How do you deal with mistakes, or disappointments?

[Stephernovas]

In my youth, I've always been heavily shamed for my faults. As a way to cope, I focused on always taking accountability for my actions. I learned that if someone takes the heat, everyone can just move on. Also, if I owned up to everything, then I would be more genuine of a person (instead of the terrible human being my mother labelled me). Unfortunately, I ended up being held responsible, and took accountability for anything that I could remotely be blamed.

I internalized a lot of the disappointment from others (and even myself), to the point where I'm prevented from doing anything because I now get extreme anxiety. Recently, my physio got frustrated trying to get me to set small goals. Sounds easy enough, right? When she gave examples of goals, I was like 'yeah, sounds good! I can do that!', as I am more relaxed when other people set these smaller goals for me/us (they are more likely to know how to choose the right goals - something I'd likely screw up and fear disappointing them).

I really like my physio - I think she's a good human. Sadly, I have a huge fear of disappointing her, especially because I like her so much (if I could hang out with her outside of the clinic, I would). She emulates a lot of who I want to be, if I didn't have the trauma stuff that leaves me feeling like I'm damaged goods. So I've come to the conclusion I need to talk about this and since therapy isn't until Friday, I thought I'd toss out the question here. How can someone like me effectively cope with feeling disappointment, and/or feeling like I've disappointed others?

 

[Deleted member 47099]

I think this is actually quite a deep issue.
I don't cope with mistakes or disappointments well at all :dpressed:

I've learned self-acceptance when everything is going "okay".
But self-acceptance when I make a mistake or when disappointments arise? Whoa... totally different story.

Around people I trust, I've learned that if you make a mistake, you can apologise and repair it.

I've also learned that with the people I don't trust - the ones that are likely to make a big drama out of a mistake - that that's their problem - that they are being :poop: about something that was just a mistake.

I still find it challenging tho.

And disappointments are even harder for me. I go silent - totally silent :ninja:
I usually need about a week to process it, before I can even talk about it with people I trust.
I'm terrible at dealing with disappointments. :bag:

 

[Friday]

One of my CoreBeliefs is ... If it’s my fault? I can fix it... same end result, I can blame myself for things happening 5,000 miles away. Different causality.

Sounds like a couple few of yours are

, if I owned up to everything, then I would be more genuine of a person

someone takes the heat, everyone can just move on.

they are more likely to know how to choose the right goals - something I'd likely screw up and fear disappointing them

There’s also the reverse/idea here in the 2nd one that someone has to be punished for everything to go well. Like it can’t go well without someone being sacrificed (and that someone is you). That could be a terrifying proposition if you’re doin something on your own... because if you’re the one to be thrown under the bus, who is left to do the thing? IE needing to be a part of a team so that “they” can succeed // anything you really value you can’t attempt on your own.
***

Add all these together? You get Disappointment = Inevitable.

But they’re each super valuable to break apart, IMO, and will help break apart the conclusion. Just a beginning of breaking some of those down?

You can be genuine without being at fault.
You don’t have to have screwed up for things to go right.
Expert advice is invaluable, but not all advice is expert.

 

[Stephernovas]

One of my CoreBeliefs is ... If it’s my fault? I can fix it... same end result, I can blame myself for...

Lol sad thing is, I’m highly aware of all this. Like a good old DVD I keep playing, even tho I hate the movie

 

[EveHarrington]

I read a bit of Brené Browns stuff. She says we will fail many times along the way, in other words there will be much disappointment. It is to be expected. Just knowing that failure and disappointment is part of the game helps me deal with the disappointment aspect.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

I think my issue with disappointment is this: growing up with an abusive, narcissistic, sadistic parent, whenever I was disappointed about something or failed at something, it got gloated about.
Like "life was teaching me a lesson" for being a crap person.

So now, whenever something negative/ disappointing happens, I figure everyone who I'm not friends with will be gloating and saying "haha serves her right" and "that'll teach her to have a big mouth".

