Dealing with disappointment
by Lyn Packer
Life is full of both triumphs and disappointments; we all love the triumphs of life, but you just can’t live life without facing disappointment somewhere along the way. According to the dictionary, disappointment is the feeling of sadness, grief, and displeasure caused by the defeat of one's hopes or expectations. But the reality is, that doesn’t even really begin to describe the intense feelings we can sometimes encounter when disappointment strikes. We can look at our situation and wonder “How the heck did I get here, and why am I feeling this so deeply?”’
Here’s how your heart and mind can set you up for disappointment (1):
You're in an uncertain situation where you are hoping for a positive outcome.
You believe that you deserve a positive outcome.
You fantasize about what your life would be like with that outcome.
You're surprised and saddened that you didn't receive the outcome you hoped for.
You feel grief, anger and/or resentment that you couldn't control the outcome through personal actions.
Hope is great. We all need hope; it's an essential, and wonderful, thing to have in life. But what we hope for doesn’t always happen, and that’s where disappointment steps in. And the more time we spend fantasizing about how amazing a certain thing would be if it happened, the greater our disappointment is when it doesn’t come to pass the way we’d hoped, or believed, it would.
Disappointments come when expectations aren’t met. Maybe someone lets us down and hurts us badly – emotionally or physically – or we didn’t get that job we were hoping for, or a Christian leader or friend turns out to have very human frailties. Sometimes our expectations are realistic, but sometimes they are not in line with reality, and are unrealistic. Some of the disappointments we face are actually predictable and preventable, if we think about things a little more beforehand. Others are totally unavoidable. Sometimes disappointments are small, and easily dealt with, but other times they are like taking a punch to the gut that leaves you winded and gasping for breath. Then there are times when we face a barrage of things that don’t work out as we’d hoped, and the disappointments begins to accumulate. This is when disappointments can begin to have a very definite effect on our overall wellbeing. Research tells us that letting disappointments accumulate without dealing with them can lead to all sorts of health issues – a greater frequency of headaches, gut-related issues, chronic stress, and even depression. I would go so far as to say that accumulated disappointments are probably a major factor for many people suffering from depression.
A personal story
A while ago I was thinking about a couple of big disappointments I’d faced during my life, and was talking to the Lord about them. Immediately, in my mind, I saw a very strong internal vision of myself walking up to an office door and opening it. There inside the office I was surprised to see myself sitting behind a desk with my head in my hands, looking and feeling despondent. Upon asking the Lord what I was seeing, I was told that this was the office of accumulated disappointments. On the desk in front of me sat folders that contained the stories of disappointments I’d felt, but not dealt with. Sadly, some went back many years and were ones I thought I’d got over. In the vision I saw myself picking up the folders one by one, looking at the contents and processing them, then being able to bin them. Needless to say, the vision was a very clear message from the Lord that these overlooked disappointments needed to be dealt with, or else they would continue to weigh me down – subconsciously and even consciously.
Disappointment’s power
Prov 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." I’ve read that Scripture many times, but I read it recently in the Message Bible and its truth hit home in a fresh way. The Message Bible says, "Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick..."
Unrelenting disappointment is disappointment after disappointment – life piling one thing on top of another, each one a situation that doesn’t go how you expected it to. It can happen, and when it does, it can leave us either reeling with emotion, or feeling numbed and deadened under the weight of it all. Accumulated disappointment can eat away at our faith in God as it weighs upon us and seeks to wear us down.
Disappointment has the ability to dis-appoint us if we allow it. It can remove us from our appointed place of peace, hope, purpose, and destiny – in life, and in Christ. When this happens we are overcome; we end up losing vision for life, and losing hope and faith in God’s promises and His ability to be there for us. We lose sight of His promise and provision, as well as losing sight of any ability to see His current and past faithfulness and goodness to us.
Moving from disappointment back to confidence
How do we deal with disappointment and process it in a healthy way, instead of just brushing it off, or hiding our very real feelings under a false smile? How do we stop disappointments piling up in our heart and mind before they get the chance to affect our mental and physical health?
Here’s some tips that I pray will help…
Grieve – Things haven’t gone the way that you wanted, and your hopes have been dashed. It’s normal to feel sadness or grief. Recognize the sadness, acknowledge it – whether the disappointment is a small one or a large one. It’s okay to mourn the death of a dream, a hope, the way you thought things would be. Know that the Lord is right there, aware of all you are going through – “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” Psa 34:1.
