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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as being sad – 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 alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my young child 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 nursing – 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 changing again before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. 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 sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; 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 wept as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the intense emotions caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction 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 urge to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a skill evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.