I wrote this piece as a result of noticing what’s been taking place within me. I have been disappointed by many things and I decided to capture what it’s been like for me. I am publishing it unedited as something beautiful happens when we let what is raw be seen. This is dissolution and conjunction.
Descent
When did you first notice the fire cooling — the point when conviction began giving way to self-doubt or quiet? Describe what “disappointment” feels like in your body and your creative process right now.
Well I suppose what’s pertinent to share first is that I have gone through a period of inner growth and passion. In a word, fire. And everyone knows that fire burns, turns to smoke and ash, then eventually goes out.
I noticed this fire cool down as I experienced major life changes. First the birth of my daughter was quite the attention sapper—in the best of ways. Second, my employer stopped paying us and eventually went out of business. Lastly, I’ve been forced into a position of not having enough work.
Months of fastidiously delving into hypnosis, language patterns, symbolism, Jungian depth psychology, archetypal figures, and more…gave way to a solemn stillness. This, while certainly not hopeless, has been unexpected and disappointing.
Disappointment feels like the absence of what should be. A longing for something more than what is. But it is strange, because at this particular juncture it’s not so much that it feels hollow, rather just incubatory. As if I am in a kind of stasis, a waiting period before the next scene plays.
The Exceptionality Illusion
I have always thought of myself as unique. Worthwhile. Extraordinary. This self-image of being exceptional has pushed me in my work and therapeutic endeavors. Holding myself as unique has shielded me from the existential disappointment that I’m just like everyone else. A normal person, trying to find meaning—trying to create it.
As I have gradually loosened my grip on this extra-specialness, I have had to wrestle with questions of meaning and purpose. If we’re all basically similar, and I desire significance, then so do billions of others.
It would take a statistical anomaly to be cut from a different cloth—if that even truly exists. There’s a pain in acknowledging that in three to four generations I won’t even be a memory in anyone living. All my life’s dreams will be buried with me in the cemetery.
Dying to the image of being extraordinary has cost me my blissful ignorance. I can no longer so easily carry the soft and delightful assumption that I’ll be somebody. I will be (somebody), just not in the way I used to expect.
The Moment of Exposure
I have written for years, though only recently started posting anything publicly. As I go back through old works I have mixed feelings. There’s amusement, disgust, frustration…I find that I have always struggled to convey my experiences.
What I know on a deep intuitive level has never lined up with my ability to articulate it well. Part of my frustration is that I want others to understand me, yet when I attempt to communicate I don’t believe I do so clearly. I use too many words. I make ideas overly complex and convoluted. I try to sound like someone in addition to just trying to share what I think.
I long for something more simple. More precise. And I’m on the threshold, but not quite there.
The Hidden Gold
However, this seems to have been a necessary training ground. An inability to clearly communicate, but deeply sense, has translated into learning through experience.
So, while I still don’t feel the best about my language choices and articulation, I am rather amazed at my ability to spontaneously and intuitively meet people at a symbolic and metaphoric level. And to meet others on such a level, pretty words are unnecessary—just an opening up of oneself to what has always wanted to be.
If it were not for my wrestling with communication I would not have the present ability to conceptualize in the manner that I do. Additionally, my discomfort with ambiguity would suffer tenfold if not for this period of stillness.
Wrestling, stillness, coagulation—are giving form to the ineffable. And I’m not worried because that which has been solidified can be broken down, turned into a powder, then mixed back into a liquid.
The Temptation of Cynicism
Something else I have seldom shared with others is my overwhelming frustration and tendency to want to condemn the field and those in it—that is, the field of psychotherapy and mental health.
I’ll not dive into my frustrations as what is more important is to consider what my temptation is trying to convey to me. When I feel righteous fury, it comes from a place of having deep loyalty to the craft.
Our field is one where healing is meant to be the primary nexus. When I see the system (or those within it) failing to meet this central axiom (or worse yet, actively working against it—wittingly or unwittingly), I burn with injustice.
But, my negative emotions which focus upon what is external is really just a byproduct of a deep existential internal disappointment. A disappointment that I am so small and insignificant that I may perhaps never effect any meaningful change.
What’s easier to deal with, feeling fundamentally insecure or turning hatred outward?
Fire to Light
What’s being called for currently is not to scorch with fire, but to illuminate with grace, subtly, and finesse. In a very rudimentary way, the alchemical process which takes place is separation, dissolving, reunification, heating, cooling, refinement—to make that which is golden.
To be a more unified self is to allow space for tension. With fire, comes light; with shade, coolness. A declaration more to myself than anyone else, the time for preaching and moralizing has given way to a time of revelation through presence.
I have for so long wanted to convince. And have for so long known that’s the path of most resistance. Hearts are changed by intentionality and relationship, not by debate and logical persuasion.
Furnace of Integration
Disappointment is merely an invitation, a calling card from our own lives asking us to look, hear, and feel deeper. To experience disappointment is to experience living through that which is difficult—and to learn that we can.
