Negative mood and affect are resistance to what is. They are us saying, “No! I cannot tolerate this! I will not tolerate this!” It is not the thing itself that makes us depressed or anxious. It is our resistant relationship to it. Simply put, it is our resistance to accepting that it is. It is this fight that gets somaticized as depression and anxiety, as sadness and fear.

We give a lot of thought to how we are different from the other animals in the animal kingdom, even superior to them. We are, after all, just another one of those animals in that kingdom, and we would do well to give more thought to how we are like them. They do not always do worse than we do. In fact, they seem often to do better in many regards. One of the ways in which they seem to do better than we do is by accepting what is. Our particular capacity for intellectualization often gets us in trouble by getting us stuck. The other animal species’ lack of that particular capacity seems to be able help them move on. For example, let’s say a non-human animal is almost killed by a predator but miraculously escapes to live another day. That animal’s reaction: shake it off and scan the horizon for the safest place to head for. Human intellect adds nuance to this thought. In other words, we dive immediately into the meanings associated with the event. Our first thought is not how to move forward. Indeed, it is about stopping and dwelling on the meaning we ascribe to the event. We stay in the event; we remain in the nature of it – that is, in the trauma of it. We know it has affected us, but if the context of the trauma remains only the event itself (even the long arc of a traumatic developmental events) and not where we are today and how we are moving forward, move forward we never will, and we will be trapped in continual, endless reenactment of the trauma. Negative mood and affect are what we typically associate with trauma symptomology – a wide range of PTSD symptoms. Remember that negative affect is a resistance to what is; it is saying No to what is, rather than Yes. It is the struggle to accept what happened to us. It is staying angry (sad and scared) about what happened to us. We know what anger does: it enables us to externalize the grief and fear associated with the trauma that are intolerable to stay with. It lifts us off those feelings and off ourselves and puts our focus on something outside of ourselves in order to identify the source of our suffering in someone or something else and to relieve us of the pain we cannot otherwise clear from our bodies and minds.

The world is not set up to offer recompense or material restitution for life events. Life events take place in a world that is often a dangerous place where we take hits of varying degrees all the time. It’s the wear and tear of living. We all experience more or less wear and tear. Trauma tends to be a lot of wear and tear. Also, what makes something traumatic is the existentially threatening quality of the event. As we’ve evolved as a civilization, death, the ultimate existential threat, has become pretty much unacceptable. We have become skilled at keeping death at bay. In any event, no matter what the threat, no matter what happens, we are responsible for how we respond to everything that happens in our life, not because it is the virtuous thing to do, but because no one else but ourselves can and will assume responsibility for what happens to us.

We in the West, particularly in the U.S., where we have experienced historically unprecedented abundance of resources and ease and safety of day-to-day living, have gotten accustomed to things going steadily well, and also to being able to make things go better. We have very little tolerance for dissatisfaction, let alone discomfort or pain. Hence, our inclination to resist what is, to say, “No! This does not feel good! I don’t like it! It feels awful! It shouldn’t be this way! Someone’s got to take this feeling away from me and make it better!” That is a response that emotionally activates us and takes us outside of our resiliency zone and, ultimately, disempowers us. We lose our agency. A lack of acceptance always does that. It limits our problem-solving options. Accepting what is keeps us in our resiliency zone, enables rational thought, and increases our chances of solving the problem (i.e., getting unstuck and moving on) and taking ourselves to safety.

Trauma recovery, which involves the ability to move on from the traumatic event – ultimately boils down to acceptance – acceptance of what happened and of how we have been affected by what happened. We say to ourselves, “How do I move forward being the person who has had this traumatic experience?” This is our work, our task, our responsibility, our journey, our story. From the time we are conceived, we develop in a certain way. We develop certain response patterns and coping skills. That makes us who we are today. That may change. That may not change. No matter how and why we developed, we alone own what we do with the selves we are today. We alone are responsible for how we continue to evolve and for our choices. Acceptance of all of that influences one’s therapy experience. Therapy, or a therapist, will not fix anything. There is nothing to fix. We are what we are. However, therapy can help us work with what we’ve got, can help us work with what we are. We can create with a therapist a space that will foster gaining greater insight into who we are and into how we became who we are, into why we do what we do, yet it will be up to us to decide what to do with that insight and to change our relationship with the world around us.

One last time: resistance to what is precludes gaining insight and making choices. And, emotionally, it’s a lot of work. Acceptance of what is makes things workable. It lightens the load.