Facing Our Unexpected Challenges: The Reason You Can't Simply Click 'Undo'

I trust your a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth important, all over again, about how difficult 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 – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down 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 was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this urge to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, 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 – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving 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 despised being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.