Noelle:
Disappointment doesn't kill

Dr. Abby Barnes:
Right... rejection kills. Disappointment only maims.

I don't know how I stumbled upon the 1996 film The Truth About Cats and Dogs back in the early 2000s. It's a fairly generic rom-com starring Uma Thurman, Janeane Garofalo, and Ben Chaplin (an actor who clearly was trying to be a High Grant/Colin Firth type but never really got traction). Young me loved it, and I've not revisited it, not wanting to see how badly it's aged. I do think about this quote relatively often though.

I feel like disappointment can be a form of rejection, or it triggers the same pattern for me anyway. I tended to receive positive regard from doing things, and doing them well enough without needing help. Failure wasn't often rubbed in my face, but I also wasn't given much in the way of encouragement to try again. Any positive regard felt fragile, like I had to constantly work to keep up this appearance of being a good student or worker, who no one needed to worry about. This means that I have no real experience of sitting with this kind of disappointment and rejection, because it was too unsafe for me to do that. The burnout and exhaustion from being hyper-competent and hyper-independent is real, and left me unable to sit with myself being anything else.

This difficulty leads to avoidance. it's easier to sit with the disappointment of not doing something than doing it badly. Failing through inaction says something about my work ethic or procrastination, or how much my health is affecting me. Doing something and failing at it says something about my ability and my potential. And those things not being good enough is scary to contemplate.

Logically, I know that feedback and failure are an important part of learning, and I welcome it. However, there are times when opening myself up to feedback feels impossible.

It was talking to my tutor and my counsellor about this difficulty, and some work I've been doing with clients that allowed me to realise what the issue was: I have no way of tending to myself when I feel disappointed in myself. I don't show myself compassion, I just shove the feelings away and work even harder. I then shove any success at the feeling of disappointment to quiet it even more. There's no acknowledgement of the feeling, just a rejection. A pushing away because I don't know what else to do. This is how the pattern of rejection shows in disappointment.

I'm not mean to myself, but I avoid and ignore instead. This is still unsafe, essentially. It's not safe for me to feel disappointment, because I won't engage with it.

Now I'm getting to the end of my course (maybe, maybe I'll need to resit, who knows), and working with people in placement, the stakes are so much higher. Which means to disappointment feels much more pointed and scary.

This year, I'm looking at commitment to myself, and part of that it learning to manage tasks and to do lists in a way that feels compassionate and correct. Alongside this, it's learning to be disappointed in myself, and then to be compassionate to myself alongside that.