Embracing Our Unplanned Challenges: Why You Can't Simply Press 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, 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 moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes 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 – functionality combined with nurturing – 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 feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem endless; my milk could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings caused by the impossibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, 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 discontent and rage with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a ability evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.