Handling disappointment: Are you willing to do the work?

As the holidays wrap up and the New Year approaches, I often find myself reflecting on patterns I’ve observed over the past year. One that consistently stands out is how often people seek therapy for a very human reason: they need a safe place to talk through and learn how to cope with disappointment.

Disappointment exists on a continuum. It may stem from a celebration, such as a holiday, birthday, or anniversary, that didn’t unfold as hoped. It may come from a personal or professional setback, such as an injury that prevents competing in an athletic event, a breakup, or being passed over for a job or promotion. It may also arise within relationships, including romantic, familial, professional, or social ones, when someone important behaves in ways that feel hurtful, stressful, or unacceptable.

Whether at the start of therapy or many sessions in, people often arrive after another person or external event has generated enough disappointment, frustration, hurt, and other intense emotions that they decide they can no longer carry it alone.

A quick spoiler alert: there is no magical “lightbulb” moment in which someone walks into therapy weighed down by heavy feelings and walks out fixed. In fact, if that is the expectation, disappointment is almost guaranteed. Therapists do not have magic wands or Willy Wonka-style machinery that allows people to instantly let go of difficult emotions.

The work of therapy in these situations almost always involves grief. This is the grief that comes from realizing a person or situation is not who or what you expected it to be. Grieving is deeply uncomfortable, and if you are doing the work, therapy will be uncomfortable at times. Insightful “a-ha” moments are rare because working through grief, especially when the people or situations involved are still very much present, is slow and painful. Many people leave therapy prematurely and conclude it didn’t work because they are unwilling or unable to sit with that discomfort.

But if you can tolerate the discomfort long enough, and the timeline is different for everyone, something begins to shift. You work through the grief and eventually reach acceptance. Acceptance is not resignation. It is the realization that the only person you can truly change is yourself. This idea may be overused on social media, but actually living it, working through the twists and turns and landing there honestly, is often the true therapeutic breakthrough.

You can change your attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and choices. You cannot change another person, an external event, or a situation outside of you. A helpful rule of thumb is to adjust expectations so that you expect people to show up as they consistently do, rather than as you hope they might. While we cannot control illness, injury, or misfortune, we can choose to be in relationships with people as they are, not based on their potential to become someone else.

Take care. Take charge of you, and only you.

Psych’d to see you next month!

-Dr. S.

Dr. Hayley B. Sherwood is a longtime Clinical Psychologist in Reston/Herndon. To learn more, please visit her website at www.oakhillpsychological.com/

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