Dr Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre says that, in her practice, she has never met a patient who fully believed in and accepted what happened to them in the past. She believes this is at the root of all mental and emotional health problems: not fully accepting past experiences or traumas, even on some level.

This could mean not accepting that you’re not rich enough or beautiful enough, that your parents treated you a certain way, that a woman or man rejected you, or that you didn’t get into medical school, for example etc..

At the heart of it all is an inability to accept what has happened, what didn’t happen, or how things turned out.