Expectation Hangover

by Christine Hassler

  I learned the ultimate lesson of surrendering control and leaning into acceptance when I had an unexpected and traumatic cesarean birth. My plans for a natural birth in water, for immediate skin-to-skin contact with my baby, for inviting my child into a world of peace, tenderness, and love were shattered. Our baby girl was born into the hands of a stranger, shielded from me with a curtain, and cut out of my womb by a doctor I had never met. Never did I expect for my baby girl to join us under such conditions. Never did I expect to feel so completely out of control. Never did I expect to feel like such a failure and such a success at the same time.

  Once I began to face my sadness, my feelings of utter failure, and my desperate desire to have had the birth I planned, I could see that I was completely ignoring the most important truth: though my child’s birth did not follow the plans I’d held on to so desperately, everything turned out wonderfully, and I have a beautiful, healthy baby girl. What better way for me to learn to release my expectations than to see my plans shattered? How could I truly embrace the art of surrender without being taught so clearly that grace comes from letting go?

  You have a powerful choice to make right now: either accept your Expectation Hangovers fully or fight against them. My sense is you are exhausted from fighting, but perhaps you think you have to stay strong. I assure you that surrendering through acceptance is one of the most powerful things you can do. Your life doesn’t have to be a battle. You don’t have to work so hard or be so hard on yourself. If you feel stuck in situations that keep repeating themselves, it is a sign of a core issue that holds deep truths and life lessons for you. When you attempt to eliminate your suffering by fighting with reality, you lose 100 percent of the time.

  “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”

  — Martin Luther King Jr.

  Part Two

  TREATMENT PLAN

  Chapter Five

  A HOLISTIC PRESCRIPTION FOR TREATING YOUR EXPECTATION HANGOVER

  “If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”

  — Henry David Thoreau

  Even before your Expectation Hangover hit, you might have been creating external results and achieving success in certain areas, but still not feeling a sense of fulfillment. Nothing felt terribly wrong, yet nothing felt particularly right either. Then, once an Expectation Hangover hit, you felt out of balance and like a lot was missing. To me balance is about harmony between our emotions, thoughts, actions, and soul. We feel out of balance whenever there is an excess or deficiency in any of those areas.

  The treatment plan offered in this book is a holistic approach to creating harmony even in the midst of the chaos of an Expectation Hangover. It’s not enough to engage in thoughts or actions to try to fix the symptoms; you also have to address the emotional components of an Expectation Hangover. Similarly, it is not effective to focus on our emotions and not engage in any behavioral changes or seek deeper understanding. Most of us learn and adopt highly ineffective ways to deal with our emotions, manage our thoughts, take action, and connect with a Higher Power. When it comes to our negative emotions, we develop ways to avoid and suppress them. When it comes to our thoughts, we allow our mind to control us, tell us things that are not true, and make us worry, obsess, and overanalyze. When it comes to our behavior, we operate out of habits based on stories we believe about ourselves and the way the world works. And when it comes to our spiritual life, we may be uncertain about faith, focusing more on our physical reality and only reaching out to God when we need something.

  This treatment plan will help you leverage your Expectation Hangover, not just get over it. You will learn how to express and release your emotions in a healthy way. You will begin practicing mindfulness by knowing that you have dominion over your thoughts. You will begin creating different results in your life by shifting your actions and changing what drives your behavior. You will identify or deepen your connection to a Higher Power and begin to understand your life from a spiritual perspective — which is liberating!

  You have emotions, but you are not your emotions. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have a body, but you are not your body. You have relationships, a career, and belongings, but you are not your relationships, your career, or your belongings. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. Even if you do not believe in God, you are aware that there is a bigger picture in life. You have felt it at times in nature, when your child was born, when a prayer was answered, or when you’ve truly felt love for another. If you feel resistance at any time to the truths and tools I share, ask yourself if the way you are reacting to your Expectation Hangovers is working for you. Do you feel peaceful? Fulfilled? Accepting? Connected? Loving? Loved? Purposeful? If the answer is no, it’s time to stop letting resistance run the show.

  HILARY’S STORY

  I was a checklist kind of girl, with my life mapped out before me. I was a people pleaser and wasn’t listening to my intuition. My hangover hit when a relationship ended unexpectedly. Everything began to unravel after that, as I had put so much of myself into an idea, a projection of a thought, that I didn’t know how to hold myself up while the walls of my expectations were falling around me. Little did I know this experience was the beginning of my awakening to myself. I made what felt like an impulsive but intuitive decision to move to New Zealand and try to make a go of my teaching degree. I had no job, no home, and no one to go with me; I just knew that this was what I had to do. My year there was the most transformational experience I have ever had.

  Letting intuition and faith guide me, I found a home, a family, and a job at a Montessori school (until then I wasn’t even aware that alternative schools existed). I reconnected to my love of teaching and truly got to understand what education can be and what kids deserve out of learning and guidance. Traveling and immersing myself in an entirely new environment, with new people, allowed me to get out of my head and enabled me to begin feeling again. I started to eat healthier and ran to the ocean almost every day. I talked to Spirit and my intuition, expressing my feelings and asking for guidance. By the end of my year abroad, I felt completely healed.

