The Messina Movement

One of the biggest shifts I’ve had to make in my own life is recognizing that disappointment isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong in a relationship.

It’s a sign that two people have different needs, capacities, hopes, or expectations.

For many of us, disappointing someone can feel deeply uncomfortable. So we become experts at accommodating, rescuing, overextending, and saying yes when we mean no.

Not because we don’t know what we need.
But because someone else’s disappointment can feel harder to tolerate than our own.

The irony is that while we’re protecting others from disappointment, we can slowly become disconnected from ourselves.

Healing isn’t about becoming indifferent to other people’s feelings.

It’s about learning to care without abandoning ourselves.

It’s about trusting that the people we love are capable of experiencing disappointment without it becoming the end of the relationship.

And it’s about trusting that we can survive being the person who occasionally disappoints someone else.

💭 I’d love to hear your reflections:

When you think about disappointing someone, what feels most difficult—their disappointment, or what it brings up in you?