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

I hope you had a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug towards seeking optimism: “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 really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that option only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this urge to erase events, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped 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 changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my sense of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.