How Do I Cope With Overwhelming Disappointment?
A reader writes about the emotional impact of an unexpected election result, describing shock, disappointment, and a growing sense of dread about the future. Struggling to focus and questioning whether she needs support, she asks how to process her feelings and regain a sense of stability.
Dear Douglas
Last week my American friends and I watched the results come in for the presidential election. One of my friends was crying even before Donald Trump was declared the winner. All of us are in shock, not expecting this outcome at all. I feel like I could get depressed, like a dark cloud hangs over our future and that so many problems will come from this election. He is a man I don’t respect or trust and I don’t see how so many people could have chosen him. Do I need counseling? I haven’t been able to concentrate at work. How can I make sense of this and feel better. I am so disappointed.
Sinking
Dear Clash…less
I can offer some food for thought, but it is by approaching your experience with an open mind and listening to people and reading books that you can sort this out.
Differences, and there are certainly differences between how Eastern and Western people think and behave, can so easily become conflicts. Conflicts can occur between people and/or can be internal experiences, the need to make sense that which confuses us. Our minds seek to create resolution, when what we see or experience doesn’t fit into the schemas that we are most familiar with. The quickest way to resolve this internal dissonance is to divide behaviors into good and bad, right and wrong, smart and dumb and then to apply that code onto the behaviors we see or experience. It might be what your colleagues are doing…to find a way to resolve the inner conflict that is inherent in being immersed in a culture that is different than the one in which their ideas and schemas were developed. The problem is that they end up carrying negative feelings and distancing from the people whose culture they are living in.
It appears that you are trying not to slip into a negative perspective, but still feel confusion and the need to make sense of it all. You may be more aware that the way you see things is through the lens of your own bias, the schemas that are part of the way you grew up. These feed your assumptions, your expectations and ultimately influence the way you interpret most of what you experience. Just knowing we are biased helps to create more space for other ways of seeing things. Instead of seeing a behavior that is confusing to us as good or bad, we can see it as different…a little bit like agreeing to disagree. From this mindset you can learn from and appreciate the differences of Eastern and Western thought and expand to include the set of options that come from each orientation.
There are many examples of the difference in the “psychology” or orientation of Eastern and Western peoples. As visitors living here, it behooves us to suspend judgments and open up to ways that are different than our own. The acceptance of these differences is seeing the broad ways that the human species has emerged over thousands of years of development. Also realize that some of what we experience with other people is the outcome of self-fulfilling prophecy. When we align ourselves with people, demonstrating acceptance and expecting the friendliness we bring, it is more likely that we will get just that. Of course, the reverse is also true.
Enjoy the time you are in Vietnam!
