Bouncing Back From Disappointment

How we respond to disappointment has a lot to do with our upbringing, according to the Harvard Business Review.¹ When the bar is low and people eschew risks, they bypass disappointment by underachieving. Others dodge it by overachieving with unattainably high expectations. Parents who strove for perfection likely created insecurities, whereas having a “good enough” mindset provided a more secure life base.

What does this mean as people contemplate sad events, unanticipated election results, or hard realities? Our developmental history is not our destiny. Processing disappointment with introspection helps—rumination not so much.

Here are some cognitive-behavioral tools to help people refocus after experiencing lost dreams or disappointments:

Slow Down and Embrace Change

Haemin Sunim, a Korean Buddist monk, developed a following through prolific, pithy wisdom. In When Things Don’t Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times and The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World, readers gain reassurance and inspiration to eschew the exhausting daily treadmill society beckons them to adopt.⁸

First, slow down. People can take cues from rituals such as shiva, where mourners sit to reflect after losing loved ones, and weddings where couples gather with friends, good food, fun, and then escape to rest and settle into their voluntary, new dynamics.

Yet much change is involuntary, inflicted upon us. “Do not lament the world has changed,” writes Sunim. “Do not resent that people have changed. Evaluating the present through the memories of the past can cause sadness. Whether you like it or not, change is inevitable. Embrace and welcome it.”

Reframe and Adopt a New Perspective

The Journal of Clinical Psychology found that reframing a situation, taking what one deems negative or unwelcomed and viewing it from a different lens, can significantly reduce stress and anxiety.²

Steps to reframe thoughts include challenging them to see if there’s truly evidence to back them up. Was the thought ignited by or flamed by others, social media, or biased news reports? Has anxiety grown over time and culminated in a truly bothersome perception?

Flip the thought and see how if it resonates. Studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that accepting negative emotions—“habitual acceptance”—leads to better mental health.³

Lean Into Radical Acceptance

Mister Rogers wrote, “Often, when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”⁹

Sometimes we’re not ready to plod through next chapters, but would rather relegate them to the remainder bin, where no-longer-popular books go. Hold on. There is a technique used in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) called radical acceptance.

Radical acceptance means not that we agree with a reality but that we don’t fight against it. We accept what's happened, because when emotions otherwise escalate, we face even more collateral damage and suffering. Radical acceptance occurs when we extend kindness to ourselves; forgiveness extends kindness to others.

We accept the painful or undesirable situation outside of our control and resist the temptation to disconnect from it. This doesn’t mean that we remain passive, have no agency, or must approve of tough stuff. Use the acronym RAIN: recognize, allow or accept a current circumstance, investigate what’s happening in your mind and body, and nurture yourself with self-compassion.

Move a Body, Move a Mind

Noticing people with illness, injury, trauma, and exhaustion, Nahid de Belgeonne wrote Soothe: Restoring Your Nervous System from Stress, Anxiety, Burnout and Trauma to help us regulate our nervous system.¹⁰ De Belgeonne delves into body sensing, breathwork, rest, and movement, especially with her experience as a yoga and Pilates instructor.

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“You can’t afford to feel overwhelmed, for there is never enough time to tend to yourself, so you simply say, ‘I can’t think about that right now,’ or ‘I’ll deal with this at the end of the day,’” writes de Belgeonne.

The Soothe Program teaches that bodies operate in rhythms, from electrical brainwave frequency to the flow of blood, responses of hormones, and the release of synovial fluid in joints. This slow movement of the lymphatic system carries what we don’t need away. We must move.

“When we experience emotions, they can manifest in our bodies in the form of tension, pain, or other physical symptoms,” writes de Belgeonne. “Somatic movement can help us to release these physical symptoms and reconnect with our bodies in a more mindful way.”

Use Affirmations

If we wake up feeling disillusioned, what do we reach for? Studies have shown that self-affirmations decrease health-deteriorating stress, lower rumination, and increase academic achievement.

“Positive affirmations can be chosen to motivate self, encourage positive changes in one’s life, or boost self-esteem. If a person frequently finds himself getting caught up in negative self-talk, positive affirmations can be used to combat these often-subconscious patterns and replace them with more adaptive narratives,” writes Minakshi Rana in Education World.⁵

A fun way to skew positive is with the calendar we keep. Keep Calm and Carry On features uplifting quotes, such as “We must keep going. If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving” by Martin Luther King, Jr. and “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life” by Susan David, a South African psychologist and writer.⁶

Nurture Plants and Walk Amid Nature

Ambra Burls published in the Journal of Public Mental Health how green spaces improve both mental and physical health, reduce pain, relieve anxiety, and reduce depression risk.⁷

Whether it’s a visit to a well-known botanical garden or your own, a public park, lake, ocean or other body of water, or a walk along tree-lined streets on a suburban or city sidewalk, place yourself outdoors. Gardening, listed in most mobile apps as exercise, may not burn voluminous calories, but it does force bending, stretching, and movement in the hands, arms, torso, back, and legs.

All told, there are at least six attainable strategies here to move beyond disappointment. When people engage into new thoughts and activities, they become less available for regret and rumination. They change what they can and gradually let go of what they cannot.

Copyright © 2024 by Loriann Oberlin, M.S.