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

I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain 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 supposed 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 remained low, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and accepting the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, 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 requires patience – 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 disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to reverse things, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the task you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each 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 alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles 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 important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions caused by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to weep.