Rationally, I think that's probably not the case... but emotionalls that's what it feels like, everytime.

Oh and yeah:

Lol sad thing is, I’m highly aware of all this. Like a good old DVD I keep playing, even tho I hate the movie

Me too. Of course! :p

 

[grit]

I do not know exactly how to cope or how to tell others to cope but I grew up with narcissistic mother and internalized a lot of crap.

What I learned though is that the beauty of language. Like if to the phsio, I would probably tell her, I hope you wont be disappointed if do not follow up exactly as you set the goals. I would be more honest about my shortcoming. I had the tendency to say NO NO to everything to my husband until he pointed out how difficult it was to talk to me. He started to give me the opposite question so when I said no, he got yes. and this created other problems so he finally came out and said well you always say NO when you mean yes!

Well that was not nice. I felt like I got stuck at 2yrs old. So I started to say I do not know. Maybe instead....but it took a lot of mechanical ways.

Of course take this to your therapist and deal with it but in everyday, you can start to preemptively say you may not meet with others' expectations or your own.

 

[Stephernovas]

I think my issue with disappointment is this: growing up with an abusive, narcissistic, sadistic parent,...

That’ll teach her comment is exactly how I feel about my accident. I feel a lot of ppl are watching me struggle now and they are like “hmm..typical attention seeking. Whatever, that’s what you get for being a jerk.”

Even though I am the farthest thing from a jerk!

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Yeah, it's hard to shake that feeling isn't it?

I'm sure it's not true, you know. It's something that just keeps echo-ing from our childhoods.

And that makes us hyper-senstive to any comments and makes us read stuff into them, that isn't there.

 

[addvalueaddtime]

I can relate to what you´re describing. I don´t know if this is a completely counterproductive method (as in too avoidant), but it´s what I´m working with for the past while and it´s been better than the alternative so far. When I feel like that my gut instinct is to replace that emotion with something bigger, stronger I guess. That´s just all smoke and mirrors though, and it doesn´t solve a situation if there actually is one, and it doesn´t address if there´s something to, you know, address. Personally my self-destruction seems to have a back-up drive - so if the unbearable shame doesn´t get replaced with something "stronger" (my way of avoiding), a voice in my head generally perks up and encourages me to kill or at the very least harm myself. To counter this, I´ve begun to sort of play "jedi mind tricks" with the voice in my head by telling it that I´ll do what it asks of me, but in x amount of minutes, and then an hour later, and maybe tomorrow, and so on. It of course continues to pester me either way, but by consciously lying to the voice and focusing on distracting myself - I usually manage to cut myself off from it in smaller and then bigger doses. I find it´s easier, later, to pick up the emotion again to analyze what´s true and what´s not. Yes, bringing it up again after I´ve "locked it up" does bring back the feeling itself, but I find the more smaller "sessions" I have with it, bringing it back, putting it away again, makes it more bearable to look at.

Basically - the thought of facing a continuous never-ending loop of shame, etcetera, is discouraging as shit. Finding methods that work for you to "chop it up", for example by distracting yourself until you can face the feeling without being eaten alive by it, maybe revisit it then when the certain thing that set it off isn´t as close in time, might lessen the strain of it.
It seems "easier" to learn to deal with feelings and beliefs when you´ve already achieved a certain calm, but maybe that´s just because it´s pretty hard for most people to reason with these feelings and attempts our brains make to fault us, independent of whether we´ve actually done something wrong (which everyone does) or not?

Don´t know how much sense that made, I hope you find something that works for you. It´s all trial and error, but hopefully the process makes a little more difference each time.

 

[Strangelongtrip]

I have very similar core beliefs. I also often find myself overconpensatinf constantly trying to avoid dissapointing someone by being extra accommodating to a pint that isn’t healthy (although it works working in services as I do lol) and when it does happen I feel like an awful human being. I dunno reading all of this I thought of the saying from that children’s writer: those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind or however it goes.