Permission to feel: Disappointment

A Path to Self-Compassion and Growth

Disappointment can be one of the hardest things to deal with; we have expectations and when they aren’t met we can feel foolish for having those expectations in the first place. When I say we, I mean me of course 😂. You too? Oh, good, I’m in great company.

What I have done in the past is build up my defences against feeling that disappointment.  People pleasing, intellectualising, perfectionism, self criticism, learned helplessness and control have all been ways to handle my disappointment. Let me elaborate…

It was picked up quite early at school that I was ‘good at English’ (what does that even mean?!) and I ended up applying to Oxford University. I studied at lunchtimes and after school alongside another girl.

The day that we were due to find out the results was the school open day. The news was shared with me just before the evening session where, as Head Girl, I had to show prospective parents around the school all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Except I was red eyed with my tail between my legs. 

At the time I felt devastated and humiliated. As Head Girl at school everyone knew me, and knew that I was applying to Oxford, so not getting in felt like a very public failure. I was then rejected by a further 3 universities. I only got one university offer. 

It compelled me to drive harder. I found doing English at university extremely painful because my veneer of ‘good girl’ was so thick, I couldn’t get in touch with the translation, with how any of it made me feel and why. I was numbed out, in total freeze, in my work addiction.

When I read the books of poetry I was so wrapped up in what I was ‘meant’ to think. What was the right answer? If someone could just tell me the magic formula I would DO THAT!

I kept chasing the validation, the reassurance that I wasn’t really a failure.

Fast forward to December 2010 when my life had spectacularly imploded due to a series of events and I found myself at a healing trauma week in Cumberland Furnace, in the depths of Tennessee. We had been invited to go outside and take a silent walking meditation in the snow.

Onsite workshops

There had been a fresh snow fall and I focussed really hard on the glistening surface in front of me as I trudged around in circles, head down. It all just looked so bloody beautiful and it felt like a small flame lit back up inside of me, one that had been extinguished for so long.

I know that social psychologists have spent many years debating ‘the self’ from a cognitive, affective and behavioural perspective, but for me, it was all wrapped up in the feeling of that glowing flame within.

When I did that silent walk in Tennessee and the healing work that week I started to see me again, and it was the first step towards allowing myself out of the genie bottle of perfectionism and driving myself ever harder to buffer myself against how disappointed I felt about myself.

Underneath all of the defences that I had used was my vulnerability. This vulnerability, that we all have because we are human, is with us from birth. Despite our many adaptations and defences, this vulnerable part is still present within each and every one of us. In psychotherapeutic terms this vulnerable self is often referred to as the ‘inner child’.

The idea of the ‘Inner child’ has been popular in psychology since the 1960s, although, if you look at any myth, legend or fairy tale you will find many tales of the orphaned, abandoned or threatened child who goes on a journey of discovery to become a leader or source of wisdom. 

When I first encountered the idea of this inner child I was so annoyed with her! I had clamped her mouth tight shut from a young age. I genuinely believed that if  I could stamp out the needy part of me then I would be able to get along with my life just fine thank you very much. To trust and speak up, any inner child needs to be validated. That certainly wasn’t going to happen by me on my own!

When I was at the healing trauma workshop at Onsite we had lectures in the morning. One morning we had a lecture on our rights of being. The work there was experiential which means that rather than sitting down and listening in the lectures we played them out. So we had one person to represent each of the rights.

Bill of rights, taken from ACA literature

1) I have the right to say no.

2) I have the right to say, “I don’t know”.

3) I have the right to be wrong.

4) I have the right to make mistakes and learn from them.

5) I have the right to detach from anyone in whose company I feel humiliated or manipulated.

6) I have the right to make my own choices and decisions in my life.

7) I have the right to grieve any actual or perceived loss.

8) I have the right to all of my feelings.

9) I have the right to feel angry, including towards someone I love.

10) I have the right to change my mind at any time.

11) I have the right to a spiritually, physically, and emotionally healthier existence, though it may differ entirely or in part from my parents' way of life.

12) I have the right to forgive myself and to choose how and when I forgive others.

13) I have the right to take healthy risks and to experiment with new possibilities.

14) I have the right to be honest in my relationships and to seek the same from others.

15) I have the right to ask for what I want.

16) I have the right to determine and honor my own priorities and goals, and to allow others to do the same.

17) I have the right to dream and to have hope.

18) I have the right to be my True Self.

