When Things Don't Go as Planned: No Matter How You Work It, Things Go Wrong
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
On anxiety, self blame, and learning not to hurt twice
By Sarah Plassman MSW, LISW-S
Sheesh! and Other Thoughts on Being Human
One of my favorite musical artists is John Mayer.
Give me a good John Mayer song and I am probably going to be just fine.
Well.
Maybe not fine.
Because John Mayer has an annoying little habit of putting words to the exact emotional experience I was doing a perfectly respectable job of avoiding.
He is obviously an incredible musician, but it is his lyrics that get me. In Your Atmosphere breaks my heart every single time, no matter how many times I have heard it.
His songs seem to live in those in between spaces. The almost relationships. The things we meant to say. The tiny moments that should not have mattered nearly as much as they did. The heartbreak that is not dramatic enough for anyone else to notice but somehow still manages to rearrange the furniture in your chest.
You know.
Light listening.
Lately, one line from Last Train Home, from the Sob Rock album, has been following me around:
“No matter how you work it, things go wrong.”
Well.
There it is.
Preach, John.
It is also a particularly terrible truth for those of us who have ever believed that sufficient planning, careful communication, prayer, research, good behavior, or sheer force of overthinking should guarantee a favorable outcome.
You can plan. Prepare. Communicate. Think it through. Then think it through again, just in case the first seventeen rounds somehow missed the magical solution.
You can make the careful choice. The responsible choice. The thoughtful choice.
You can do everything you know how to do.
And sometimes?
Things still go wrong.
Which, frankly, feels like a design flaw.
I don't particularly enjoy this feature of being human. I would prefer a system in which sufficient preparation guarantees the desired outcome.
Unfortunately, God did not personally consult with me during the dawn of human creation.
So that's that.
Surely If I Think About It Long Enough
There is a part of me that really likes the idea that if I prepare enough, I can control the ending.
Perhaps you know her.
She researches. She anticipates. She rehearses the conversation in the shower, then rehearses a slightly improved version while driving. At 2:17 a.m., she remembers the one thing she somehow failed to address during the previous seventeen imaginary conversations and reconvenes the meeting.
I am her.
She is me.
I know this pattern well. I have walked away from conversations and replayed them twelve different ways, identified six things I could have said differently, imagined an entirely new version of myself who possesses perfect hindsight, and then wondered why I somehow felt worse.
Anxiety loves this arrangement because anxiety often whispers that if we can just think far enough ahead, we can keep something painful from happening. We can keep ourselves safe.
And who wouldn't want that?
If I choose the right words, they will understand me.
If I am a good enough parent, my child will not struggle.
If I work hard enough, I will succeed.
If I love someone well enough, they will stay.
If I prepare for every possibility, nothing will catch me off guard.
Somewhere along the way, preparation quietly crosses the border into attempting to personally manage the universe.
Planning is not bad. Responsibility matters. Accountability matters. Communication matters. Our choices matter.
Thinking before we act is generally preferable to launching ourselves into life like a raccoon who found an unlocked garbage can.
But none of those things are guarantees.
And that part is harder.
But I Did Everything Right
Sometimes one of the most painful things we can say is:
“But I did everything right.”
I communicated. I showed up. I apologized. I prayed. I tried again. I made the best decision I could with the information I had.
And it still didn't work.
The relationship ended anyway. The friendship changed. The job went to someone else. The person misunderstood you. Your child struggled. Someone got sick. The apology was not accepted. The thing you desperately hoped would happen simply... didn't.
I have seen this so many times in the therapy room.
People learn the communication skills. They work on themselves. They set the healthy boundary. They say the thoughtful thing. They pray. They seek counsel. They try again.
And sometimes it still hurts.
Sometimes doing the work changes us.
It does not always change the ending.
That can be difficult to accept because when something goes wrong, our brains often start searching for the exact moment where we must have gone wrong too.
What did I miss?
What should I have known?
Why didn't I see it?
Why did I say that?
Why didn't I say this?
Welcome to the emotional crime scene.
Apparently we are both the investigator and the prime suspect.
But here is something worth remembering:
A painful outcome does not automatically mean you made a bad decision.
You can communicate clearly and still be misunderstood. You can love someone deeply and still lose the relationship. You can be a good parent and have a child who hurts. You can make a thoughtful decision and still wish the story had ended differently.
We have a terrible habit of judging yesterday's decisions using today's information.
Of course I know more now.
I already lived through what happened.
Yesterday's me did not have that luxury.
Sometimes Blame Feels Safer
There is another reason we can become so hard on ourselves when things go wrong.
Blame can give us the illusion of control.
If this was my fault, maybe I can make sure it never happens again. If I can locate the exact mistake, perhaps I can create a foolproof system in which I never have to feel this way again.
Cute.
Unfortunately, sometimes other people make choices. Sometimes relationships change. Sometimes bodies get sick. Sometimes timing is terrible.
Sometimes life looks directly at our carefully prepared itinerary and does whatever it wants anyway.
Accepting that does not mean avoiding responsibility. It means taking responsibility for what is actually ours without claiming responsibility for everything and everybody.
