Facing Life's Unexpected Setbacks: Why You Can't Simply Click 'Undo'

I hope you had a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept experiencing a pull towards finding the positive: “I can {book a replacement trip|schedule another vacation|arrange a different getaway”; “At least we have {travel insurance|coverage for trips|protection for journeys”; “This’ll give me {something to write about|material for an article|content for a story”. But I never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that button only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to erase events, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the change you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings caused by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.