When your expectations aren’t met, you may have a lot of grief because of the disappointment. How can you release that grief and move on?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: Dealing with the grief of disappointment. How do you do it? This is Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli with TheIntimacyDojo.com. We’re talking about expectations. This is video number three. If you haven’t watched the first two videos, you might want to watch them because this will make a whole lot more sense.
Cathy: We were talking about how sometimes your expectations just the person or people in general can’t meet them. That can be really painful. It can be distracting and hard to focus on. How do you move forward?
Reid: Sometimes you don’t know that you’re having expectations, you’re just having the upset and the grieving. Hopefully videos one and two will get your bearings on this. Now we’re dealing with the situations where you have a lot of stuff coming up and it might be because it’s connected to some stuff from childhood.
Cathy: I found I’ve worked with thousands of people and I’ve found that feels so intense. I’ve had people that have great lives all the sudden who weren’t suicidal, weren’t depressed, were like “This is too much. I want to die.” What I found is almost always there’s an aspect from their childhood where they felt completely dis-empowered like if they didn’t get that thing they would die.
Reid: Are they generally in a place in their lives now where they’re strong enough our prepared enough to actually tackle that?
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: That’s why it’s coming up?
Cathy: Yeah. I don’t think it comes up until you’re strong enough to deal with it. I think our body … Just like the splinter works its way to the surface, our body brings up what we’re ready to handle.
Reid: Okay
Cathy: Realizing, and you ask this sometimes in sessions, you’re like “How old is this? What’s the date time stamp on this?” Asking yourself that can give you a lot more power because if you’re feeling all that grief now, it can feel just like you’re three and you didn’t get that pony that you’ve been so good for months thinking that Santa was going to bring you the pony if you were good enough.
Reid: Do you want to share something with our audience Cathy?
Cathy: I had a pony when I was two.
Reid: I’m like, “Oh, my God. She’s going there.” Okay so-
Cathy: It feels, I’m sharing that intensely because that’s how intense it feels to a small child.
Reid: Until you realize that this is something that’s connected back to your childhood, you may think that-
Cathy: It really feels now-
Reid: Whatever the not getting the job promotion is the end of the world because you’ve been so good at work and you didn’t get the promotion.
Cathy: Noticing the time date stamp on it is huge. A lot of the times people will realize 90 percent of this is about that three-year-old experience or that huge disappointment when I was a child 10 percent is about now. All of its grief that can come up and you can experience and let go. There’s a lot of techniques you can use to do that. Meditation, guided visualization, hypnosis, talk therapy, I love, emotional freedom techniques or tapping. There’s a lot of different ways you can release the grief so that you don’t have to feel so alone by it.
Reid: In your experience having worked with lots of people who untangle and dissolve childhood stuff, then what happens in the present?
Cathy: You just start feeling really empowered. When we have echoes from old traumas when we were little, they influence us all the time. We use the analogy of old traumas are like the radio or TV is playing in the background from that time. People over time build up a lot of different hurts and disappointments. It can feel like you’re in the middle of a TV store, with all the volumes turned on, on different channels. It’s harder to focus, it’s harder to move through without running into some noise. The more you clean them up, you’re just turning off those TVs. You can focus on now and go “Wow. He didn’t give me a promotion. I thought I was going to get that. I need to rationally and calmly talk to him.” I may find a friend to vent to first and talk about slashing his tires.
Reid: No. We’ll ride a pony into his office.
Cathy: Exactly.
Reid: Or her office and claim my victory. Ponies.
Cathy: There’s a lot to clear out that can be really helpful around that and just feeling the grief and letting it go. I encourage you not to do it alone. Find a friend or a counselor or someone you can talk to because grief often happened in isolation when we felt disappointed or betrayed by someone.
Reid: Just watching this video might help, but go get support by living, breathing human beings that you can sit in front of so you’re not feeling isolated. These videos and other resources are really great. Reading books and things like that, but get out into the real world with people. Or ponies.
Cathy: Or both.
Reid: Maybe just getting a pony will solve it all.
Cathy: I think it would. What I’d like to do is come back with one more video on dealing with disappointment around sex. I think that’s so core to a lot of people who are watching these shows.
Reid: Not with ponies, right?
Cathy: Not with ponies.
Reid: Leave your comments below. Video number four coming up next. Boom.