Patience is a virtue and it’s not freely given, it’s hard-earned. Discipline is freedom, but it doesn’t come without a price. To temper a blade is to heat it until it’s soft again, then to quench it, rapidly cooling the metal. This gives the blade unequivocal strength comparative to untempered ones. Now this may call to mind the word “temperance”…it’s all related you know?
And it’s interesting just how easy it is to fall into old rhythms, sometimes without noticing it. But wouldn’t that mean the opposite is also true?
One moment we’re feeling content and carefree, the next completely overwhelmed and ruinous. Yet, time passes and at some point in the future we’re back to feeling content again…makes one wonder…if being is so fickle, then what does that mean about being stuck?
The Emergence of Artistry
Recently I’ve been working with a child in therapy. I’ve gained consent from the family to share this story.
There’s a young girl who has severe migraines and refuses to go to school. First, I framed her having migraines as something that she may not want to get rid of, because it can serve her really well, whether in her current life or sometime in the future, because when there’s something, for instance, that she doesn’t want to do, that she’d like to get out of, it is very convenient to be able to have a migraine, that allows her to get out of having to do something that she doesn’t want to.
Secondly, I asked her if she’d ever been to school with a migraine before. She said yes. She said, but it wasn’t fun. And I said, good. I don’t want it to be fun. It’s not going to be fun. That’s already a given. You already know that’s true. No matter what, when you go to school with a migraine, it is not going to be fun. You’re going to have a bad day.
I said, well, I have a task for you then. You know that you’re going to have a really bad migraine here in the future. She said, yes. I said, good. I want you to have a really, really, really bad migraine, perhaps even the worst that you’ve ever had. And when this happens, I want you to go to school. And I want your goal for that day to be to have a bad day, to know that you’re not going to do very well in math and that you’re not going to be able to pay attention in history class, and that your head’s going to hurt the entire day, and that it’s just going to be miserable. That’s what I want you to do.
She was confused, and she said, well, you want me to have a bad day? And I said, yes. When you have your worst migraine, I want you to go to school and to have a really bad day. That’s your goal. And I said, and here’s the most important part of it. Under no circumstances are you to try and have a good day. That’s the most important part. That no matter what, at any point in this day where you’re having your worst migraine, are you to try to start having a good day. That’s the absolute strongest rule.
Now, what I’m getting at with this case example is that I allowed space for a way of being and relating to others that I never have before. I was, perhaps for the first time, not consciously constructing interventions. Yet, what came was an elegant use of sophisticated approaches naturally.
To this girl, migraines had never before been thought of as “useful”, only as something that had to be struggled through. This changes the emotional landscape tied to the symptom. Then, I did what I assume no-one had ever done with this girl before, which was to encourage and give permission for the experience she was having— “good, I don’t want you to have a fun day”.
I am certain she had been told repeatedly to try and get through it, to do her best anyway, to make the most of it. By paradoxically doing the opposite, I subverted the conscious and unconscious resistance to instruction. Afterall, I wasn’t telling her to do anything she wasn’t already doing.
Lastly, I gave a double-bind that with either choice would lead to a therapeutic outcome. I informed her under no circumstances to try and have a good day. If she follows my instruction, she is being cooperative with therapy. If she breaks the suggestion and has a good day, well that serves to benefit her too.
So, without conscious intention, I prescribed the symptom, implemented paradox, created a therapeutic double-bind, used language patterns which bypass resistance, and reframed what was previously held as a deficit. I have studied these things for over a year and have never been able to spontaneously use them with clients. The stillness, and disappointment along with it, have birthed this.
New Covenant
I don’t need to burn bright or shine brilliantly. All that’s needed right now is to ride the rhythm of my own soul and that is enough. Sit back and relax in the comfort of knowing what I don’t know. Create a pact with life to live it more curiously and playfully. Life is much too short not to smile.
Honestly I’m not exactly sure what to call it, the Other, something greater, energy…it’s been inviting like a whisper between the cracks. And I hate to even say that because of how cliche it is, yet it’s what’s true. I’ve been invited into the unknown and ignored it for far too long.
This next phase of life is learning how to flirt with it. How to engage not because I’ve finally arrived, but because I no longer need to.
Gift to the Reader
When you find yourself craving personal meaning and significance, it’s alright. Que Sera, Sera. When you find yourself disappointed, you may begin to wonder just what exactly it’s trying to tell you…and you find some small hope in being curious for what comes next.
Disappointment and ache were never problems, but invitations into the unknown.
Fight with life, submit to it. Honor its wishes; curse and blaspheme against it. Figure it out, know nothing—over and over. Gain and lose. Hold the beautiful tension in opposites, never seeking fully to resolve. The second you find mastery is the second the fool is executed. And the fool is the safest and most dangerous person in the kingdom.
Rebis Counseling & Hypnosis, LLC 
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