top of page
Search

A disappointing story

Writer's picture: TeresaTeresa

Let’s start with some housekeeping.

 

As you read what I have written below I’d like you to keep something in mind.


I am a liar.

 

I say things and then, in saying them, change my mind. I may confidently tell you that, “I am heartbroken” and then two minutes later tell you that, “I am overjoyed.”

 

I mean, pick a side, lady!

 

I’m a liar because I don’t know how to tell the truth any other way. I can’t pin my ‘self’ down to reality, can’t fix myself to the page like an unfortunate butterfly. Instead, like a hummingbird’s wings, I lie the truth into being 70 times a second.

 

And by extension, I’m lying about my family, too. When I say, “My mother is…” what I really mean is that, in this moment, I’m going into the dressing up box in my mind and creating a tableau to project my stories onto, so I can mine for new insights to help me understand myself better. I am director and screenwriter and costume designer, all in one.

 

But it’s all pretend. And as soon as the tableau fades, I’ll dive back into the dressy-up box and re-cast all the roles all over again.

 

I’m telling you this because our brains love certainty. They definitely want us to pick a side. Villains are villains and princesses are princesses. But in truth, every princess I’ve ever met, dated, coached or been always carries a dash of villain in them too. That’s just how it is.

 

So, with that in mind, let me tell you a disappointing story.

 

__

 

“Did your mother want a boy?”

 

That was the question that really kicked all this off for me.

 

I’d been sitting with a growing awareness of the theme of disappointment for a few weeks at this point. Like watching a sunrise at dawn slowly, tentatively, incrementally light up a morning sky, the word kept popping up, presenting itself as a new psychological seam for mining.

 

And then, working with my therapist, that question; and it was though I gasped into life, unaware that I’d been holding my breath. A shock of recognition, deep in the cells of me.

 

Just imagine that.

 

Just imagine (it doesn’t have to be true, after all) that you are born, you appear, you take your first breath, your mother’s eyes land on you, taking you in and, for a split second, that person realises you were not what they hoping for. How disappointing. Just for the merest, briefest, flicker of a moment.

 

What might that flicker do to the tender psyche of the receiver?

 

(This isn’t real, remember, because none of ‘this’ is real.)

 

But what might become possible if I allow myself to step into the mythical what-if of this particular tableau?

 

For me, it was like opening a door and calling home some disparate parts that that had been left flailing in the psychic side lines, inviting them to be recognised, to be included, to come home.

 

__

 

This topic had been on my mind as I’d started marketing and promoting my first shadow work retreat for coaches earlier in the year. Like many others, the words ‘marketing’ and ‘promotion’ trigger an involuntary full body shudder. These activities live where ‘eurgh’ meets ‘ick’.

 

I’d been working hard to reframe the whole idea of marketing to ‘I’m sharing from a place of enthusiasm.’ If I wasn’t connected to that enthusiasm, I would walk away from the computer and do something else. And it was really helping; I was doing it! I was marketing the retreats and selling places on the retreat.

 

How exciting, right?

 

Ah, no. How disappointing. That’s what I started to notice.

 

I was disappointed at the rate of sales, the pace of sales, if an enquiry didn’t convert to a sale, if somebody reeeaally wanted to come but couldn’t because of a date clash or other life demand.

 

This disappointment caught my attention as I didn’t recognise myself as someone who did disappointment.

 

And yet, here it was.

 

And once I started to allow for the possibility of disappointment as part of my personality, I saw it EVERYWHERE.

 

  • Every relationship I’d ever had.

  • Every friendship.

  • Every job.

  • Every Christmas, birthday, holiday, anniversary.

 

Turns out I’ve been disappointed at everything, all the time. I’ve inhaled disappointment and exhaled disappointment. And just as fish don’t know they’re swimming in water, I hadn’t realised this was my default, my baseline.

 

And then I recognised it in my mother, too. Equally unacknowledged and disowned.

 

And I wondered, as I splashed about in the mythology of my family, was this projected onto me, as a child? And did I comply, ever the Good Girl, accepting the unconscious invitation and wearing my mother’s disappointment for her, so that she could move through life unassailed by this trait?


__

 

Shadow work is a tricksy dance. It marches to the beat of its own drum and rarely moves in straight lines.

 

And so it was with my disappointment story.

 

I’d woken up to the fact of its existence. I was doing the work. Exploring it through multiple lenses.

 

And then I realised, oh so subtly, I was doing the work in service of eradicating this trait from my personality.

 

Rather than allow for it, there was a subtle but powerful disgust for the trait that meant I was working hard to work it away.

 

But to really transform is to allow. As the Paradoxical Theory of Change tells us, “Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.”

 

Recognising the disgust was as upsetting as it was useful. It meant opening to the possibility that I may be a sour person, someone who defaults to disappointment. Not the sunny disposition I would prefer to see myself as, then.

 

And yet, being a lover of reality, it also meant I could really start to do my work now.

 

I came to recognise that, for me, disappointment is a multi-headed beast with tendrils across numerous areas of my life and history. It shows up in many shades and tones making it harder to catch, harder to work with.

 

  • Sometimes the disappointment is soft and sorrowful.

  • Other times it is hard and critical.

 

What terrifies me most are the times when it allies with my bitterness and I get a flash of how easy it would be to surrender and give myself over to the delicious stance of self-righteous contempt for the world, like willingly throwing myself into the gaping mouth of an active volcano.

 

Because hanging out with Bitterness, Jealousy and Contempt offer a place of hollow empowerment; the superiority they lend may feel temporarily satisfying, but all it’s ever doing is masking the deep ache of disappointment for not being good enough, truly loveable enough, in the first place.

 

Did your mother want a boy?”

 

__

 

So here it is. My confession. The big reveal.

 

I am disappointed.

In you.

In me.

In life.

 

And, in allowing for that, the pressure breaks. A sigh sighs. And something softer, more hopeful emerges into the frame.

 

Satisfaction.

Fulfilment.

Gratitude.

 

Because this is the ultimate joy of shadow work. A restoration of balance.


In recognising - and, crucially, allowing - for the presence of the over-powering, baseline stance of disappointment, the gift of the polarity could finally emerge. A neon sign pointing to the place of compensatory healing, saying, "Point your heart here!"


Satisfaction.

Fulfilment.

Gratitude.


And that’s a roadmap I can follow, as I continue to travel home, to myself.

 

 

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

37 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

With love,

Comments


bottom of page