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Trish Taylor, LPCC-S
Counselor, Insight Clinical Counseling and Wellness, LLC

We all fall into that familiar loop:

“If only he would…”

“What if she just…”

“When will they finally…”

Or the classic: “Why can’t they just…?”

The problem with this cycle is that it keeps us stuck in disappointment. We set ourselves up with expectation, often silently, and then wonder why we feel let down when they aren’t met. The people we place those expectations on though? They’re going on about their day, completely unaware. It’s us who end up feeling that sting, frustrated, sad, anxious, resentful and those feels? Oh, they hurt.

There’s a quote I often share with clients when we’re unpacking this dynamic. It comes from Brené Brown: “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.”

I know. Truer than true, right?

Working through expectations might just be one of the toughest emotional lessons out there. In my experience, expectations seem like one of the most persistent issues that surfaces in therapy. It’s almost as if we arrive in this world with a starter set of expectations and collect even more as we go. Many of them are socially constructed: things we’re “supposed to do” simply because “they” say so. Others are more subtle, shaped by the messages we absorb from the world around us, what we call internalized expectations. Those ones are sneaky, becoming beliefs we mistake for our own truth.

Here’s the thing: whether we impose expectations on others or ourselves, someone always ends up
disappointed. So what’s the alternative? How about a radical idea: eliminate expectations altogether!

Okay, maybe that’s a little idealistic. Is it possible we could reduce them? What if we practiced seeing ourselves and others not through a lens of expectation, but through the lens of humanity, flawed and doing the best we can with the tools we’ve got?

When we focus on grace, kindness, and patience, especially with ourselves, we’re less likely to project our unspoken thoughts onto others. As we deepen our understanding of our own inner world, we build a capacity to offer that same understanding to the people around us. And that? Just maybe, feels like a beautiful place to begin.