ve found that having a trusted friend – someone with whom I can be vulnerable and who can be vulnerable in turn – helps me understand my expectations of myself and can help me discover strategies to ease or to more easily accept them.
Take Care of Yourself (of Course)
walking in nature supports well-being
To feel disappointment is also to be fully human. Taking care of yourself when disappointed may include being outside in nature – walking, hiking, biking, kayaking – any activity that connects you to nature and to your body and its feelings. It could involve helping a neighbor, friend, or non-profit with a project or other needs. Reiki, bodywork, and yoga open up the inner space. And dealing with disappointment almost always includes talking with someone with whom you feel safe and who will explore the truth with you.
“It means getting enough rest. Because bone-deep disappointment causes bone-deep fatigue.”
As for me? I made it to April. That alone is a kind of victory. I’m sensing what I’m learning from the three disappointments and how positive action may result. And, in one case, one of them already is creating change and a new sense of community. I’m still surfing the wave of my three-pronged disappointment, though I notice the wave grows smaller overall. Simply put, I’m feeling less disappointed, more grounded in reality, and more aware that examining this emotion when it arrives helps to resolve it by knowing which actions to take. I wish the same for you.
