How not to be disappointed when you expect everything in life, When we not only want to achieve what we want, but to the extent that we had imagined? Being disappointed is almost a commonplace that is born from our own expectations.

The problem arises when we are not able to digest those feelings and channel them towards improvements. Without meaning to, we can block ourselves emotionally and, trapped in suffering, open the door to depression.

We all have expectations that are not always met. The way we value the success or failure of our lives and what our relationships with others bring or satisfy us depends in part on its degree of fulfillment. Therefore, if expectations do not adjust to our real possibilities, we run a serious risk of feeling frustrated and disappointedliving it as if others or ourselves had been damaged.

By Víctor Amat and Bet Font

Disappointment: an anguish that partly depends on one

Our society, unlike that of our parents or grandparents, is not based on values ​​such as effort, work or dedication. Today the need to consume prevails and the predominant belief leads us to think that we are practically a function of what we consume. We may strive to hold down an unsatisfying job to maintain a certain economic level without considering whether it will make us happy.

We intend to reach everything and have it allso we endure frustrations and setbacks poorly. In our search for security we fear making mistakes or losing something in every decision.

The lack of guarantees in an uncertain world is one of the reasons why pathologies associated with anxiety and nostalgia abound in our culture. It is utopian, but we believe that it is possible to foresee everything and eliminate difficulties, whether with a partner, work, children or one’s own goals.

In our search for security we fear making mistakes or losing something in every decision.

Meanwhile, experience shows us that There are imbalances, crises and disagreements that force us to live with a certain degree of uncertainty.. We are more vulnerable to disappointments to the extent that we tolerate suffering less, which leads us to anesthetize it by replacing – for example with pills – what previously relieved the group and the feeling of belonging.

Social networks, in times of lean times, are not valued as support: A person can feel immensely lonely even if they have 500 friends on Facebook. We live, therefore, the hypermodernity of fear, because paradoxically we seek the highest levels of security as well as freedom and individualism.

3 common ways to feel disappointed

Simplifying greatly we can recognize basic disappointment profiles:

• Who feels disappointed with themselves

Some authors call it the disillusioned delusional. That person believed they were capable, but the evidence insists on reminding them that they are not who they thought they were, or that they are not where they wanted to be. In this situation the individual can surrender or mobilize. What really dissatisfies you here and now?

You may have gained weight while being able to lose weight, or you may have to accept that you have aged, with all that that entails. A disillusioned deluded person tends to forget that plans serve to orient oneself, that fears are human and that unforeseen events arise in life. Instead, it makes demanding balances in which obvious that he or she is not only that which did not reach.

• Who is disappointed in others

The basic thought here is a positive utopia respect to othersin which there is no possibility of setback or misfortune.

When something goes wrong, the individual he feels that others have betrayed himdespite the fact that he has offered them the best of himself. The person tends to expect others to act according to their needs and to feel like a victim of ingrates who do not reciprocate as they deserve. The closer those people are, the more painful the disappointments will be.

This person she usually forgets that she is not the only one who suffers and, above all, that others do not have the power to guess their desires. The writer Émile Cioran put it this way: «Our resentments derive from the fact that, by remaining below ourselves, we have not been able to reach the goal. We never forgive others for this.»

• The disappointed in the world or total disappointment

Its original truth is that it is right and that the rest is wrongso everything would have to be different than it is. In the face of adversity, not only does he not react or activate his resources, but he increases and reinforces his primary belief, until disappointment exhausts or depresses him.

Even from the paralysis caused by renunciation, he can continue trying to dominate the world with his thinking and moralism, as in this example: One rainy afternoon, a passenger gets stuck for a long time in a taxi, while the driver listens to the news on the radio, complaining that: «Everything they say is bought lies. I haven’t heard anything that saves me in recent years. It’s maddening.» Then the passenger asks: «Did you try turning off the radio for a while and chatting, or playing music?» To which the taxi driver responds with determination: «In the taxi there is no choice but to listen to those lies.»

Feeling disappointment, an opportunity to improve

We all make mistakes when we try to predict how we will cope with life events or how others will.

It is true that our society enhances expectations to the point of utopianism and that life sometimes brings us very difficult moments that we did not anticipate going through. Even so, theExperience can teach us to be more realistic and take our own circumstances into consideration..