There are questions worth asking:
What was mine? What can I learn? Is there something I need to repair? Would I choose differently now?
But there are other questions worth asking too:
What was never mine to control? What belonged to someone else? What could I not have known then? What am I carrying that was never actually mine?
That is a much kinder investigation.
Don't Make Yourself Feel the Pain Twice
The painful thing is already painful enough.
The rejection hurts. The regret hurts. The relationship ending hurts. The dream not happening hurts. The person leaving hurts. The realization that something is not going to become what we hoped it would become hurts.
That is the first pain.
Then we sometimes add another one.
“You should have known.”
“How could you let this happen?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“You always ruin everything.”
And now we are not simply grieving what happened. We are attacking ourselves for being the person it happened to.
We feel the pain twice.
Once because it happened.
And again because we decided it should never have happened to someone smarter, wiser, better, more careful, or more lovable than us.
Life already handed us the bill.
We do not need to add a convenience fee.
What if we did ourselves a favor and chose compassion instead?
Not avoidance. Not pretending we never make mistakes.
Compassion can still tell the truth.
It can say, “I know this hurts.”
“You really wanted this to work.”
“You did not know then what you know now.”
“There may be something to learn here, but you do not have to hate yourself while you learn it.”
There is a difference between accountability and cruelty.
You are allowed to recognize where you went wrong without deciding there is something fundamentally wrong with you.
You do not have to bully yourself into becoming a better person.
Maybe the Goal Isn't Control
Maybe instead of asking:
“How do I become good enough at life that nothing ever goes wrong?”
We ask:
“How do I become someone who can meet myself when it does?”
That is a different kind of strength.
Not control.
Capacity.
The capacity to be disappointed without deciding we are a disappointment.
To acknowledge a mistake without turning ourselves into one.
To grieve something that went wrong without deciding everything is wrong.
Maybe resilience is not arranging life so perfectly that nothing hurts.
Maybe it is learning not to abandon ourselves when it does.
When My Control Runs Out
Faith has not given me a loophole around being human or guaranteed the ending I prayed for.
For me, faith has been much more about what happens when my control runs out.
I can do what is mine to do. I can learn. I can repair. I can pray. I can trust.
And eventually, I have to release the rest.
I do not particularly enjoy that part. I tend to prefer a detailed agenda.
But faith gives me somewhere to stand when the agenda falls apart.
Which is incredibly inconvenient.
But apparently God already finalized the design.
I checked.
If You Are Tired of Being So Hard on Yourself
Maybe you know this pattern.
If you are holding yourself to impossible standards, replaying old decisions, struggling with anxiety or hypervigilance, carrying the effects of painful experiences, or simply wanting to find more compassion for yourself, therapy can help.
At Agape Counseling Center, our therapists can help you slow down those thoughts, better understand the patterns that keep you stuck and where they may have come from, look honestly at what is actually yours to carry, and practice responding to yourself with both accountability and kindness.
Because life will hand us enough hard things on its own.
We do not have to volunteer to become one of them.
Here's a quick guide handout. Enjoy!
One More Thing, John
This does leave me with one small dilemma.
There is a part of me that genuinely wants John Mayer to find his true love and get his happy ending. I want someone to love this man so well that he finally runs out of devastating observations about heartache.
I really do.
And then there is another, significantly more selfish part of me that quietly wonders:
But... what happens to the songs?
Apparently I would like John to be deeply emotionally fulfilled while continuing to provide me with beautifully worded reflections on longing, heartbreak, regret, and all the strange little spaces in between.
Which is unfair.
Definitely even rude.
So hang in there, John.
Find true love. Get your happy ending. Become wildly emotionally secure. I want that for you.
And if, completely unrelated to my own entertainment needs, you happen to keep writing beautiful songs about love, loss, timing, and the complicated business of being human...
I will be here.
In the meantime, I'll love you.
Platonically. Obviously.
Sheesh.
For Further Reading
Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
A reader friendly introduction to self compassion, including how we can respond to mistakes, painful experiences, and feelings of inadequacy with greater kindness without abandoning accountability or personal growth.
Dennis Greenberger and Christine A. Padesky, Mind Over Mood, Second Edition
A practical cognitive behavioral therapy resource for understanding connections between thoughts, emotions, and behavior and learning strategies for responding differently to unhelpful thinking patterns.
About the Author
Sarah Plassman, MSW, LISW-S, is a therapist and owner of Agape Counseling Center in Centerville, Ohio, and the author of Sheesh! And Other Thoughts on Being Human. Being a therapist has shaped the way she sees people, relationships, pain, joy, growth, and all the complicated things we carry with us.Through her writing, Sarah shares some of what she has learned from years in the therapy room, her own life, and simply paying attention to what it means to be human, with clinical insight, compassion, curiosity, and usually a little humor.
Because apparently, if she goes too long without saying something weird, she starts becoming suspiciously well adjusted, and nobody wants that.
Educational Disclaimer
This article is intended for educational and reflective purposes only. It provides general mental health information and is not a substitute for individualized assessment, diagnosis, treatment, or advice from a qualified mental health professional. Experiences with anxiety, trauma, hypervigilance, self criticism, and other mental health concerns vary from person to person.
