The disappointment of unmet expectations is a much-needed wake-up call

Whenever you base your self-image, self-esteem, and every thought, feeling, need, desire, or expectation on the premise that you are responsible for the feelings and behavior of others, you are empowering. The place you have in your life for people who abuse you depends on your level of self-respect. This respect is reflected in the line you draw with others, affecting their negative impact on you.

Do you feel like you are constantly walking and fighting among shady people? Do you regularly struggle with unmet expectations? Ask yourself: how much compassion do I have? How much time, energy, effort, and emotions (my bandwidth) do I devote to self-criticism, judgment, and punishment? And how much time do I spend trying to get hits (praise, validation, esteem, etc.) from others?

When we are miserable because people don't meet our expectations, part of our pain is about the actual act. Much of our pain, however, is 1) the story we tell ourselves now that we know this person is not meeting our expectations and 2) our unrealistic, possibly inappropriate expectations. Even if it didn't seem like it at the time, our disappointment with unmet expectations is a much-needed wake-up call. It's a wink of life telling us to change our way of thinking and question our habits.

These predictions, including how we interact with them and respond to inconsistent expectations, have their roots in our emotional baggage, including trauma. We internalize ideas and rules about how the world works. We then organize our behavior around these to feel in control.

While expectations can be a way to create norms that guide us toward healthier boundaries, we often use them to manipulate and control people and situations. We take our beliefs and our rules and use our perception of desirable behavior to try to generate desirable outcomes.

I will do X, people will do Y in response, and Z (my desired outcome) will happen.

When we don't root our expectations within healthy boundaries, we keep repeating the past. We also avoid vulnerability and do things to get something back or to avoid what we don't want. For example, when we compromise to keep a relationship and they still hurt us. This result is not what we expected given what we have done to try to make this person meet our expectations.

And those are the things we do to try to get others to meet our expectations where we break down ours and others' boundaries.

We get angry at people who aren't "like us". After pleasing people, we feel aggrieved that they aren't the version of themselves we think we are indebted to. Ultimately, we struggle because they failed to live up to the picture we painted in our minds.

Who a person is and what they do is their actions, not the manifestation of our worth, people's satisfaction, or our ability to be perfect .

If someone's actions go against our expectations or even what they promised or inferred, we set ourselves up for a downfall by ignoring that data and opting for the dream.

People say to me, They didn't call, apologize, or make it right. They didn't even try to be the person they could be or what they pretended to be at first. I don't understand. Shouldn't they be doing that? What kind of person do I have to be if this is how they behave?

These people fall victim to their own expectations and call it something the other person does. But they are fighting for a fantasy. Their attitude prolongs their torment as they are let down by a fantasy while rejecting reality.

We must be present if we are to treat ourselves and others with love, care, trust and respect. There is a vulnerability in recognizing that someone is not living up to the fantasy of our expectations. We will have to mourn the disappointment and present ourselves in a way that respects the boundary created by truth. But by being willing to recognize where our expectations are tripping us up, we can stop trapping ourselves in old stories and rules that don't serve us. Ultimately, waking up and releasing painful expectations sets us free.

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