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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those instances 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 put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and allowing the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish 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 changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings caused by the impossibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity developing within to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.