Emotional Dysregulation and Disappointment
Barbara Heffernan • December 4, 2025
Have you ever noticed how one disappointment, even a relatively small one, can completely derail your day, change your mood, or send you down a spiral of negative thinking?
The emotion of disappointment is incredibly powerful, yet we rarely discuss it. It's an everyday emotion that doesn't get the headlines that anger, grief, or depression might get. But I believe it can be at the root of much emotional dysregulation.
By understanding disappointment—what is happening in your body and brain, and the cycle it can create—you can better regulate your emotions, feel more contentment, and feel better about yourself. By the end of this article, you will understand disappointment and the cycle it creates. You will also walk away with practical tools about how to cut that cycle and prevent disappointment from becoming overwhelming. You might also learn to recognize disappointment as the root of a number of other emotions.
Defining Disappointment
Disappointment is sadness or displeasure when your expectations are not met. Basically, there is a gap between what you expected or hoped for, what you wanted, and what actually happens. It is that moment when you realize that reality is not matching your desires and sometimes your needs.
When we think of that, we do not fully appreciate how painful it is. I am going to give you some information on the neurobiology so you will understand more about why it is so painful. I also want to talk about what happens when we are children and disappointed, and how the authority figures in our lives respond to us. This can create a pattern for whether we internalize or externalize disappointment, how resilient we are, and which pathway disappointment leads us down.
Disappointment Never Shows Up Alone
Disappointment almost never appears by itself. It usually comes with frustration and irritation, sometimes anger at ourselves or at somebody else, sadness and hurt. Very often we feel hurt when we are unable to get what we want or need. It also brings up shame and embarrassment.
I think it is critically important to understand that disappointment is a very vulnerable emotion, primarily because it says, "I wanted that, and I did not get it." For some reason, saying that makes us feel very exposed, very unworthy.
As most of you know, I worked as a psychotherapist for 20 years. In that work as well as in the online coaching programs that I have, I have noticed that people feel a lot of shame when they are asked to express out loud what they really want in life. I know this personally because it came up for me the very first time I was asked that question.
It felt embarrassing to say it. It is very vulnerable to say, "I want this. I want it to look like that." I think it brings up feelings of: maybe I am ungrateful, maybe I should be grateful for what I already have. Who am I to think that I could have something like that? I should not be wanting it.
When we get disappointed, we are essentially saying, "I cared about that thing and now I am feeling hurt, sad, or angry because I did not get it." So disappointment is a signal to us of what we want or of what we wanted.
Understanding how vulnerable disappointment can make us feel can help us regulate that emotion because we can look into it more deeply and question some of our assumptions.
The Cycle That Disappointment Creates
As I go through this, you might want to jot down for yourself what the cycle is for you. I will be giving some examples, and it is helpful for you to begin to think through how this works for you.
Basically, disappointment starts with an event that does not match your expectations, desires, or wants.
For some people, that mismatch will immediately create physical feelings: a sinking in the stomach, a feeling that the rug was pulled out from under you, a deflation.
The emotions that can accompany these physical feelings vary. If you feel a lot of tension, the emotion that might come up right away could be irritation, frustration, or anger. If you get the feeling that the rug is pulled out from under you, that could be shock. That feeling in the pit of your stomach could be sadness.
The reason I want you to be aware of your own cycle is that sometimes people are first aware of the physical feelings, but others are first aware of the emotional feelings. And a different group of people might be first aware of the negative thoughts that come up as soon as there is a mismatch between expectation and reality.
The thoughts could be negative thinking about yourself, or it could be negative thinking about others. Your brain interprets the event, turning it into a story. And very often that story is driven by your negative core beliefs.
If you have a negative core belief of "I am unworthy," the story will be, "Well, you did not deserve this. You are unworthy. You are not good enough." If your negative core belief is "I cannot count on others," well, this disappointing event just reinforced that.
To assist you as you think this through, I have a free PDF called "Transform Your Negative Core Belief." It helps you understand which of those beliefs is truly at your core, and it gives you a handful of techniques to begin to rewire those beliefs.
This cycle is based on the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) cycle. When an event happens and we interpret it, our thoughts loop back and affect how we feel and how we behave. Similarly, all the feelings that came up with the disappointmet impact how we think and how we behave.
The behaviors that very often come from disappointment can be avoidance or lashing out.
Avoidance would be avoiding taking any risk because you do not want to feel disappointment again. This contributes to future problems, because taking reasonable risks is necessary to move you to where you want to be. And therefore there is more disappointment in the future.
Avoidance would be avoiding taking any risk because you do not want to feel disappointment again. This contributes to future problems, because taking reasonable risks is necessary to move you to where you want to be. And therefore there is more disappointment in the future.