19) I have the right to know and nurture my Inner Child.

20) I have the right to laugh, to play, to have fun, and the freedom to celebrate this life, right here, right now.

When it came to the right to have all my feelings and they asked for volunteers I shot up my hand. This was my chance to reclaim my voice!

I stood up in front of the group of about 40 people and shared a story of when I had tried to speak up as a child and my feelings had been denied as I was labelled ‘too sensitive’.

Through a snot filled face I wailed out ‘I’m not too sensitive and it wasn’t ok to be called that’. The facilitator encouraged the group to call back out to me ‘it’s not ok’. We then repeated it a few times, my cry of ‘it’s not ok’ and the echo back from the crowd ‘it’s not ok’. Tears were streaming down my face and my legs were shaking. I was getting my actual reality and experience mirrored back to me. 

In healthy parenting this happens spontaneously as the parent, without judgment, echoes back to the child how they are feeling. This helps the child regulate their emotions so that the part of the brain that can reason (the prefrontal cortex) can come back on board. When this doesn’t happen the child is left in an emotional state and just adapts their behaviour (swallowing down their feelings or kicking the cat for example) to get rid of the energy.

It’s a small moment of fight, flight or freeze. 

It’s never too late to reparent yourself or, as I did, find a group that can help to reparent you by mirroring back what you need to hear. For that is what we need when we are disappointed.

I know that people often say don’t have any expectations and you won’t be disappointed, but I’m not sure you can have a wholehearted life living that way. I would rather learn how to dare and then handle my disappointment when my daring takes a dive.

So who is my inner child?

What is she like?

I call her my enchantment. Let me introduce you:

I am sunlight through the leaves and blackbird’s song.

I am the golden glittering reflection on the waves.

I am the cold rush of air in snowy mountains.

I am the scent of lilies.

I am Bach’s Minuet and heart opening drum beats.

I am easy dinners and delicious breakfasts.

I am criatura and irreverent and do not give a damn.

I am pigtails.

She’s cute isn’t she?!

Being alive can only be thoroughly experienced through the being-ness of ourselves, through our senses. By the time I had gone on that trauma workshop my being-ness had felt like it had shut down completely. The only way that I felt that I could get through life was through ‘going beige’. 

Going beige is what I called my freeze response. When we are in a threatening situation we have a few go-to responses that our amygdala kicks into gear for us. Before our prefrontal cortex can come on line our amygdala has powered up our systems full of cortisol and adrenaline ready to fight or flight. Yet, when we are in a situation where we perceive that we cannot overcome through fighting nor escape through fleeing we have another response - freeze. 

It’s not possible to experience your being when you are in freeze because it is designed by mother nature to make you dissociate so that you DON’T experience anything about being alive. When we are traumatised, our window of tolerance to what we can handle is narrower than someone who has not been traumatised because a traumatised person has not had the chance to discharge their traumatic stress. It doesn’t take much, therefore for the old response to get triggered again.

When we are disappointed yes, it is a horrible feeling and can bring up historical shame, fear and humiliation; but we are also being given the opportunity to reparent that part of ourselves which felt of all of those feelings. Some writing exercises that can help with that are:

Exercise 1

Write a shitty first draft. Set the timer, give yourself 15 minutes and actively go after all the shitty things that you want to say about what has happened. Let it all out and see what happens.

Now what would a loving parent write back in response?

Exercise 2

Write a letter from your perseverance. 

Write Dear X, I am your perseverance and this is what I want you to know. Then write down all the times that you have stuck with it, that despite it all you have kept going. How does this change your perspective?

Exercise 3

Practice self compassion. 

Self compassion can be broken down into 3 things:

Self kindness

A sense of common humanity

Mindfulness.

Self kindness

So recognise: You can’t always be who you want to be and get what you want to get Kristen Neff in her book Self Compassion writes, “When this reality is denied resisted, suffering arises in the form of stress, frustration, and self-criticism. When this reality is accepted with benevolence, however, we generate positive emotions of kindness and care that help us cope.” Neff.

Common humanity: 

Life challenges and human failures are part of being human.

Mindfulness - to radically accept the as-is

The serenity prayer is great for this:

Grant me the serenity 

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can 

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Writing exercise:

Using the serenity prayer

What can you not change about the situation?

What things can you change?

There you have it, wisdom. 

Let me know if you have a go at any of the exercises, and how you got on!

That’s it for now,

‘Til next time

Jacky x