Embracing Our Unplanned Challenges: Why You Cannot Simply Press 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug 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 down. And then I would face 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 Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow 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 honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to erase events, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to press reverse and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a ability developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to sob.