I I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day when we had to go on vacation, I sat in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent, but the usual operation, which meant that our travel plans should be canceled.
Based on this experience, I learned something valuable, everywhere, how hard it is for me to feel bad when something will go wrong. I’m not talking about injuries that change life, but all the more everyday, quietly destructive disappointments, which we will not be able to feel them, they will actively push us out.
When we were supposed to be on vacation, but there was no, I continued to experience tightening to find positive: “I can book a trip”; “At least we have tourist insurance insurance”; “This will give me something, what can be written about.” But I never felt better, just a little suppressed. And then I came across the reality that this holiday really disappeared: my husband’s operation demanded frequent changes in painful bandages, and there is a limited time on the coast of Belgium for a pleasant break on the coast of Belgium. So there is no holiday. Just disappointment and disappointment, pain and care.
I know that the worst things can happen, this is just a holiday, what a privileged problem – I know because I also tried this line. But I had to be honest with myself. At those moments when I was able to stop fighting with disappointment, and we talked about it, it seemed to me that we were experiencing something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I allowed myself all kinds of undesirable feelings, including, among other things, bitterness, resentment, hatred and rage, which, at least, felt real. From time to time it even became possible to enjoy our time together.
This reminded me of a desire that I sometimes see with my patients with psychotherapy, and I also saw in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: this therapy can somehow change our undesirable experiences, for example, to click “cancel”. But this arrow indicates only back. Faced with reality that this is impossible, and allows grief and rage for not finding out how we expected, and not the dishonest type of “rethinking”, can contribute to a change in current: from denial and depression to growth and possibility. Over time, and, of course, this will take time-this can change life.
We think about depression as a bad one – but, in my opinion, this is a kind of numbness of all emotions, the pressure of anger and sadness, disappointment, joy and vitality, as well as everyone else. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but a sense of what is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.
I often found myself in this desire to click “cancel”, but my baby helps me to flow out of this. As a new mother, I was sometimes amazed at the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only feeding – sometimes more than an hour at a time, and then again in less than an hour – and not only a change, and then again a change before you even finish the change that you changed. These everyday precious tasks among many other practicality, wrapped in guardianship are comfortable and with great privilege. Although they are also, in moments, tireless and exhausted. What shocked me the most – in addition to imprisonment – was emotional requirements.
I thought my most important work as a mother was to satisfy my child's needs. But soon I realized that it is impossible to satisfy all my child’s needs at the time when she demanded this. Her hunger may seem direct; My milk could not come quickly enough, or it came too fast. And then we had to change her – but she hated to change her, and cried, as if she had fallen into the dark whirlwind of death. And although sometimes she seemed comforted from the hugs that we gave her, in other cases it seemed that she was lost for us, that nothing of what we could offer could help.
Soon I found that my most important work as a mother was the first to survive, and then help her to digest overwhelming feelings, caused by the inability to protect her from all discomfort. When she developed the ability to accept and digest milk, she also had to develop the ability to digest her emotions and suffering, when milk did not come, or when she was painful, or in any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and mine), rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My work was not that everything went well, but to help bring the meaning of her emotional experience, which is not so good.
For her, it was the difference between being with someone, who tried to give her only good feelings, and instead helped to grow the ability to experience all feelings. For me, there was a difference between a desire to feel perfectly to do perfect work as an ideal mother, and instead develop the ability to endure her own far-reaching in order to do a good job, and understand the disappointment and wrath of my daughter. The difference between my attempt to stop her cry and understanding when she had to cry.
Now that we crossed through this, I feel less acutely, the desire to hit “cancel” and rewrite our story to the one where everything goes well. I find hope in my sense of the ability to grow inside me to understand that it is impossible and understand that when I am busy, trying to transfer the holiday, I really need to cry.
My Sarner is a psychotherapist NHS and the author of the book When I grow up – conversations with adults in search of adulthood
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