“Disappointed” is a pretty nefarious word, especially when we use it with a child or our partner.
Consider the commonly said, “I’m not disappointed in you, I just feel disappointed.” There is that tricksy You-statement pretending to express emotions like we talked about in Part 1. The sentence becomes, “I’m not disappointed in you, I just feel that you have disappointed me by not living up to my hopes or expectations.” That’s quite the narrative built into one word!
And especially to a younger person, a simple “I am disappointed” can sound like:
when you disappoint me
because I think that you are a disappointment.
The thing about disappointment is that there is no defense against it. If someone says, for instance, “I feel ignored,” we can rebut it by rewording it into the narrative statement that it is and then argue against the narrative (if there is an argument against the narrative), “You think that I was ignoring you, but I wasn’t because…” The reason that we can’t defend against disappointment is because it’s a shorthand way of saying, “You made me feel some heavy emotions because you didn’t go along with the narrative/plan in my head.”
So how do we keep from poisoning our relationships with a word like “disappointed”? Answer: break out the actual heavy emotions buried inside and put them in your Emotion Expression model. For example, let’s take a parent who is (ahem) disappointed in his child for not joining the family business. He might say instead:
when you say you’re not joining the business
because I think that you’re just taking the easy choice instead of the honorable one.I feel sad
when you say you’re not joining the business
because I always image how proud I would be when you’re working alongside me.
I feel fearful
when you say you’re not joining the business
because I experienced a lot of opportunities and stability from this job, and I worry that you won’t have the same elsewhere.
Note that these feel a lot more vulnerable than “I feel disappointed…” but that’s exactly what makes the Emotion Expression model so powerful — you are starting from a place of vulnerability rather than a place of attack and accusation.
See if you can catch yourself before you use a word like “Disappointed” and if you can instead express your emotions, not the shorthand. It may or may not cause them to change their choices, but it will save the relationship.
Also, try it with other past-participle emotional shorthand words: annoyed, irritated, offended, etc.