Facing Life's Unexpected Setbacks: The Reason You Cannot Simply Click 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, 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 blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted 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 sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could assist.

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 triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my feeling of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to sob.