This cycle begins to wire our brain in a way that avoiding disappointment becomes the biggest thing we focus on, and our world can get more and more constricted.
Lashing out: If one of your habitual patterns is anger, you might get angry and lash out at loved ones, which pushes them further away and makes the situation worse. Or you might go into a spiral of lashing out at yourself, and those negative core beliefs get more and more ingrained.
This is not a good cycle. I want to help you understand it and shift it.
The Neurobiology of Disappointment
Deep in our brains, there is an ancient evolutionary part called the lateral habenula. You can think of this part of the brain as the "disappointment hub." This part of the brain activates when an anticipated reward does not materialize.
That feel-good chemical you have heard about—dopamine—kicks in when we are anticipating a pleasure, when we are anticipating something good. Before an event, that chemical can kick in. But when that reward is not realized, the lateral habenula releases two other neurotransmitters. One is glutamate and the other is GABA.
Glutamate is an excitatory chemical. It revs us up and amplifies the signals we are receiving. GABA is inhibitory. GABA slows things down and dampens signals. They have opposite effects, but they are released at the same time.
The ratio between these two chemicals is like the dimmer switch on how disappointed we feel. If we release significantly more glutamate than GABA, the switch is turned up—our disappointment increases. If we release more GABA, the dimmer switch is lowered. That is why sometimes we can handle disappointments without any problem, and other times they feel devastating.
The Long-Term Effects of Repeated Disappointment
What happens if we regularly experience a lot of disappointment and we have a strong reaction to that disappointment?
With frequent and severe disappointment, your brain can learn to stop anticipating good things. If wanting something leads to pain, it is better not to want anything at all.
This causes a rewiring in the brain, and we neurologically withdraw from motivation and anticipation.
The good news is we can rewire the brain. Our brain learns and changes throughout our whole lives. With the right guidance and the right effort, you can begin to rewire that pattern. I do not want you to lose hope here!
How Childhood Shapes Our Response to Disappointment
As we explore this, I want to encourage you to look at the patterns from your childhood as if it is a fact-finding mission, not a fault-finding mission. It is much more productive to really look at this as "Why did I develop these patterns?" so you can have empathy towards yourself without immediately going to blame.
Let us think about a 2-year-old. I am sure many of you have spent time with two-year-olds. If you think about it, those 2-year-old tantrums are almost all about disappointment. They are almost all about that 2-year-old wanting something or wanting to do something that they either cannot get or they are not allowed to do.
It is disappointment mixed with frustration, and it is an unbelievably powerful emotion. It is so powerful that the 2-year-old ends up on the floor screaming and banging their fists.
This is a challenging stage for parents. I do not know any parent who does this stage perfectly, but some do it adequately and others maybe do not. But it is a universal stage, instinctual.
This can be frustrating for a parent because the child could be hugely upset for a "minor" or unavoidable reason. For example, you promised to take them to the park but when the time comes, there is a thunderstorm happening. You cannot take them to the park. The child does not understand that. They do not have any perspective.
Many parents will try to calm the child, which is good. But often we do that by brushing away the disappointment. "Oh, do not be so disappointed. We will do such and such tomorrow."
The fact that a parent tries to bring in perspective makes sense. But if this pattern of dismissing the child's upset continues, that child will learn, "This is an emotion I am not supposed to have." The child will not feel seen or heard.
Other parents might panic when their child is disappointed. They get anxious and try to jump in and fix it right away. They might even give in to whatever it was—take the kid outside in the storm, whatever it was. The parent might panic and try to get the kid not to be so upset. But that also teaches us that this is an anxiety-provoking emotion and that if this emotion is scary to my caregiver, wow, that is really scary.
Worse, sometimes a parent might totally withdraw from the situation, which is very threatening to a toddler. Toddlers and young children are completely dependent on their caregivers. If the caregiver withdraws physically or emotionally, that is very threatening to that child's survival emotionally. Other parents might get angry and lash out.
Thinking through how your disappointments were handled can help you understand how you feel about that emotion right now.
As you got a little older, you might have begun to be aware of your parents' disappointments. If disappointment was such a horrible, scary emotion when you had it, you immediately will think it is a horrible, scary emotion for them to have. They might respond that way too.
You may develop a feeling of "I am a disappointment to my caregivers." It could also be "I am a disappointment to my teachers/siblings/coach." Eventually this leads to an internalized negative belief: "I am a disappointment."
Even later in life, as we grow up and move away from our parents, other people have a hard time with our disappointment and we have a hard time with theirs. When somebody is disappointed, we all jump in right away. We want to make them feel better. We want to say, "Oh, it is not so bad," or "Oh, you will get it next time." We want to whitewash the pain.
