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

I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge towards finding the positive: “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 remained low, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, 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 profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised 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 unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the intense emotions caused by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. 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 distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my sense of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.