And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls Podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and this episode is titled, Disappointment. and if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Alright folks, how are you doing? Have you had a good summer? I feel like I'm solar powered, really do enjoy being out in the sun, so I like this time of year. And if the weather's not good, I do feel a little bit let down. Which is a selfish disappointment, I know, but you feel what you feel, don't you? And we've long known the importance of looking below our emotions to see what else is driving it, to see if it's better placed to help us deal with bad situations, even the really bad ones. In his letter from Birmingham jail in 1963, after being arrested on the rather trumped up charge of marching without a permit, Martin Luther King wrote, amongst other things, this quote.

He said, There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. In other words, if you feel disappointed, it's only because you care about something. I remember when the theatre and arts centre, where I did a lot of amateur dramatic stuff, closed down. We had to move to a new venue, which is fine, it's lovely, but it was really sad to see everything being stripped out.

The council said that the place didn't make enough of a profit and the space could be put to better use. They had different values, I guess. They saw the purpose of art as something to profit from, rather than to educate or inspire. And we still don't know what's going to happen to the drama group for the kids with special needs, or the youth group, or the art classes, but we'll see.

But it's really disappointing to me. And the reason it's disappointing to me is because I care about the arts. Now, you know me, I'm one for following the science, and studies consistently show the benefits. To not just the emotional and intellectual side of what it is to be human. But actually even the long term health benefits, even the economy benefits in the long run if we promote art, music and anything creative.

And I know, from the outside people could easily think that it's a waste of time because, well, we need houses or plumbers. You can't build a house or work as a plumber with an interest in arts and crafts? Well, yeah, you can. How else does an architect practice their spatial awareness skills and so on?

Same for plumbers. I'm disappointed because I care about the future of the town. If you're disappointed in something, something big, maybe, what's a biggie? That the UK left the EU, then it's because you care about sharing resources and preventing wars and working and studying in different countries. If you're disappointed that a friend let you down with something then it's because you care about your friendship.

But just because we're disappointed, it doesn't mean that you can stop caring. Disappointment is not a dead end. It doesn't mean you have to give up on the thing that you care about. I think that because of this, the benefits of being passionate about something, caring about something, maybe even being the optimist who expects everything to go well all the time.

The benefits of that far outweigh the pain of sometimes being disappointed. Even though disappointment can be painful, it's still better than apathy, indifference and numbness. When you're disappointed, it might be easier to accept what has happened if you can say to yourself, This is because I care. And I'm glad I do.

What we don't want is to think, my problem is that I care too much, I should stop caring. No, please don't stop caring. Keep your fire, your enthusiasm, your desires, your wishes, your hopes, your dreams. It's good to care. I think disappointment is a lot like grief and bereavement. It's just that we're grieving for a reality that doesn't exist.

And so it's hard to let it go, because it's only in our head anyway. Often like stuck grief is. Stuck grief is when the emotional processes of our brain, our unconscious, can't accept the new reality we're in. When disappointed, the reality we're in doesn't match our previous expectations and our brain doesn't like that.

We like our expectations to be met. It makes us anxious when it's not. It's like taking the same route to work every day and then one day you're suddenly on a diversion because there's a road closed. You might still get to work at the same time as usual, pretty much. But the morning doesn't quite feel the same at first.

Like you got out of bed the wrong side, everything just feels a bit weird. And this is at an unconscious level. A bit like how my wife gets anxious if I've dusted and I've put an ornament back slightly in the wrong place. It just doesn't look right. To her unconscious mind, something's not quite right.

Now, in extreme cases, that's OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, when the anxiety that something isn't quite right is so great that you feel the need to try and control the external world so you can satisfy it. Spoiler! You can't. In fact, in trying to, it perpetuates the idea that you need to, which then makes you try to take even more control, which still doesn't work in the long term, and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

We need to accept our reality, because without the acceptance of it, we can often bury our emotions, or try and drown them out with something that's unhealthy. Being dumped, for example, that's a big disappointment. Especially if their expectations were that the relationship was only going to get better with time.

So, whilst it's mostly okay to have rebound relationships, there's nothing wrong in using intimacy of any kind, especially sex, to make us feel better. Just be aware that it's a rebound thing, though. That's all, and don't transfer the feelings that you had for your previous partner onto anybody else. Just enjoy it for what it is, and don't take it too seriously, unless you consciously want to.

Don't rely on your unconscious, your gut instincts, is what I'm saying. Because our instincts, our unconscious mind, it just wants familiarity. I guess we need to sit with our feelings and be okay with being disappointed sometimes. I've mentioned before about our sense of self, who we are, coming from our values and the things that we care about.

If we deny ourselves those values, those opinions, beliefs, whatever, then we can lose our self, our sense of who we are. And we have to care about whatever disappoints us in order to be true to ourselves. If we lie to ourselves and just pretend that everything's fine, it won't actually make it fine. You can't fool your unconscious mind.

And if you try, it'll only make you feel emptier and emptier as time goes on. But if you sit with the disappointment, understand it, accept it, your unconscious mind catches up with reality soon enough and you can move on from the disappointment. Especially if you can dilute it down with some experiences that satisfy your expectations.

It's why people with anxiety will so often watch the same films over and over again, the same TV programs, even though they've seen them a hundred times. It's because they're familiar. It's because they're predictable and that makes them safe. Do that if that helps you. Go for walks in places you've already done plenty of times before.

Don't be bored by familiarity. Be reassured by it. Be hugged by it. People are telling me lately that they're a bit disappointed over the state of the UK. At the moment. Some of the decisions that have been made over the last few years have really set us back, and yeah, I'm disappointed too, but hey, what am I going to do?