If you find yourself in that situation doing that to somebody else who is disappointed, maybe just slow down, take a moment and say, "Wow, I totally understand why you are disappointed. That is really hard." Let them sit with it.
If you practice doing that for others—and maybe you already can do that, I am not judging here—but if you can do it for others, you can then begin to do that for yourself, which is going to lead me into the practical tools I want to talk about.
Three Practical Tools for Managing Disappointment
#1: Accept and Acknowledge the Emotion
This relates to what I just said. Accept and acknowledge the emotion you are having. Acknowledge that you are disappointed. Let yourself take a minute to feel it without having to fix it.
I know this can be counterintuitive, but our emotions ebb and flow. They do not ever stay exactly the same.
Generally when we push away or try to whitewash or cover up an emotion, it gets stronger. Instead we can just sit with it, feel it and investigate it, "Okay, where do I feel this in my body? What thoughts is this bringing me to? What if I just sit here with the physical feelings and let them be for a second?"
With this awareness and acknowledgement, bring in some diaphragmatic breathing. Let your body, your physiology, know that you are okay. This may not feel good, it might hurt, you do not like it, but you are okay.
Your body can begin to respond to it with more calm, with more of that GABA, and you can contribute to that with your own emotional regulation tools.
#2: Become Aware of Your Cycle
Become intimately aware of the cognitive-behavioral cycle that disappointment creates for you. What feelings does it generate? What thoughts? What behaviors does it lead you to? Once you engage in those behaviors, are they helpful or hurtful?
If a downward spiral starts, where can you intervene to interrupt it?
If a downward spiral starts, where can you intervene to interrupt it?
In general, we cannot directly change our feelings other than by simply sitting with them. We cannot do
something to make them change. What we can do is question our thinking, begin to think about things differently, and-or change the behaviors.
#3: Pick a Behavior That Breaks the Pattern
Pick a behavior that does not go with your typical downward spiral and practice engaging in that behavior. Behavior is the most dramatic way to begin to change the wiring in our brains.
A challenge for you could be to pick something that you have been avoiding because you are afraid of that disappointment. It could be something small. It does not have to be a major thing. Just go for it. Do it. See what happens. Approach it as if it is a scientific experiment.
It could be:
- Applying for an opportunity you have been avoiding
- Simply texting a friend that you have been afraid to text because you are worried that they will not respond the way you want them to
- Sharing an idea that you have with somebody when you have been avoiding that because you are worried that they will not like the idea
These could be small things, but pick one and go for it.
Moving Forward
As I wrap up here, my other videos on emotional regulation skills will be really helpful for this. Just thinking about disappointment as one of those core emotions that can set you down a negative cycle, you can maybe begin to think about it differently so that you bring in those emotional regulation tools simply for disappointment. As one of my friends said, that is an everyday emotion. We feel that all the time.
I really hope this was helpful. Make sure to check out that PDF—I also have a free webinar called "Rewire Your Brain," and it goes a little more into how our behaviors can help to rewire some of these patterns we have developed. Make sure you are subscribed so you will see the next video on this topic, which is going to expand on these tools.
Let me know what you think. Let me know the questions you have and I will see you next week.
Blog Author: Barbara Heffernan, LCSW, MBA. Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in anxiety, trauma, and healthy boundaries. She had a private practice in Connecticut for twenty years before starting her popular YouTube channel designed to help people around the world live a more joyful life. Barbara has a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Columbia University and an MSW from SCSU. More info on Barbara can be found on her bio page.
