Dealing with Disappointment

                At some time in our lives, each of us experiences a disappointment. It hurts; it can even make us angry, because that thing or person or event that you wanted or expected to happen, falls through. Perhaps you did not make the football team or cheerleading squad this year. Your “dream” college rejected your application. The love of your life and the person you believed to be your future spouse turned out to be just a summer romance. You were one of the few Academy Award nominees on your award-winning movie who did not receive an Oscar tonight. How did you handle this disappointment? What did you do?

                Since you were born, your subconscious mind has learned and knows only two kinds of responses: pleasure and pain. In the context of the examples above, when you get what you want (or worked or wished for), you may experience pleasure. When you don’t get these things, you may experience pain in the form of disappointment. This pain may feel, be or seem exponential if you have experienced similar disappointments in the past. After all, if this kind of thing has happened before, your subconscious mind must know how to “do” this, right? Or, what if your subconscious mind just takes this message unit (e.g., failure at, disappointment at) and stockpiles it as a "known" for the next time you’re in a similar situation?

Everything you had and then lost—or almost had and then lost—last night, last week, last month, last year felt like the worst of the worst kind of pain you have ever experienced. But, you got through that pain (somehow) and went on to triumph in another way, on another day, right? You must have, because you are reading this blog right now. You will get up again tomorrow morning, too, and start over again, because that is what your subconscious mind also knows how to do. Your subconscious mind works, wants and loves to please you. This is true even when it seems like your SCM is hanging onto memories of this pain and repeating your negative, mental chatter as if to sabotage next time’s chance for you, too.

                Hypnotherapy and therapeutic guided imagery are great ways with which to deal with a disappointment, because both tools give you direct access to the area where the emotional reaction to that experience has occurred—your subconscious mind. During hypnosis and guided imagery, you can explore alternative scenarios to what happened and other ways you could have responded in this situation, including possible benefits to not have realized this particular dream. (For more information John Kappas, Ph.D.’s technique of “Turning it around,” read my February 19, 2014 blog.) While you are in this relaxed state, you can also learn a new response to disappointment: replace the old response (e.g., hurt, anger, sadness) it with “X” (a positive, optimistic, etc. emotion of your choosing) for having an opportunity to experience “Y.” Then, anchor the new emotion to the sensation of feeling relaxed, comfortable, etc. that you experienced in hypnosis or during your guided-imagery journey, so the next time your wish for today didn’t come true, you can feel relaxed and positive about still being in the game for next time.

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014