Owning Up to Disappointment

Let me be very clear about something: I am very far from perfect. I have a friend who calls herself a “recovering perfectionist,” and I think I’ll borrow that term for myself. It’s taken years of my own therapy and self-growth to learn how not only to accept my imperfections, but to lean into them, to really own the moments when I disappoint myself and others.

Here is what I have learned. It’s okay to disappoint and to be disappointed. It’s okay not only because it means accepting imperfection in ourselves and others, but because it leads to growth within ourselves and also within our relationships. That is, if we are brave enough to voice our feelings, and brave enough to take in another person’s feelings towards us.

Recently, I said something in a session that didn’t sit well with a patient. It doesn’t really matter what I said, or if it was “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong,” because her feeling was a feeling of anger and disappointment towards me, and that’s what matters. The following week, she told me that she had been sitting with these feelings. My immediate reaction was disappointment in myself. I cared about my patient, and I had let her down; perhaps I had even done damage. My secondary feeling was pride in her and the strength of our relationship. She felt strong enough to tell me that she felt these ugly feelings towards me, and safe enough in our relationship that everything would be okay. We talked about trust. We talked about her courage. We talked about having a therapist that messes up. We talked about being a human that messes up. We talked about other people who have disappointed her. And we talked about all the times that people have discounted the fact that she felt disappointed and angry.

When I’m in my turquoise therapist chair, I never question whether my patient’s feelings are valid, even when it’s anger and disappointment directed at me. And I’ve learned what a valuable skill this is to apply to my personal relationships. It feels so natural to get defensive, to try to argue that my partner, friend, or parent shouldn’t feel angry at me or disappointed in me, instead of wrapping my head around the concept that they can feel this way, AND YET a) that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me, and b) that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with our relationship. All we have to do is talk about it.