That does not mean that we should do without goals and even less dreams. But if we aspire to achieve them, in addition to realism and experience, we will need to develop other capabilities: that of connect with others, resolve conflicts and learn from mistakesassuming that we partly contribute to generating our own disappointments.

We must assume that in part we contribute to generating our own disappointments.

Why does it hurt so much?

Disappointment often comes when we critically read what has happened to us. We blame ourselves or othersleaving us only with the negative.

Anger or suffering prevents us from realizing that If we decided to act in a certain way it was because that was probably the best option what we had at that time.

The same thing happens in the field of relationships. when it is the other who disappoints us. When a friend questions us about something, is he doing it to annoy us? When a 17-year-old boy doesn’t work, does he do it to reject his father’s values ​​of effort and work? When a preteen doesn’t eat, is she doing so to reject her mother’s food (for whom nurturing can be a form of giving love)?

All these questions reflect the reading that someone makes and that gives meaning to the behavior of the other, a meaning that also hurts. And in this misreading, thoughts, feelings and behaviors are generated that will give rise to a series of misunderstandings.

We are responsible for giving a more constructive reading to the critical issue if we do not want to remain trapped in it. Too often We become stuck in anger, helplessness or victimhood.

When experiencing a critical episode, we can choose to give it a tragic and definitive reading that leads us to emptiness and frustration, or to experience it as another adversity, a kind of «false take» that gives us the opportunity to review our way of doing things to move forward in the future.

It would be good to ask ourselves what our expectations arewhat we want to achieve and what we are missing or what we must change to be better. Only then can we give our failures a proper place in the gallery of our existence.

How to act when something or someone disappoints you

Moments of disappointment – ​​mild or intense – provide a wonderful opportunity to relate better to life. These are some strategies you can keep in mind to deal with disappointment:

1. Describe what causes you disappointment. Focus on what happens or what X does, to whom and in what situation. Do it without trying to find explanations, labeling it or judging it. Simply describe the facts without qualification.
2. Recognize what hurts you. What feelings does that experience or behavior awaken in you? If you accept them without pretending that you should feel differently, it is easier for you to learn to live in peace with your losses and frustrations. You can write it or share it with someone; If you want, read it and destroy it later.
3. Look for exceptions that contradict the story of disappointment you have been telling yourself. If you have trouble identifying opposite examples, you can ask someone who you think has the resources to help you.
4. Realize that you are much more than your disappointment and that your story of disappointment. Change or question the limitation of your labels (whether you put them on yourself or whether they helped you), add a sense of humor, and broaden your perspective with other qualities of yourself.
5. Remember what resources helped you in similar situations that can give you possibilities to go beyond the complaint.
6. Instead of thinking that you «should» have acted differentlybe more understanding of yourself and your disappointment, building a more useful story around it. If it doesn’t occur to you, act as if you were an unconditional friend willing to make sense of your experience, because if you acted like that, you surely had your reasons at that moment.
7. Try doing something different next time. Churchill said: «Success is learning to go from failure to failure without despair.»

Other keys to overcoming disappointment

Being disappointed is useful until it isn’t.: until it eats us, mortifies us or tarnishes our relationships. Although it is an indicator that we are emotionally connected and that we know how to set goals, it is also a sign that we are not on the right track and that there is discomfort.

An old stratagem from the Chinese art of war says that «to straighten something, you must first learn to twist it further.» In our case we would say that To overcome our own disappointment we must first embrace it.. There is no one way to deal with pain.

There are those who need to talk, those who choose to write, those who seek to give meaning or the company of someone to help them. In any case, Putting words to the pain helps to accept itto distance oneself from him and, to the extent appropriate, to banish him.

There are therapeutic rituals that have the purpose objectify or specify feelings –like the one that invites you to write them, read them and burn them–, giving them enough space and time for the disturbances to dissipate like smoke.

If the disappointment is with another personit is useful to distinguish the positive intention – what the author intended as good – from the meaning we gave it and the harm it could cause us. That is, look for a less illusory or limiting meaning.

It is useful to distinguish the positive intention of the person who has disappointed us from the meaning we gave to what he or she did or did not do.

Sometimes the sense of humor…