Expectation Hangover

by Christine Hassler

  There are two things to consider as you journey through the emotional treatment plan for your Expectation Hangover. First, don’t compare your life experience to anyone else’s. You may think it’s silly to cry over being laid off when you know someone who just lost a child to cancer. It is not: your experience is your experience. Understandably, hearing about other people’s struggles puts our lives in perspective and cultivates gratitude, but that happens in our left brain, our rational mind. Feelings come from your right brain, the emotional side. Minimizing your emotions in light of someone else’s journey is a form of suppression. For now, honor your personal Expectation Hangover and give yourself full permission to feel all your feelings about it.

  Second, expect that the symptoms triggered by your Expectation Hangover will be tied to feelings you stuffed away in your past. Expectation Hangovers catalyze feelings that you have been unwilling or unable to face before. Your treatment plan on the emotional level gives you the opportunity to work through them so there is more room for the feelings that feel good!

  Working on the emotional level was a very important part of treating my own Expectation Hangovers. At eleven years old I was diagnosed with depression and put on Prozac. For twenty years I took a variety of antidepressants, which numbed feelings of sadness and anger that I never really processed. Every Expectation Hangover I experienced reactivated suppressed feelings, and because I didn’t know how to move through them, my avoidance strategies kicked in. I distracted myself through work, numbed my feelings with food and television, or changed my prescription to a higher dose or different brand. It wasn’t until my late twenties, when I learned how to process my emotions, that I was able to stop taking medication. (I am not asserting that antidepressants are not helpful or necessary; this is just my personal experience.)

  You too have the courage to let go of your avoidance and suppression tactics, whatever they may be. It may feel scary, but I’ll walk you through the process. I assure you that you will get through the darkness to the light — and it will be well worth it!

  “As a natural life force, emotions are intended to flow freely through our bodymind, then dissipate once we have fully experienced them and assimilated their valuable message.”

  — Tim Brieske

  HOW WE SUPPRESS EMOTIONS

  Growing up, we learn how to add and subtract, read and write. Our parents teach us life skills like how to tie our shoes and drive a car. But how many of us are taught how to deal with our emotions effectively? We are told to “shake it off,” “be a good girl/boy,” “stop crying,” that “it’s not such a big deal,” or that we are “overly sensitive.” Because of the dismissive responses we receive and come to anticipate in others when strong emotions come up, our natural emotional responses feel wrong, shameful, or inappropriate. People in your life, especially your parents, while attempting to make you feel better or just being uncomfortable with strong emotions, taught you how to not fully experience emotions. Perhaps they jumped in to soothe you so you never learned how to fully feel a feeling. Or maybe they distracted you from the negative feeling by diverting your attention with a positive distraction such as candy or video games (hint: this is how addiction as a way to avoid and soothe emotions begins). Even if you had very loving parents, they may have interrupted the full expression of your feelings.

  This isn’t about blaming anyone. Everyone has always been doing the best they could with the tools they had. Chances are, your parents were not taught how to process emotions either. But it’s up to you now to reverse the trend of suppression.

  EXERCISE

  Exploring Your Emotions

  The first step in treating your Expectation Hangover on the emotional level is to become aware of how and when you began suppressing your feelings. This exercise will help you access a deeper understanding of your emotions. As you move through the following steps, answer each question in your journal. Begin writing (by hand) immediately after you read the question — don’t stop to think about your answer. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember a lot of specifics. Write anything that comes to mind; don’t edit, analyze, or judge.

  1.Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted. Close your eyes for a moment and take yourself back to a time in your childhood when you were really angry. Go with the first memory that comes to mind; you can work through this process again as other memories surface. After you have a memory, answer these questions:

  What was the reaction of the people around you, such as your parents, siblings, peers, teachers, or coaches when you got angry?

  What were you told about being angry?

  What beliefs do you think you formed about expressing anger?

  2.Repeat step 1 for each of the following feelings: sadness, fear, embarrassment, and excitement.

  3.How did you see people in your family express their emotions?

  4.What do you do today when you feel a big feeling (like anger, sadness, shame, fear, guilt, or excitement)? What do you tell yourself?

  5.What avoidance strategies do you use to suppress your feelings?

  Acknowledge yourself for having the courage to do this exercise. You have now increased your awareness of how and when you began suppressing your emotions. Take some time to reflect on this process in your journal.

  Emotions need a way to get out. If you do not express them, they will find another exit! For instance, through over a decade of working with people as a coach and spiritual counselor, I have noticed that unprocessed sadness creates lethargy and even depression. Unexpressed anger can manifest in irritability and anxiety. If you find yourself doing things like snapping at a waiter, road raging, crying over things that you don’t think should upset you so much, constantly feeling “blah” and passionless, consistently looking for external things to make you feel happy or peaceful, or using any of the common quick-fix avoidance strategies, it is time to really face your feelings. I understand it seems challenging, but suppressing and avoiding emotions is even harder work! The long-term drain on your energy from suppressing and avoiding your emotions is far greater than the short-term pain of acknowledging, feeling, and dealing with them.

