Accepting Life's Unexpected Setbacks: The Reason You Can't Simply Click 'Undo'

I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, 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 arrow only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and allowing the grief and rage for things not working out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the change you were doing. 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, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments caused by the unattainability of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, 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 difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my feeling of a skill developing within to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.