Hello dear ones!
Last week I hit pause on the newsletter and expressed how my fear of disappointing y’all was LARGE AND IN CHARGE. I wanted to share some reflections this week on why it feels terrifying to disappoint others, navigating over-accountability, and learning how to hold space for another’s disappointment.
As always, just a few reminders:
I’ve extended the deadline for submissions to OPENINGS! You have until Monday night at 11:59pm MST to submit your questions (guidelines at the end of the newsletter). No questions means no episode of OPENINGS, so no matter how big or small your question is, I’d love to tackle it 🖤🖤🖤
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THOUGHTS & FEELINGS
In her latest book, The Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines disappointment as “unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.” Brown focuses her attention on the person who feels disappointment. I’d like to shift our attention to how it feels when we’re the person who might be doing the disappointing.
Disappointing others is one of my greatest fears — and for good reason. After my mother’s death when I was eleven, my father was terrified of being perceived as a bad single parent and needed my brother and I to be shining reflections that he was doing a great job. So when I decided that I wanted to start dying my hair and piercing my face, you can guess what his response was. Disappointment, yes. But it was more than that. Disappointment tinged with anger that resulted in punishment and the withholding of love. I quickly learnt that disappointing my father came with great stakes.
As a teenager full of unprocessed trauma, hormones, and a naturally rebellious spirt (hello Sag rising conjunct Uranus), I’d disappoint him again and again. Later in life, I’d come to feel deep guilt and shame for how I behaved as a teenager: problematic substance use, stealing money, lying, sneaking out, engaging in other high risk behaviours. Instead of my father dolling out the punishment, I learnt how to punish myself. If I was going to have tattoos and piercings, I’d have to be good in all of the other ways. Straight As in school. Doing everything my dad and brother needed. No arguments. No standing up for myself. No boundaries.
What I recognize now is that in true trauma bb fashion, I’d swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. If I was under-accountable as a young teen, I was over-accountable as a young adult. Everything was, surely, my fault. I didn’t have this language back then, but reading Staci K. Haines’ book The Politics of Trauma helped me see how I lacked an understanding of centered accountability:
“Often we will lean toward being under- and over-accountable, as a reaction to a much deeper sense of shame and worthlessness. When we feel a deep sense of being ‘bad’ or ashamed, we can be over-accountable for things that have nothing to do with our action, and simultaneously be under-accountable for things that are in our purview … These reactions help us to get away from the triggered sense of being bad, caught, blamed, or our shame revealed.”
Over-accountability, writes Haines, “is taking on blame, responsibility, and fault automatically. It is taking this on for people and situations that we may have wanted to be able to affect (or want to now), yet did not have the power to do so” whereas under-accountability is “avoidance of, dodging, deflecting, and/or denying accountability.” I get why we avoid being accountable. In a world where the prison-industrial complex (PIC) continues to loom large, we’ve learnt that owning up to causing harm will result in fines we can’t afford to pay, imprisonment (which will cut us off from our community), and social ostracization. The PIC exists within our families and our schools. Being grounded. Having detention. Suspension from school. Our best chance at avoiding punishment was to not take accountability.
Centered accountability, on the other hand, “can hold complexity, both be accountable and know what is not our responsibility, and stay connected and in relationship.” Centered accountability requires us to learn how to be with discomfort. It asks us to accept that sometimes we’ll just disappoint people — not out of any malice or ill-will, but simply because we’re human beings and human beings are messy and imperfect — and that’s what makes us beautiful. Centered accountability also requires that we have clear boundaries, communicate them to others, and address the hurt (and, yes, disappointment) that occurs when others cannot or will not respect our boundaries.
Let’s take a pretty mundane low-stakes example. Your friend calls you and wants to hang out, but you’re exhausted and were really looking forward to a night alone at home. What do you do? Do you say no, and risk disappointing them? Or do you say yes and abandon yourself? It’s taken me a long time to be able to do the former. And it’s meant that I’ve had to learn that it’s okay for other people to be disappointed. Disappointment does not need to be the end of the world — or the end of the relationship. It makes sense that my trauma brain believes that the stakes are so high. And, as I step into my healing and into loving myself, I’ve built my capacity to be with the discomfort of disappointing others. It hasn’t been easy. But it has enabled me to build relationships that are authentic, supportive, and healing.
PRACTICES
I want to offer a practice for building your tolerance for disappointing others. I offered a version of this in CARESCAPES #3 that was focused on learning how to receive care. Ask a human in your life that you feel a relative amount of safety and trust with if they’ll do this with you.
Start by having the other person ask if you can do something for them. E.g. Can you make me dinner tonight? (Note: you don’t actually have to do any of these things.) I suggest keeping things fairly low stakes to start.
You will respond to each request with some form of “no” statement. (E.g. “sorry but I’m busy tonight” or just a simple “no”).
Notice what comes up in your body when you hear them ask this question, knowing that you’re going to say no. What sensations or feelings arise?
The other person will thank you for your response AND express their disappointment. (E.g. “Thanks for letting me know that you already have plans. I’m a bit disappointed as I’d thought it’d be so nice to do X. Maybe we could find another time?”)
Notice what comes up when you hear their disappointment.
Practicing acknowledging their disappointment without taking on responsibility for their feelings or changing your mind.
Notice what comes up for you when you respond. What feelings or sensations arise?
Practice again and again. Afterwords, I suggest reflecting on and sharing what that experience was like.
ACTIONS
Want to learn more about centered accountability? Check out the Centered Accountability Course made by Daria of @accountabilitymapping on Instagram. Free for BIPOC and sliding scale $25-100. Not only will you be supporting a trans person of colour, you’ll be bettering your understanding of accountability and transformative justice: necessary skills for healing our world.
Guidelines for OPENINGS submissions
Email me at hello@margeauxfeldman.com with the subject line OPENINGS SUBMISSION
Please keep your question to 250 words
Deadline to submit for OPENINGS #2 is January 23rd at 11:59pm MST
If you aren’t a paid subscriber but wanna be…
With softness,
Margeaux