Emotional Pain

 My understanding of emotional pain today is that it is caused by unfulfilled expectations. 

Not the expectations I think others may have of me, but the expectations I have of myself and others.

Another person's expectations of me will not cause me to experience emotional pain. 

I will not hurt because I am unable to meet someone else's expectations of me; I will hurt if I am unable to meet my own expectations of myself in my efforts to please others. 

If others don't act or react the way I would like them to, I can't blame them. I have to look at me. What had I been expecting?

Unfulfilled expectations are only shattered dreams, and what are dreams but images of realities? 

Images in our minds of how we would like our realities to be or to become. 

We encounter problems when the images in our own minds do not coincide with the images in the minds of those we are close to, or those to whom we would like to be close. 

Their images usually do not agree with our own, and in many instances do not even include us.

AA Grapevine, February 1987

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