Leave the country? No. Am I disappointed in not moving to New Zealand when my brother did back in 2008? Well, maybe, but maybe actually I'm just disappointed that there's been too much emphasis in the UK on supporting the wealthy rather than helping the poor. Well, those values aren't going to change if I just gave up on the UK and ran off.

I'd still be disappointed in that sort of ideology, wouldn't I? It's just that I wouldn't be watching it quite so closely. But I'd still be watching it! And I'd still be disappointed. I need to be okay with that. Because that way, I keep my shape. If that makes sense. I live true to who I am. Am I disappointed that China's got fewer human rights?

Yeah. I'm disappointed that a country exists where they don't have freedom of religious expression. I'm disappointed that they use what is, kind of in truth, slave labour to keep production costs down. But there's not much I can do about it. I'm close to helpless to change that. And I need to accept that.

But in keeping my values, I need to be okay with that disappointment. Letting go of the disappointment would stop me from being who I am. So I embrace the sadness and I do something better with it. Give it some direction because it's there for a reason. My brain wants me to take action. Now, I get that there are some things we can't do anything about.

We can't rewind time and not be taken advantage of. We can't rewrite history any more than change the ending to Game of Thrones or The Umbrella Academy. Two, apparently, quite disappointing things according to most people. But what we're attached to is the desire, not the end result, not the goal itself.

We're not attached to the TV show that was cancelled, but the entertainment that it gives us. And even then it could be a tribal thing, a fan thing that we're attached to, a sense of belonging in a tribe that all have one thing in common, their love for a particular TV program. It might be the sense of belonging that's the desire, and the TV programme was just a means to it. Once you play around with who you are and what you want, you might find that there's a lot more that can dilute down any disappointment and turn into a natural sense of loss and sadness that passes you by. In not being successful in a job application, after three interviews for the job of your dreams, you're going to be disappointed, of course.

But when you can see it's the job of your dreams that you're attached to, not that one job, it allows you to keep the idea of the job of your dreams in mind so you can attach it to the next one you apply for. Because it might be that what you're actually desiring is a reason to go to work every day. A sense of accomplishment and purpose, or of value and significance.

You might even find that those things have nothing to do with your career anyway. When bumble dates or match. com meetups seem to go well, yet the other person says Thanks but no thanks. You're going to be disappointed. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get your hopes up or not go on dates again. But recognize that what you're attached to there is not necessarily that one person.

What you are attached to is the idea of a loving relationship. Well, you can keep that idea, that hope. Be attached to that, just not to the person. Because if they're not that into you anyway, they're not going to be that loving and you won't get your actual hopes met anyway. But like I say, don't write off dating.

In fact, we should take more and more opportunities for things that help us to achieve our goals. Research has shown that we feel more disappointed over the things we haven't done than we do over the things that we have. There's quite a famous study from the mid 90s called , The Experience of Regret.

What, when, and why. That's what it was called. Which showed that doing things that ultimately go wrong makes us regret trying them in the short term, but not doing things at all makes us regretful in the long term. We regret our actions only temporarily, but our inactions permanently. So we need to take more chances, go on more dates, apply for more jobs and be true to what it is that you actually want in life.

So you can hold your shape. I've used that phrase a few times. I hope you know what I mean by the idea of keeping your shape. I want you to be an authentic human being. The real you, who lives by your wants and needs and not become a different shape to minimise disappointment or anxiety. A fear of regret holds a lot of people back from taking action, it really does.

I think because, We don't know how to handle regrets. We find it so hard to let go of the if onlys. There was a six part study into regret once. Mental contrasting of counterfactual fantasies attenuates disappointment, regret, and resentment. What a title! In layman's terms, they concluded that by thinking about the if only situation, It makes us feel bad. If only I got accepted into the university.

If only I'd said I loved them one last time before they died. That sort of thing. You ask people to think about their regrets and if only situations for a while and measure their feelings of disappointment. Not surprisingly, it makes them feel worse. But in half of the participants, They also asked them to think about the obstacle itself that prevented it from happening, like lack of money, or it's too late, or you can't undo death, and to go into as much detail as they can about that.

They even had parents of children that had died through cot death, asking them to spend some time thinking about the what ifs. If only I'd woken the baby up, it might not have happened, that sort of thing. I'm sure they knew what they were getting into when they signed up to take part in the study, but flippin heck.

The other things were more simpler things like, if only I had married that girl, or if I had not left school, or if only that accident hadn't happened. Which is a bit lighter, but even on the really significant stuff, what the researchers found is that, not surprisingly, Only concentrating on the what ifs makes us feel worse.

But if we also spend some time on the reality of what has happened, by spending some time simply saying to ourselves, It is what it is, and I can't turn back time. Especially journaling about it, because these participants were all asked to sit and write, you see. It showed across all the studies that focusing on our reality Improves your mood.

If you boil it down, it's simply acceptance. But it also shows us something we already know from so many studies over decades that emotions like disappointment and regret are thought based. A sadness that comes from our thoughts rather than from a background unconscious emotion that comes from personality.

And although we might not realise it because it's so easy to dwell and indulge in fantasies, We do have more control over our thoughts than we might think. We just need to push them in the right direction and away from the what ifs and if onlys. Right, I've properly overrun today, so I need to go. But don't be disappointed.

I'll be back before you know it. You can find me on Patreon, like I always say, where This month we've got topics like disclosing mental health issues, self sabotage, depression. I was planning to talk about kindness as well and dealing with entitled people. I'll see how many I can squeeze into a month because I think September is a five Monday month.

Anyway, time to go. Look me up on Patreon if you like and I will speak to you there. Bye for now, folks.