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“If (candidate X who I hate) wins this electionI’m going to leave the country” is a sentiment we’ve heard from a few politically outspoken celebrities during recent presidential election cycles. However, they never seem to keep their promise. That’s because it’s probably not really a promise, but rather a defense against an emotion that humans really hate: disappointment. They self-soothe through a strategy to neutralize anticipated feelings of helplessness and frustration if the feared event occurs.

So, if your favorite candidate lost on Tuesday night, you could experience this terrible emotion. Some people suffer so much from the condition that they may be diagnosed with a condition commonly called “post-election stress disorder.”

Even if all this seems exaggerated to you, you probably fear a source of disappointment in your life. Perhaps it concerns your career, your education or your romantic relationship. If so, you are most likely acting in a way that protects you from this deep, painful emotion; a few research found that disappointment may be associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. However, understanding this phenomenon can help reduce fear of your own emotions and make decisions that lead to better outcomes. It may even help you avoid making a stupid public promise to leave America.

Read: What to watch if you need a distraction this week

Athere are two scholars describe he recently in the Annual Review of Anthropologydisappointment is “the messy, friction-filled, unsatisfying gap between lived experiences and unrealized expectations.” This feeling is similar to regret, in that it involves a past event that didn’t turn out the way you hoped. But while regret involves wishing You If you had done something differently, the disappointment does not necessarily involve your decision-making body. Because of this distinction, psychologists writing in the journal Cognition and emotion find this regret most often leads to self-reproach, unlike the usual unhappiness associated with disappointment, which comes from a feeling of helplessness.

For example, you might vote for a candidate and regret it (i.e. blame yourself). But if the candidate you voted for loses, it can also make you feel like you don’t have a say in how you’re governed — that’s where powerlessness comes into play.

The above research sheds additional light on the psychological dimension of this difference between regret and disappointment. If a person disappoints you, this usually results in feeling angry. But if a result It’s disappointment, which is usually accompanied by more sadness.

Such findings tend to focus on what psychologists call “disconfirmed expectations,” that is, a difference between what you think will or should happen and what actually happens. This involves the neuromodulator dopaminewhich governs both rewards and the anticipation of rewards in our brains.

How it works: Imagine that around 11 a.m. your stomach is growling and you’re thinking about lunch. Your mind wanders to a turkey sandwich you enjoyed last week at a local deli, giving you a dopamine neuron response to build anticipation and make you make a plan to get there at lunchtime. If, when you arrive and get the sandwich, it’s exactly what you expected, you don’t get any additional dopamine response. But if the sandwich is even more delicious than you remembered, you’ll receive an extra neurochemical spritz, which will teach you to come back. But if the grocery store is closed, God forbid, your dopamine response will diminish, making you feel slightly depressed – or, in a nutshell, disappointed.

The mechanism undoubtedly evolved to teach us the most efficient way to accumulate rewards such as food and mates, and to avoid wasting time and energy on fruitless activities. In ancient times, this reward system made you return again and again to a watering hole where prey was easy to find. But if these animals spread and stopped appearing, you would have some disappointments and lose interest.

The most psychologically painful disappointments are those in which the hope of reward contrasts most sharply with the actual outcome. Closed cured meats involve a slight drop in dopamine from which you will likely recover within a few minutes. But if, for example, you really expect your loved one to propose marriage to you and instead they leave town, the dopamine deficit will be much more serious and more difficult to bear, leading to -being in a period of anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. characteristic of dysregulated dopamine levels and clinical symptoms depression.

Disappointment is particularly severe for optimists: they predict above-average results and a lot better than any negative event. This means that they tend to have greater “disconfirmed expectations” than non-optimists. Write in the journal Emotion In 2010, two psychologists studied how students felt before and after receiving exam results. They find that people with more optimistic expectations did not feel better than their peers before, but on average felt worse after learning their scores, because optimists tended to be further from reality.

Arthur C. Brooks: Schopenhauer’s advice for achieving great things

Ohyour lives are full with uncertain outcomes, often involving the things we care about most. Having positive expectations means that disappointment is a part of life. This has led some thinkers to conclude that the only answer is pessimism. The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously defended this view when he argued that “we generally find that pleasure is not as pleasant as expected, and pain much more painful.” One conclusion to draw from this: never expect anything good, or even expect the worst, and you will never be disappointed.

Then again, Schopenhauer was well known for being a miserable person, so this may not be the best strategy. Better, I believe, to maintain hope in the midst of life’s uncertainties, but to distinguish between hope and optimism. Many people use these terms almost interchangeably, but they are different. Optimism involves an element of prediction – as we have just seen, to expect a good result in a way that can border on illusion. Hope involves the belief that even if a situation results in a disappointing outcome, you can do something to improve that outcome – in the words from a team of researchers on the subject, “having the will and finding the way”. For this reason, as I did writinghope is far superior to optimism when it comes to happiness.

Hope does not require you to make any prediction about what might happen. It simply asks you to believe that no matter what happens, you will have the ability to improve the circumstances and to think about what that action could be.

Oddly, that’s pretty much what people do when they announce their intention to leave America if the wrong candidate wins the election. But the proposed action – leaving home and going into exile – is senseless and extreme; It would be much better to say, “If the bad guy wins, I will be disappointed, but regardless of the disappointment, I will work as hard as I can to improve things around me.” » The same goes for other disappointments in life. If you aspire to a big promotion, don’t predict whether you will get it or not. Just be honest with yourself and think logically about what constructive actions you can take if, in fact, you are being ignored.

Additionally, because disappointment is part of the useful neurobiological learning process you have inherited for your evolutionary form, look for valuable lessons from failure. Psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that when we are disappointed, we can actually choose between bitterness and wisdom, the latter being “the comforter of all psychological suffering.”

The problem with the approach of leaving the country is that it succumbs to bitterness instead of seeking to learn. The same goes for a disappointment like a bad breakup. The bitter response is: “I will never go out again.” A wise response is to figure out how to avoid ending up with someone in the future who shares your ex’s problematic traits (that jerk).

Arthur C. Brooks: Jung’s Five Pillars of a Good Life

I wrote this column to soothe anyone who might be suffering from post-election disappointment and to provide a better way to cope. But maybe you are not disappointed: maybe your candidate wonand you are delighted right now. It can also be an opportunity for wisdom, if you choose to seize it.

Today you taste victory, but remember: defeat is just around the corner, because that’s how life works. Consider this truth and take this opportunity to show a little grace to those neighbors and family members whose candidate lost and who are disappointed, because they feel today what you will surely feel tomorrow. Consider this a chance to travel back in time and bring a little kindness to comfort your disappointed future self.