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

I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. On the day we were planning to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected 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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the urge to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.