Facing Life's Unplanned Setbacks: The Reason You Can't Simply Click 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. 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 used that reasoning 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the pain and fury for things not working out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. 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 solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings caused by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a skill developing within to understand that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.