Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling in my pain, but the heart to conquer it.
Rabindranath Tagore
Disappointment can be described as a universal human experience and is inevitable. We experience disappointment very frequently in our lives. It could be relationship failures, unmet expectations, or missed opportunities. While we always view it negatively, it can also lead us to enlightenment. The experience of disappointment involves an individual feeling powerless and is a normal reaction to an outcome that is unfavourable or unexpected. It is said that disappointment comes from expectations. Does it mean that one can avoid disappointment if one avoids expectations? Yes. But is it realistic? No. Expectations give us an idea about how a particular thing or scenario is supposed to play out.
As everyone faces disappointment at some point in their life, everyone has a different way of coping with it. The intensity is different for everyone, and so is their coping mechanism. These ways of coping could be of 2 types – healthy and unhealthy. Healthy coping mechanisms may include participating in hobbies or any activity that brings you joy, talking to people you trust, self-soothing (meditation, mindfulness, etc.), and opting for professional help if and when needed. Unhealthy coping mechanisms include isolation, self-injury, negative thinking, and suicidal ideations. By adopting a healthy way of coping, an individual can overcome disappointment effectively and resume the normal pattern of their life.
One may wonder how to overcome this uncomfortable feeling. Below are a few steps that may help an individual to bounce back stronger and more resilient-
1. Acknowledge Your Feelings
It is said that the first step towards getting better is accepting what you feel. While ignoring, avoiding, or distracting yourself might feel like an appealing option, it certainly does not help in the long run. If you repress these emotions, they tend to manifest later in an unhealthy manner and affect different areas of your life.
Allow yourself to feel the emotions that are brought by the disappointment. When you accept these feelings, you tend to acknowledge that they are normal and you can feel basic human emotions. Acknowledging the natural responses to unmet expectations is a crucial part of healing. Here, you may journal, talk to a friend or a family member, and practice mindfulness.
2. Set Realistic Expectations
The root cause of disappointment is expectations. There are two strategies to align your expectations with your outcomes – the outcome rises above and meets the expectation, or the expectations are brought down to an achievable point. While everyone tries the first strategy, it is not easy to achieve. There might also be external factors contributing here. The second strategy is comparatively easier to apply. You can either break down your goal into smaller and more achievable ones or reduce your expectations altogether.
Rather than expecting perfection, aim for progress and holistic growth. Be open to adaptability and alternative strategies and outcomes. Even if you are optimistic in your predictions, brace yourself for setbacks and new challenges. Setbacks help you to manage your expectations more realistically. Here, you can also practice gratitude, think of new ways to achieve your goals and accept the things that are not in your control.
3. Cultivate Resilience
Resilience can be described as the ability of an individual to bounce back from adversity. It is an essential skill in the face of disappointment and can be developed over time. Cultivating this ability will help to navigate your goals better with greater strength and optimism. Through resilience, you can face any setbacks skillfully and maintain your well-being.
Maintain a growth mindset to develop resilience. It allows you to see failure and disappointment as temporary setbacks and focuses on growth, learning, and perseverance. Moreover, building a good social support network can also help to cultivate resilience. Emotional resilience can also be developed through mindful self-compassion, mindful empathy, and positivity. These practices involve understanding, navigation, and healthily expressing your emotions.
4. Self-Compassion
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Give yourself some time to adjust to a particular situation and let yourself feel the emotions it brings along. Do not fall into a pattern of self-blame, instead, ask yourself a question, “What would I advise a friend if he/she were going through a similar situation?”. This puts things in a different perspective and allows you to be compassionate about yourself. Self-compassion is benign loving and caring towards yourself and keeping a non-judgemental attitude towards your failures and shortcomings. It is accepting that disappointment is a part of life and should be overcome gracefully.
Try positive self-talk and replace critical thoughts with affirmations like ‘I can do it’. Moreover, mindfulness involves having a very realistic and holistic view of one’s situation or emotion. People with high levels of mindfulness are said to cope more effectively with disappointment.
Read More: The Power of Affirmations
5. Seek Social Support
Social support is another effective way of coping with disappointment. The right kind of social support can help you to have more of a problem-solving approach rather than wallowing in your emotions. When you get your pain acknowledged by another person, that support makes your
burden lighten.
A practical or rational person seeks support from his/her close network of social relationships based on his/her perceived needs. Since a problem usually contains both emotional and physical dimensions, a person who has strong ties with you and has been there for you in your bad times will be chosen. Furthermore, for social support to work effectively, one needs to be vulnerable and open. This vulnerability and openness are essential for building authentic connections. For this, it is also crucial that you reach out to people who are empathetic, supportive, and understanding of your situation.
6. Seek Professional Help
There are times when even after trying everything, you are clueless on how to get out of this situation or emotion. This is where you need professional support. A therapist or a counsellor can help you to navigate the problems better and help you to cope effectively by providing you with the right tools and techniques.
The guided emotional processing effectively addresses not only the surface-level issues like disappointment, but also the core issues like low self-esteem, past traumas, or unresolved grief. Rather than offering general support, a specific type of disappointment is targeted. It could be a professional setback, relationship issue, academic failure, etc.
7. Do Not Resort To Unhealthy Defense Mechanisms
When faced with disappointment, individuals tend to resort to unhealthy defence mechanisms like retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition. Retroactive pessimism occurs after a person has failed to achieve a desirable outcome. They start believing that their chances of success are not good enough to begin with. For example, saying “I knew I wasn’t going to pass this exam” even after being hopeful and confident about it beforehand. Motivated inhibition, on the other hand, is the suppression of thoughts, emotions, or feelings that might be psychologically uncomfortable.
Read More: 14 Effective Ways to Boost Self-Motivation and Achieve Your Goals
It could be conscious or unconscious. While these defence mechanisms might seem comforting for a while, they give a distorted image of reality and develop negative thinking patterns. They prevent an individual from finding healthy ways to deal with setbacks and maintain their holistic well-being.
In conclusion, disappointment is a part of our everyday life. Dealing with it healthily helps you to learn from your mistakes, bounce back stronger, set realistic expectations, and protect your inner peace.
References +
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- Arocho, J. (2021, June 27). A Psychologist’s Advice on How to Deal with Disappointment. Manhattan Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. https://manhattancbt.com/how-to-deal-with-disappointment/
- Graham, L. (2019). Resilience : powerful practices for bouncing back from disappointment, difficulty, and even disaster. New World Library.
- Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2018, August 22). Dealing with Disappointment. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/08/dealing-with-disappointment
- Stallman, H. (2021). Modelling the relationship between healthy and unhealthy coping strategies to understand overwhelming distress: A Bayesian network approach. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 3, 100054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadr.2020.100054
- Tausig, M., & Michello, J. (1988). Seeking Social Support. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 9(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp0901_1
- Tykocinski, O. E., & Steinberg, N. (2005). Coping with disappointing outcomes: Retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition of counterfactuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(5), 551–558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.12.001
- van Dijk, W. W., Zeelenberg, M., & van der Pligt, J. (2003). Blessed are those who expect nothing: Lowering expectations as a way of avoiding disappointment. Journal of Economic Psychology, 24(4), 505–516. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0167-4870(02)00211-8
- Zeelenberg, M., van Dijk, W. W., S.R.Manstead, A., & der Pligt, J. (1998). The Experience of Regret and Disappointment. Cognition and Emotion, 12(2), 221–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/026999398379727