Look at your thinking – When you face repeated disappointments it may indicate that you’ve established a pattern of faulty, or irrational, thinking. If you are frequently disappointed, evaluate your expectations and what you are thinking about situations, and try to change any faulty thinking patterns. Scripture tells us that if we want a transformed life our thinking must first be renewed (Rom12:1,2; Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:10).
Talk to the Lord about it – You don’t have to face your disappointments alone, and you need to come back to a place of knowing God’s peace. God longs to comfort you as well as give you help and wisdom in the midst of the situation. Phil 4:6-7 tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Forgive those that need forgiveness - including yourself. Forgiveness is part of the healing process; it releases you and the other person from your judgment and allows you to move forward unencumbered by soul-ties that would otherwise keep you bound to that person. Forgiveness happens easiest when hurts have been healed so allow the Lord to heal the disappointments you’ve had.
Talk to someone who can help you process – Some disappointments can be too big for us to process by ourself. Either they carry too much relational hurt, or they have attached themselves to previous disappointments by the same person, or they are just huge – like the loss of a loved one we have been praying for healing for. In this case don’t try to go-it-alone; talk to a friend, or see your pastor, or a counsellor.
Learn from it – Reframe how you see disappointment. While that may not change the feelings initially, it will help you work through the disappointment. Choose to see the experience as something you can learn valuable lessons from. You can do that by asking yourself, and the Lord, some questions, such as…
What is one thing I can learn from this?
How can I adjust my course to avoid this disappointment in the future?
What is one thing I can do differently next time?
You may find that you need to communicate better next time you're in a similar situation, or working together with someone else on a task or project. Or that you need to give yourself more time to think things through before jumping to a decision, in order to avoid mistakes and have time to think clearly. Maybe you’ll come to the realization that you need to spend less time with someone who has disappointed you too often (or always makes you feel like a disappointment no matter how hard you try).
Check your expectations – Disappointment is all about managing and setting realistic expectations and hopes. You may need to check your expectations. For example, if you demand or expect perfection from yourself, or from other people, then you’ll often be disappointed.
In everything give thanks – It’s not easy in the middle of hard times to thank the Lord, or to see the good that our lives are filled with. But the Lord tells us that having a heart that gives thanks, even in the midst of hard times, is part of how He wants us to live – “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” 1 Thess 5:18. Giving thanks realigns us with the reality that God is with us in the middle of whatever we are going through, that He has not left us or forsaken us. It also puts us in the frame of mind where we can recall His previous goodness to us. "I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High" Psa 9:1-2.
Search for the good – God promises to make all things work for good in the lives of those who love Him (Rom 8:28). In the midst of disappointment it seems like the worst time to hold on to hope, yet it’s the time when you need to do just that. The hope we can hold onto is that God will make even this work for good in our lives. When our dreams are dashed our natural tendency is to feel self-pity, yet while this is the hardest time, it’s also the most important time to tell our soul to not be downcast, but to hope in God as David did. In Psalm 42 we see that David has obviously face a huge disappointment of some sort, yet he reminds himself to hope in the Lord and calls his soul out of that place of hurt, back to a place of trusting God to work in his life.
Put things into perspective – There is a common saying I have often used as a comfort. It says, “This, too, shall pass.” I used to think that was a Bible verse, but it isn’t. But the Bible does give us perspective – we know that in this world we face difficulties, trials and tribulations, but we also know that this world is not all there is. 2 Cor 4:17-18 talks about our troubles being temporary. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Those trials and difficulties we face will do a good work in us if we make them work for us, instead of letting them work against us. “Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us” Rom 5:3-5.
Renew your hope in God and receive fresh vision – Re-establishing hope is vital for moving on with life in a healthy way. We do this through allowing the Lord to minister healing to us and to speak hope and promise back into our hearts and minds. He does this in various ways – through Scripture, through other people, by His peace becoming re-established in our heart and mind, and by recalling His past faithfulness and goodness to us. Here’s a verse that has been a huge help to me over the years. "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" Psa 27:13.
If you’ve allowed disappointments to pile up without processing through them can I encourage you, don’t let another day pass by without talking to the Lord about them, and facing those feelings of disappointment head on. Step back into your appointed place as one who perseveres and overcomes in the strength of the Lord. Rise up within yourself again, and with the Lord’s help demolish any strongholds of hopelessness, negativity, and loss of vision that disappointment has established in your life, and receive fresh vision and hope from Him!