  Keeping your feelings inside is like attempting to hold an inflated beach ball under water. You can wrestle with it for a while; but sooner or later you lose your grasp on it, and it pops up, creating a huge splash and knocking you right in the face. If you have ever had a big feeling come up in a way that felt almost out of control, you know what I am talking about. During an Expectation Hangover it’s common to have a disproportionate emotional reaction to a situation. You also may experience feelings that seem inappropriate or out of context. I remember being irritable and quite rude to my family when I was going through an Expectation Hangover regarding my career in my twenties (which makes sense because one of the symptoms of repressed anger is irritability). Although I recognized and didn’t like that I was acting that way, I did not know how to change it until I learned how to process emotion.

  Lynne met a man on a dating site and was excited about the potential she felt from their email and phone exchanges; but the morning of the date, he canceled. She was extremely disappointed, crying all the time, even though she didn’t know this guy from Adam. She was questioning why this particular event upset her so much. What Lynne realized from her inflated emotional reaction to this dating experience was the following: “Feeling like no man wanted me goes back to feeling like my mother did not want me. It brought up all my childhood fears and sadness about not being good enough for my mom.” At fifty-seven Lynne finally grieved the relationship she always longed for but never had with her mom. Since then, her life has turned around 180 degrees. Her business is flourishing, and she is experiencing causeless joy. “It is such a gift and a blessing to know that I can take care of myself emotionally. I don’t need a man to take care of me anymore, and I do not get upset if I do not hear back from someone romantically. Now when a beloved comes into my life, I can share my life with him i
nstead of needing his caretaking.”

  TRANSFORMATIONAL TRUTH

  Creativity Is a Channel

  During an Expectation Hangover many of us get creatively constipated. Negative emotions seem to sever the connection to our creative muse. But the muse is still there, and it is a healthy outlet for the painful feelings that come with disappointment. Think of some of your favorite songs, films, or pieces of art. Many were probably inspired by an Expectation Hangover; the artists channeled the rawness and realness of their pain into creating lyrics, stories, and images that touch our hearts.

  Creative self-expression is important because it is one of the ways we can channel and release emotions. Use your anger or sadness to create something. Channel it into writing, painting, singing, or dancing. It doesn’t matter if you are good at it or not.

  I notice that people get depressed when they suppress their creativity. This is especially true for individuals who are highly right-brain oriented (inclined toward creativity) but grew up in very left-brain-oriented (logic-focused) environments. Since their creativity was often misunderstood and discouraged, they had to suppress it.

  To get your creativity flowing, make time for it by putting it on your calendar. And just like you’d set the mood for a romantic evening, create an atmosphere for your creative process, using things like music, candles, and sacred objects. Create with enthusiasm, curiosity, and joy, but without attachment to the end product. Allow your emotions to come up and inspire you as you create. I have heard from many artists that there are teardrops in their paintings.

  Do not judge yourself or attempt to edit your expression while you are creating it. Doing so will only interrupt your process and shift you away from the emotional part of your brain to the analytical part (and don’t you spend enough time there anyway?). After you create something, acknowledge yourself for it! Celebrating — not evaluating — is key to honoring your self-expression.

  ROLE-PLAYING Rx: THE SURFER

  “I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy. It is my call to greatness. Learning about what you’re made of is always time well spent.”

  — Henry Rollins

  It is time for some role-playing Rx. The role you are going to take on to treat the emotional level of your Expectation Hangover is that of the Surfer. Even if you have never surfed before, you know the basic principles of surfing. A surfer paddles out into the ocean completely willing to face the waves. He has no control over the ocean or the wave that comes in, but he does have a choice over how he responds to it. The surfer must be present, allow the wave to carry him, and rely on his surfing skills to keep him safe. A good surfer knows that if he attempts to avoid, overpower, or swim against a wave, he will never experience the exhilaration and freedom that come from riding the wave all the way through. Think of the waves as your emotions and your surfing skills as the processes you’ll be learning in this chapter.

  By taking on the role of the Surfer, you will become skilled at riding the emotional waves of your Expectation Hangover, which include all the feelings you have avoided and suppressed up to now. You will realize that your emotions, just like waves, have peaks but gradually subside, landing you softly on the beach, where you are free from the emotional symptoms of your Expectation Hangover.

