DISILLUSIONMENT
"You cannot lead people further than where you have been willing to go."
David-Research Participant
Disillusionment is the first stage of alchemy for the wounded healer. This stage aims to enhance self-awareness by cultivating your inner observer, practicing self-compassion, and fostering authentic connections. Another key shift is to to use self-awareness skills to open up to the possibility of joy all while leaning into discomfort by shifting away from dress-rehearsing for tragedy towards dress-rehearsing for joy.
What is disillusionment?
Disillusionment is defined as, "the condition of being disenchanted : the condition of being dissatisfied or defeated in expectation or hope (Merriam-Webster. (n.d.).
Disillusionment, whether personal or professional, can leave you feeling scared, confused, and helpless. Disillusionment is your resistance to accepting what is. Once you recognize resistance, you can choose to face the discomfort for deeper self-awareness or avoid it by staying familiar, but nothing will change.
Signs of disillusionment
Everyone will experience the feeling of disillusionment differently and will have different reactions to it. Below are some signs that signal that you may be experiencing disillusionment in one or more area(s) of your life.
Compulsively scrolling through social media can provide short-term comfort to distress but it will lead to bigger long-term consequences. Over-consuming media content is a response to avoid discomfort. This avoidance response keeps you further disconnected from yourself and prevent you from meeting your needs.
Taking a passive role in your life by believing that you lack the power to change it, can leave you feeling jaded and stuck. Conversely, believing that you can control what you experience in life will lead you to waste copious amounts of energy trying to maintain a distorted narrative. You must see yourself as an active participant in your life.
You may find yourself dress-rehearsing for tragedy, or in other words, "waiting for the other shoe to drop." Dress-rehearsing for tragedy is an example of hyper-focusing on the things that are going wrong in your life, and while it can provide temporary relief, it can prevent you from fully experiencing joy.
Isolating from your support network because you feel pressure to be a certain way in social settings will keep you disconnected from yourself and others. Avoiding hanging out with a friend because you believe that you are unworthy of connection unless you are perfect can increase feelings of shame and low self-worth.
"Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone."
–Fred Rogers
Dress-rehearsing for tragedy
Researcher Brené Brown, Ph.D., describes “dress-rehearsing for tragedy” as a fear-based response to vulnerability and uncertainty, where we imagine the worst-case scenarios in an attempt to protect ourselves. While dress-rehearsing for tragedy may seem like a way to control fear or uncertainty, it actually blocks our ability to experience joy and transformative healing.
​
Embracing uncertainty instead of resisting it is a vital step towards enhancing your self-awareness. Cultivating an inner observer, engaging in self-compassion, and fostering connections with others, can help you to expand your capacity to fully experience joy while still leaning into discomfort.
Enhancing Your self-awareness
Cultivating an inner observer, practicing self-compassion, and building authentic connections are essential skills that help us to enhance our awareness by stepping back from our immediate experience, confronting our wounds, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.
Enhancing your self-awareness is a foundational skill that you will need to practice before you can fully engage in the next stage, confrontation. We must know what we are confronting before we can figure out how to confront it.
Inner Observer
Cultivating your inner observer means learning to separate your sense of self from your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The key is to remain curious about what arises, whether pleasant or unpleasant, and without judgment. The practice of cultivating an inner observer deepens your awareness of your wants, needs, and desires, and begins to create space for you to nurture a more harmonious relationship with yourself.
Self-Compassion
Self-compassion means offering yourself the same kindness that you extend to others. It invites full acceptance, flaws and all. It works in harmony with your inner observer, helping you sit with discomfort rather than avoid it. In doing so, you deepen your understanding of yourself, which becomes a part of the groundwork for building authentic connections with others.
To Learn More About Self-Compassion, Click Here
Connection
Connections with others and community are essential to self-care. Healing isn’t meant to happen in isolation and in moments of overwhelm, it’s easy to feel alone in your suffering. Connections with others reminds us that we are not alone. Building authentic relationships helps fosters compassion for others and, just as importantly, compassion for yourself.
Dress-rehearsing for Joy
Contrary to how the term "dress-hearsing" is typically understood, dress-rehearsing for joy isn’t about delaying or doing anything to prepare for joy, rather it’s about rewiring our internal responses to expect joy rather than tragedy. When we anticipate the best-case scenario with presence then we can invite joy into the current moment. Practicing being present through adversity affirms that we can do hard things—and that joy is not just possible, but accessible now.
​
Thinking with our bodies and intentionally seeking opportunities to find and express joy, we can expand our capacity and awareness to better regulate distress. Where we once braced for pain, we can now train ourselves to welcome joy.
Managing disillusionment in clinical practice
Many of us enter this field with a desire to help, completing rigorous educational programs, clinical practicums, and trainings. However, the helping profession can leave us feeling disappointed, exhausted, and helpless.
I, like many of my fellow wounded healers, have experienced the emotional toll of the helping profession, of which I describe as disillusionment. Disillusionment may also take the form of secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, or countertransference.
Coping with disillusionment may look like:
-
Create rituals to signify the start and end of the session.
-
Connect with supervisor, colleagues, mentors, or other friends in the field.
-
Develop skills to identify triggers and skills to manage them such as creating a "container" in your minds eye