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Seeing things as they are in an essential concept in Buddhist philosophy and psychology, as well as Freudian theory.   So much emotional turmoil, what is known as suffering in Buddhism, is due to the tendency to withdraw from and deny the true nature of things, what Freud called the configuration of reality.

 

It is perhaps the most common dilemma I encounter with patients in my clinical practice. A person has great difficulty accepting what has transpired, what has happened, what has come to be – a secret that has been revealed, a life that has been lost, a relationship that has ended.

 

Why is the truth of what’s happening — reality — things as they are — such a dilemma for many people? Part of the answer lies in the recognition that — as the truth of a situation emerges over time, sometimes quite suddenly — a change is foisted upon us. Things as they were can no longer be. A life lived with health, for example, is suddenly punctured with the onset of disease. A friend we trusted does something so hurtful that we can never trust again.

 

One might guess that change, specifically change that involves some kind of loss, triggers a mourning process that is difficult for most of us. Being laid off, for example, even if it brings about some sense of relief or unburdens a person from a challenging or unhealthy workplace, typically involves encountering loss -– the mourning of no longer seeing colleagues, of one’s proficiency in a particular role, of the affirmation of admiring clients, and so on. The fruits of one’s efforts are no longer to be enjoyed; it’s over!

 

Yet what I have found is that these types of changes, change that involves some type of loss or transition, are usually not too difficult to resolve and move on from. After some period of mourning, a new reality emerges, and a person transitions into new situations and experiences.

 

Conversely, experiences in which what was perceived as the reality of a person or a situation / is suddenly proven false, / the moment when you realized you only knew part of the story and have not been privy to the subtext or other aspects of a situation, / seem to be more perplexing and more difficult to resolve.

 

Unlike the strong spirit of innovation that characterizes modern technology, a fundamental principle of evolutionary psychology is that the human mind appears to be invested in maintaining consistent cognitive conclusions/it wants to be right — even as the true nature of experience, the emerging truth of reality — demands revisions and new perspectives. Simply stated, the mind is stubborn — it does not want to admit there are other possible views or perspectives.

 

Just think how long it took for anyone to question the notion that the earth was flat. Evolution is not really innovative — and is certainly not quick in responding to changing circumstances and emerging opportunities.

 

Rather, evolution is a slow, gradual process of necessity in which the need to adapt to changing circumstances is supported by serendipitous discovery. Similarly, the mind, and all of its perceptions and thoughts and conclusions — and the emotions our thoughts stimulate– would prefer to remain inert, even as the world around us confronts this inertia every day.

 

The mind seeks homeostasis; thinking differently about anything is an investment of energy that could be better allocated, if we think in terms of evolution, to simpler goals with more immediate positive gain.

 

Returning to our discussion of seeing things as they are, reality, what I would like to suggest is that as we live our lives and the reality of situations and people unfolds, as things clarify, what seems so difficult for the human mind is to revise what it perceives, thinks and … by extension, feels. The mind is conditioned to foreclose rather than expand.

 

If, for example, a child had to resort to thinking she is responsible for her father’s drinking — because it would have been overwhelming for her to MORE accurately conclude that her father drinks because he is unable to tolerate his emotions and has a significant brain disease that predisposes him to addiction — she will be oriented toward living a life that reflects and perpetuates this perspective.

 

And so, two decades later when as an adult she is overlooked for a promotion at work, she may assume that the reason she did not get the promotion had to do with some weakness or limitation on her part. She may never have considered other plausible explanations — such as her manager letting his personal feelings get in the way – perhaps for whatever reason he had been jealous of this employee for a long time — and it was this issue, not any limitations or weakness on her part, that prevented her from getting the promotion.

 

I call this tendency of the mind “accommodation.” No matter what the circumstances, the mind seems eager to make sense of a current event with a belief or perspective, an assumptive framework, formulated long ago and held in place by repeated efforts over and over again to maintain the validity of this perspective over all other possible perspectives. The mind finds a way to craft a familiar argument, a predominant thesis or view, and, in this way, nothing ever really changes – not the world one sees, and not the seer who see it.

 

Accommodation captures the psychological mechanisms and dynamics implicated in our understanding of trauma. Most traumatic experiences that remain unresolved are due to the trauma failing to have been metabolized, digested by the mind, processed in a way that allows the trauma to disintegrate as it is absorbed. Just as food needs to be digested, absorbed, and expelled, so too does any experience – especially trauma.

 

By this I am emphasizing that the trauma — in order to be fully resolved — cannot just be accommodated to, further affirming whatever the person was and believed before the trauma. Rather, the trauma needs to be absorbed by the person’s mind and soul. We need to be permanently altered by experience – whether we prefer the experience or not. We cannot remain the same — and the accumulation of life experience necessitates that we innovate, that we think and feel differently, as we encounter the emerging reality of people, places and events, AND of ourselves. It is our proclivity to resist being altered by experience that is the problem, the challenge we must overcome.

 

In a future episode, I will discuss the antidote to accommodation — assimilation. In assimilation, a person is able to absorb experience in a productive way that allows for innovative thinking and feeling, and strengthens one’s capacity to actively engage with a keener perspective on what is really happening. Assimilation can be challenging because it goes against what the mind seems programmed to do, but if assimilation is practiced it can develop like a muscle and become quite adept at helping a person see, understand, and act in accordance with the reality of experience.