  My time in New Zealand opened me up to a world where anything is possible, where life is not a matter of checking off a list, but a journey of continuously learning, challenging myself, and accepting the forks in the road as gifts of fulfillment. I know now that happiness comes from within and that it is expectation-less. The word expectation will have little relevance in my life. Intuition and love are the things I build my life with now.

  You are your own greatest ally in navigating through your Expectation Hangovers. No one knows what is best for you other than you. You have forgotten that, because you’ve been so busy trying to live up to all the expectations you feel. You cannot hear the voice of your intuition because your expectation-driven thoughts are too loud. You have been looking outside yourself for answers. They are not out there. It is by going within that you find out who you really are. It cannot be discovered in a job, a relationship, or any other external thing. Part of the way your Expectation Hangover serves you is by removing something external to reorient you back to your own internal compass, which will always lead you in the best direction.

  GUIDED VISUALIZATION

  Connecting to Your Internal Compass

  You can download the audio version of this exercise at www.expectationhangover.com/bonus

  You’ve been conditioned to look outside yourself for direction. Now it’s time to reorient. This visualization exercise will help you connect to your internal compass — the part of you that always offers you the best guidance. Read all the directions so you understand them, then take yourself through the exercise.

  1.Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted.

  2.Close your eyes and take five deep, slow breaths. Bring yourself into the present moment by focusing your awareness on your breath. Feel each inhalation and
exhalation.

  3.After you feel more calm and present, visualize some kind of volume control device located in your mind that goes from 1 to 10. Maybe it’s a dial, a lever, a knob, or a touch pad. Whatever you see is perfect. This volume control represents the level of noise of your thoughts. What number is it at now? If your thoughts are loud, it’s probably at 9 or 10. Wherever it is, is perfect.

  4.Next, in your mind’s eye, visualize yourself turning down the volume of your thoughts. See the dial, lever, knob, or touch pad decreasing the volume of your thoughts, 10, 9, 8. Keep focusing on your breathing, seeing each number as you go down, 7, 6. Soften your belly even more, 5, 4. Your thoughts are getting quieter. Increase the volume of your breath as you decrease the volume of your thoughts, 3, 2, 1, 0. Feel the stillness of your mind. Experience the quietness of presence. Hear the sound of your soothing breath.

  5.Bring one hand to your abdomen, just a few inches above your navel. Breathe into that part of your body. This is your internal compass. Your internal compass will offer you directions that will come in the form of a sensation, a feeling, an image, or even a word or phrase you may hear inside. At first you may not feel anything; but as you practice this exercise and establish this connection, you will. For now just spend some time experiencing how it feels to be a little more out of your head.

  6.Your connection to your internal compass is anchored by the hand you have resting on your abdomen. Take one more rich, deep breath into this place so you can feel your hand rise. Inwardly, say, “I always know what is best for me. I trust myself.”

  7.When you are ready, slowly open your eyes and bring your awareness back into the room.

  8.Take some time to reflect on this process in your journal.

  “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

  — A. A. Milne

  ROLE-PLAYING Rx

  Now that you are beginning to reorient yourself from the inside out rather than the outside in, you are ready to dive into your treatment plan. The most effective prescription tool I have developed to respond to Expectation Hangovers holistically is called “role-playing Rx.” This method uses the metaphor of a familiar role — one whose basic activities, mind-set, and skills you’re acquainted with — to help you understand how to do things that may be unfamiliar to you.

  Most of us need a picture we can relate to, to help us transform our emotions, thoughts, behavior, and relationship with a Higher Power. Stepping into familiar roles with new viewpoints and strategies is an effective way to gain altitude on situations where we feel highly charged. Role-playing Rx will also allow you to think more creatively and use your right brain more, thereby giving your rational, analytical left brain a rest.

  Throughout this treatment plan, I will also be sharing “transformational truths,” which are principles that will reduce the severity and length of your Expectation Hangovers. These truths will help you perceive your disappointment in a way that assists you in moving through it faster. We all know that being “book smart” means being able to succeed scholastically, which creates external results. But being book smart only gets us so far, and, as a 4.0 student, I can attest that it definitely does not prevent disappointment. In order to be life smart, we must see beyond the illusions of our judgments and conditioning by keeping these transformational truths in mind.

  We get so caught up in the disappointment of our Expectation Hangovers that possibilities pass us by. We waste time on mindless activities, like tweeting while stuck in traffic, gossiping, and making to-do lists that really aren’t helping us do much. We stuff our schedule with fillers rather than spending time on things that are truly fulfilling. We rely on ineffective coping strategies. We complain about our outer circumstances because we forget we have the power to change our inner experience at any time.