  I recently received this email from Lola:

  I thought my future involved being a mother and a wife. Fast-forward to the present, and I’m divorced, dithering about a career, worrying about money, living in the spare room of a kind relative’s house, and wondering what the hell I’m going to do. For almost two years now, I have been exhausted, stressed, unmotivated. Chocolate has become a daily food group. I feel a lot of toxic emotions brewing — resentment, guilt, bitterness, blame, sadness — and it can be quite seductive to just let them take me over and indulge in the “woe is me” thoughts. How can I stay afloat when it feels like such a struggle?

  Relief will not come from attempting to stay afloat, as if you were holding on to a small life preserver and being bounced around by the waves. The Surfer rides each wave of emotion — no matter how big or scary — without any judgment, analysis, or desire to get out of the situation. Probably the best illustration of this is a child’s temper tantrum, which goes something like this: The child gets upset about something. The emotion escalates, usually to anger and frustration. Then the tears and sobbing begin as sadness and disappointment well up. There may be a few waves of these emotions. Eventually, if the child is given the time and space to feel all the feelings, the emotions begin to subside, exhaustion hits, and the child begins to whimper. Acceptance sets in, and the child begins rocking or curling up into a ball (forms of self-soothing). Finally, the child nurtures him- or herself out of being upset and heads back to playing. Before avoidance strategies set it, children are natural surfers of their emotions!

  Now, it’s important to note that the child usually does not get to the other side of a temper tantrum if someone comes in and tries to stop it. Similarly, it is impossible for us to get to peace and acceptance if we interrupt our feelings before fully expressing them. Processing emotion means allowing ourselves to fully experience all our emotions just like a child having a temper tantrum. In a tool I will share a bit later, you will learn how to have an adult version of a temper tantrum that will guide you through the trajectory of an emotional experience in a healthy way.

  At forty-seven Jack was suffering an Expectation Hangover from a layoff, and an entrepreneurial experience that went sour had him panicked about his next step. After our first meeting I wondered whether he would come back to see me, as I was certain he left with an Expectation Hangover about our session. You see, Jack came in dead set on my helping him get his résumé in order and “figure out” what he was going to do. He was tense, down, and rather short tempered. I told him I really could not help him until he dealt with some of his feelings about his Expectation Hangover, to which he responded, “I’m fine. I just need to get a job, and I’ll feel better.” Yet I knew that emotional beach ball Jack was holding under water was preventing him from moving forward. Jack believed that coping strategies like being strong and distracting himself were better than feeling. I asked if he would be willing to do a specific kind of journaling that is a treatment tool on the emotional level (you’ll learn this tool a bit later), before our next meeting. Reluctantly, he said yes. I gave him some sentence stems that I knew would trigger emotion and sent him on his way.

  The next week, Jack reported that in his journaling, a lot of shame and sadness came up that he had no idea he was hanging on to. The next few sessions were dedicated to giving Jack the space to express his feelings. He talked about the shame and intense sadness he felt over his perceived failure. Tears ran down Jack’s face, and the gift of his Expectation Hangover was revealed. For the first time since he was a very little boy, he actually cried. This release opened up so much space for Jack that he felt he got his confidence and energy back.

  By honoring his own feelings, Jack felt a sense of worthiness he had not felt in a while. As he was able to take on the role of the Surfer and use the techniques you will learn in this chapter, he released shame he had been carrying around for years. His entire approach to his career shifted from a place of desperation to a place where he saw how much he had to offer. Within two months, he had a new job offer that came from an old colleague who called him “out of the blue,” and he is thriving in his new position.

  Many of us avoid diving into the sea of our emotions because we are afraid we will fall into a black hole of despair and pain that we cannot climb out of. But every surfer has a sturdy board that he is always connected to through a surf leash (a cord that connects his ankle to the board so that even if he falls off and feels separated from the board, he never loses his connection to it). The board you are always connected to as you surf the waves of your emotions is your own compassion. H. Ronald Hulnick and Mary R. Hulnick have defined healing as “the application of Loving to the
places inside that hurt.” We apply this love by being compassionate with ourselves.

  Let’s examine the word compassion and its roots, co, which means “with,” and passion, which means “suffering.” Compassion basically means being “with suffering.” One reason counseling and coaching are so powerful is that they offer a safe space for the client to express feelings while receiving loving compassion from the counselor or coach. Your own compassion will keep you safe. You can even think of this part of you as an unconditionally loving and nurturing parent who gives you permission and encouragement to express your feelings fully. You may not always experience the connection to this part of yourself, but trust me — it’s there!

  GUIDED VISUALIZATION

  Connecting with Your Own Compassion

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

  The Surfer is aware there is a part of us that is experiencing the emotion and another part of us that is simply with us, offering us compassion. This visualization exercise will help you become aware of and connect to your own self-compassion. 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. Close your eyes, take three deep, slow breaths, and bring yourself into the present moment.

  2.Repeat, inwardly or aloud, the affirmation “I am choosing to be with myself in this moment” and take another deep breath.