Welcome to psychcentral. As my friend Skeezyks would say, welcome and I hope you find the support you are looking for here.

I would like to ask a few questions:

To what extent would you sacrifice to make your unit better?
Before being passed over for a nomination, would you say that your teachers knew of your commitment to your unit?

If I had to guess, I would say that you were very committed to your unit and your teachers knew this about you. You sound like you gave this unit 100% and although achieving this honor would have felt good, it would not have affected your performance very much because you were already giving 100% - you cannot give more than 100%.

You have seen first hand how powerful being rejected has affected you. How powerful would being accepted for this honor been for you? How powerfully would it have affected your future performances? How powerfully did receiving this honor affect the people who ultimately won this award? If losing out on this honor affected you, then winning this honor undoubtedly affected those who won. Perhaps they were only giving 90% before but now they are giving 100%. Giving the award to them then, may have strengthened the entire unit.

I have done this before in my own life - I have seen people who because of low self-esteem (for instance) were not living up to their potential. By promoting or honoring them, their confidence rose and they became a much better member of my unit. They might not have been the most deserving, but the unit deserved the boost in performance it realized when this person began to feel better about themselves.

In my case, I often took the person who was passed over aside and explained my reasons to them, but this is not always possible or a good idea. If you know that you were doing a good job, please consider that your teachers knew this too and passing you over was part of a greater plan.