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You can probably recall a time when you were with someone who was intensely anxious—and within minutes, you began to feel anxious yourself. Perhaps your heart rate increased. Your breathing became shallow. The knot in your stomach tightened. Or maybe you remember the opposite: a time when you were with someone who was truly grounded and calm, and their presence actually calmed you down. Your shoulders dropped. Your breathing deepened. The tension you had been carrying began to dissipate. This is not your imagination. This is emotional contagion, and it is scientifically proven. Understanding how your own emotional regulation—or lack thereof—impacts other people, and how other people's emotional states impact you, is essential for healthy relationships. Learning emotional regulation tools can improve your relationships significantly. Learning how to lower your susceptibility to emotional contagion can help as well. In this article, I will explain what emotional contagion is, how it impacts relationships, and provide five specific strategies for improving regulation in your own relationships. What Is Emotional Contagion? Emotions are contagious. Extensive research—both behavioral research and neuroscience—shows that we pick up the emotions of the people around us. The closer our relationship with them and the more invested we are in that relationship, the more this phenomenon occurs. This may not always feel accurate because we also tend to balance each other out. If someone is very upset, we might suppress our own emotions in response. But as I will explain, that suppression is actually part of the same dynamic. Three Pathways to Emotional Contagion There are three pathways that lead to emotional contagion: Pathway 1: Automatic Mimicry Unconsciously, when we see facial expressions in another person, we mimic them. If someone smiles, we tend to smile immediately. 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I am not saying this to assign blame, nor do I want you to spiral into worry about what you may have done to your own children. These are intergenerational patterns, and all we can do is work with the present. However, it can help to recognize that if you feel your own emotional regulation is lacking, you probably learned from dysregulated caregivers. If you have a partner who is very dysregulated, the same is likely true for them. This understanding allows us to remove blame and accusation from the discussion. We can approach this with compassion, recognizing that these are skills that should perhaps be taught in school or more seriously in our society—but they are not. The good news is that you can learn them now. Five Practical Tools to Improve Emotional Regulation in Your Relationships It truly is possible to improve your own emotional regulation and have a postiive impact on your relationships. These tools are helpful even for the partner that feels they are the one who is more emotionally regulated. And as a heads up, Tools 1 and 5 require substantial work - but gradual improvement is helpful! Tools 2, 3, and 4 are easier to implement immediately. Tool 1: Develop Your Emotional Boundaries Because emotional contagion is so strong—particularly if you grew up in a caretaker role in your family—it is important to begin recognizing when the emotions you are feeling are the ones you are absorbing from someone else. Begin to visualize a see-through bubble around you which represents you and your emotional boundary. Begin to think of your emotions as existing within that bubble. And picture another bubble around the other person - give it a light, see-through color. Picture that all their emotions are within their bubble. Differentiate between what you are feeling and what they are feeling. Bring in your observer brain to look at what you are feeling. For example... "Wait a second. 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But if you are not, sometimes it helps to explain these concepts to your partner. Let them know what will help you calm down when you are upset. You might have to remind them, and I know that takes substantial emotional regulation on your part. But honestly, that is the big picture here: the best thing you can do for your relationships with others—as well as your relationship with yourself—is learn emotional regulation tools. Tool 5: Practice Honest, Regulated Communication This can be understood as assertive communication that is also compassionate. If you are feeling overwhelmed, I understand. These concepts can seem complex and somewhat unattainable. I have an online boundary program that addresses emotional regulation as the foundation for healthy boundaries. It includes an exercise on visualizing emotional boundaries to strengthen that skill, and an entire section on assertive communication so you can set and maintain boundaries. Healthy boundaries are not about keeping people away or controlling other people's behavior. Healthy relationships actually require good boundaries. Good boundaries are about knowing yourself—where you end and the other person begins—and knowing it is acceptable for you to have needs. Compassionate, assertive expression of whatever needs to be communicated will help the relationship. It can be done in a way that supports your own emotional regulation and possibly helps the other person—or at minimum, does not contribute to escalation. Suppressing your own emotions and needs will escalate the negative cycle of conversation. This is not about suppression. It is definitely not about lashing out, exploding, or releasing everything you have been suppressing because you are angry and frustrated. If you have taken that timeout when needed, if you have been aware ("my heart rate is way up; I am in fight-flight-freeze mode"), you will not reach that explosion point because you will have taken your break and calmed down. All these steps are interrelated. Expressing what you feel in a regulated manner keeps you in connection with the other person. Remember: it is not just what you say but how you say it, and even how you are feeling when you say it. A statement like "I am feeling overwhelmed right now with too much to do" will enable you to stay in connection far more effectively than exploding because your partner has not done what they were supposed to do. Anytime we explode with attack or criticism, we contribute to emotional dysregulation in the room. Bringing It All Together Consciously keep track of your own emotional regulation Visualize your emotional boundary Use breathing techniques to stay within your window of tolerance, aware that you might need to take a mini timeout for yourself if you cannot stay within that window Validate the other person's feelings, emotions, and experience. Pay attention to: "This is me and my emotions, and that is them and theirs." Practice assertive communication which includes compassion for yourself and the other person This is not easy work. I know that. But what I want you to understand is that emotional contagion is real, and there are tools you can use to work with it. You can understand the other person without fully absorbing their emotional state. We are not individual emotional islands. Each one of us impacts those around us. Let me be very clear: Impacting others is not the same as causing their emotions or being responsible for their emotions. They are not responsible for ours. We are responsible for our own emotions and what we do with them. Yet there is this framework of interconnectedness among us, and knowing how to work with it can improve your life and your relationships significantly. Please share in the comments if you found this valuable. What resonated with you? What questions do you have?
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