Expectations

Expectation is defined as the act of expecting, and to expect something is to look forward to its probable occurrence. A secondary definition for expectation — which may be more of a universal experience than the former — is eager anticipation. Sit with that for a moment; eager anticipation. What are you eagerly anticipating in your life right now that you are telling yourself you’re looking forward to as a probable occurrence? In the middle of waiting for our expectations to be met lies a void where anxiety likes to hide. We tend to overlook this void as we eagerly anticipate what we consider to be the probable occurrence to manifest. So, how do we manage our expectations and keep them from inviting anxiety from the void?

You may have heard it said throughout your life to “manage your expectations” and chosen to ignore it because it may come across as a bit condescending (depending on who said it). But there is practical therapeutic utility in this advice than what may appear at face value. What does it mean to manage our expectations if we know the outcome we desire is probable? Well, it means we have to recognize that the outcome we desire is also improbable — another popular notion meaning “lower your expectations.” And yet, the anxiety that may accompany our eager anticipation is not satisfied by someone telling us to manage, or lower, our expectations. It actually may have the opposite effect. An alternative approach to “managing expectations” may be to investigate them for a better understanding of why they exist in the first place. That is where therapy may be able to assist.

We are conditioned by other people and our environments throughout our lifetime. Therefore, we are conditioned to expect certain outcomes in certain situations. This is not only an evolutionary feature of survival, but is a socially reliable condition of our exchanges with others (both positive and negative). An easy example is to assess your expectations for the people closest to you. What are the expectations you have for your parents, for your children, for your partner, for your best friends, and for your acquaintances? Each relationship we have gives us insight not only into our conditioning but also into the expectations we’ve developed as well. We may expect our parents to be supportive of us (or not); we may expect our children to listen to us (or not); we may expect our partner to be there for us (or not); We may expect our best friends to be ride or die (or not); and we may expect good faith from acquaintances (or not). These examples are points of entry into a better understanding of why we anxiously anticipate our interactions with the world — again, positively or negatively.

Understanding why we look forward to any outcome provides great insight into areas where anxiety may be lying in wait. For example, it may be difficult to ask your boss for that raise you deserve because your expectation of asking others for something has previously been met with a “NO”. And I want to be clear that anxiety doesn’t always have to exist with expectations, but if there is any discomfort, distress, or avoidance associated with looking forward to things then it may be a good indicator. Expecting things to go our way or expecting the worst outcome is a result of our conditioning. And the best thing to know about being conditioned is that it’s possible to be unconditioned with sufficient support.

Therapy offers a place to look at what type of conditioning we’ve been exposed to throughout our lives. Whether we’re conditioned by our parents when we’re little, our high school social circles, and even to the events of the world around us in adulthood — we are constantly paying attention to what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior in any given context. It’s easy to understand why such a learning mechanism would be engrained into our developmental processing since we have the longest socialization (aka conditioning) period of any other animal know to us. Again, what is learned can be unlearned through proper assessment, understanding, and appropriate processing. If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety associated with expectations then I encourage you, and them, to reach out for support.

Best,

Joseph