Facing Our Unexpected Challenges: Why You Cannot Simply Press 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

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

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, 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 required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. 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 pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have often found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem endless; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. 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 no solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions caused by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, 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 guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have great about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the desire to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to weep.