  The techniques in part 2 are all about actualizing your potential by committing to no longer settling for mediocrity or complacency. It is time to milk your Expectation Hangover for all it’s worth rather than wallowing in it. As your coach, I am enthusiastically calling you forward and offering you new tools to deal with old emotions, thoughts, and patterns. It’s actually quite easy to leverage your disappointment in a way that supports you in optimizing your potential, but it requires commitment on your part. Challenge yourself. Do things that push you out of your comfort zone — change never occurs within the walls of your comfort zone. Commit to learning new things. Develop skills that do not come naturally to you. Treating your Expectation Hangovers is not about changing your reality, but about changing your reaction and responses to it so that true transformation occurs.

  Chapter Six

  THE EMOTIONAL LEVEL

  “The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.”

  — Jim Rohn

  An Expectation Hangover catalyzes and magnifies feelings that most of us would identify as undesirable. (From my perspective, there are no “positive” or “negative” emotions, but for the sake of clarity I will use those words in this chapter to describe the feelings we desire more and the feelings we desire less, respectively.) Since no one enjoys feeling bad, the immediate impulse is to get out of the negative feeling as soon as possible instead of fully experiencing it. This is because we do not know how to manage our feelings in a way that leads to healing through expression, understanding, compassion, and forgiveness. Plus, we often consider strong emotions to be dangerous territory — we’re afraid they’ll move us closer to being crazy, hysterical, or losing control.

  We try to put distance between ourselves and our emotions in all sorts of ways. We overthink or overanalyze our feelings, to stay in our minds. We deny the emotions we don’t want to experience by pretending we are “FINE” (Feelings Inside Not Expressed). We throw ourselves pity parties and become victims. We numb ourselves with behaviors, sometimes to the extent that they become addictions. We criticize and judge ourselves, or blame or judge others. But avoiding feelings pushes them below the surface of our consciousness, where they continue to do damage. And the harder we try to avoid feelings, the deeper we push them. This can lead to unhealthy thoughts and behaviors, and even to illness.

  The human experience is all about contrast: yin/yang, male/female, light/dark, joy/sorrow. Every dark emotion has a light side; and in order to fully experience the light, we must journey through the darkness. If we stop resisting, we can find unexpected insights and gifts in the darkness. We know joy because we understand sadness. We know peace because we understand anger. We know compassion because we understand shame. Remember, we are not one-dimensional beings — we are here to experience the full range of emotions.

  PATRICIA’S STORY

  After being laid off due to corporate downsizing, I decided to travel abroad to fulfill a lifelong dream of immersing myself in another culture while also escaping the uncertainty I felt from not having a job for the first time in twenty years. I had anticipated that traveling would be enlightening and exotically romantic. The reality was far lonelier and more disillusioning than I ever could have imagined. However, physically removing myself from the constant hustle and obligations of home was like an “out-of-life” experience — I had the opportunity to view my life from a fresh angle, to pause from the go-go-go and take stock.

  Pausing was not something I was used to. Within thirty-six hours my world had become quiet — and I felt like a junkie going through detox. Long-suppressed emotions bubbled to the surface. The lid came off of feelings that had been ignored for decades. Some days I was overwhelmed by anger, sadness, hurt, and anxiety. My stomach would be in knots, and I would lose my appetite. The hardest part was dealing with the shock of how lonely and sad I felt after finally realizing my lifelong globe-trotting dreams. I did not anticipate that all the internal issues I was trying to run away from would follow me halfway across the world. I had no choice but, for the first time in my life, to allow my feelings to breathe. I gave them space, I sat with them, and I honored
them. I found the courage to be vulnerable. Often I was terrified of what I would feel, but my feelings were grateful for permission to express themselves.

  Some days I would come home from a good run and just sit and cry. It was an incredible release. I discovered a lot of compassion for myself. I did a lot of writing. I set off on my adventure with the intention of writing a travel blog while I was overseas, but I mostly wrote about things I had struggled with back home. I actually had enough time to process everything and enough perspective to begin to make sense of it. I returned home with a six-hundred-page non-travel, feeling blog.

  The biggest lesson from my Expectation Hangover was that the most effective route to the other side of pain is through it. I had put so much effort into avoiding yucky emotions — by numbing, suppressing, ignoring, and not having time for them — that I was also cutting myself off from feeling joyful, inspired, and alive. It is now crystal clear to me that no matter how extremely you change your external circumstances — even if you wake up every morning sipping Turkish tea as the sun rises over the Bosporus — ultimately, you need to embrace your own truth and love your sadness if you truly want to be happy. Knowing that happiness cannot be found outside of me has radically shifted my expectations and helped me realize the limitations of changing my external life. I am grateful that I had the courage to actually feel my pain because now, even as an unemployed, single, forty something, I am actually happier than I have ever been before.

  Your emotions are incredibly valuable. They deserve your compassion, your attention, and your patience. They deserve to be expressed. By “expression” I do not mean talking on and on about your emotions. I’m sure you have analyzed yourself so much that by now you could write an autobiographical self-help book! It feels safer to talk about our emotions — why we are sad, who we are angry at, why we have a right to be angry — than to experience them. However, you leverage your Expectation Hangover on the emotional level by giving yourself full permission to experience your feelings in a safe and loving way.