We all lose our temper from time to time or become upset with another person. And we also all know, somewhere deep down, that we need to be able to process that feeling and put it behind us. Holding onto anger is much like holding a hot piece of coal in your hand. The longer you hold on to it, the more damage that it does to you, and only you. Just like your anger, you need to throw that hot coal away and begin to heal, for your own good and self-preservation.
But there is another emotion that can often be confused with, or intermingled with anger and it can hold an even greater potential to cause self-inflicted pain. This devious little creature is disappointment, and it carries with it some added emotional baggage. With anger, in most cases, we feel that we have been wronged and we are holding some other person responsible for our pain; we are angry with that person. But disappointment adds self-imposed injury, or blame to the mix. And it makes the healing process much more difficult, as we must first come to the realization that we need to reflect on how this disappointment occurred.
Once we have determined that disappointment is an issue, in addition to anger, we need to do some soul searching. Someone can only disappoint us if we set an expectation for him or her. So in essence, we must allow someone the opportunity to disappoint us. With this new epiphany, it’s not as simple as placing blame on someone who hurt us and then trying to find the benevolence to forgive that transgression. Now we need to own up to our share of the responsibility for our pain. And that can be difficult for all of us at times.
We wonder if we were expecting too much from the person who hurt us. Then that thought leads to many more questions about our own judgment and insecurities. And to be honest, not very many people like to go down this path. We believe in our own ability to judge character and integrity and we almost need to apply some blind faith to that skill, lest we live a very solitary and lonely existence.
So while anger is that hot coal we are grasping, disappointment can be a hot corkscrew that has been driven through our hand. It’s just not possible to throw it away. Instead, we must endure the painful and often time-consuming process of twisting and turning that hot metal to remove it from our hand. And all the while, we are causing more pain by sorting through feelings about judgment, expectations and personal responsibility for our disappointment and in the end, our pain. But until we begin to extract that hot metal, there is no end in sight for the pain.
The lesson here is that we all have expectations, whether we consciously admit to them or not. So when we find that we are not able to toss our anger aside like a hot coal, we need to look again and see if there is not a deeper issue such as disappointment that is burning in our heart. Only after reflecting and forgiving, both the other person and ourselves, can we move forward from anger and disappointment.