Difficult things happen. They happen to everyone and quite often, ranging from minor everyday irritants, like being stuck in a long traffic jam, to really heavy, painful things, such as losing one’s job or even a loved one. We go through life trying to manage these, often feeling helpless at not being able to prevent these things from happening or resolve them as quickly as we would like (or at all). Yet that same difficulty that can knock someone completely off their feet, seems to only shake another person slightly or even motivate them to try harder to overcome the hurdle and keep going.
What is Radical Acceptance?
Of course, there can be many reasons for the different ways people respond to hardship. There are situational factors, including the number of social supports a person has and their overall life situation, as well as internal factors, such as having an optimistic outlook or self-confidence that makes a person more likely to effectively deal with difficult things when these happen to them. There are also certain skills people can use to make it easier to not let the difficulty completely take over one’s life. One such skill is called Radical Acceptance and it is a skill taught in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), which allows people to move on rather than getting stuck. It is also effectively used for borderline personality disorder and PTSD. And it is so very easy to get stuck, especially when the problem arises seemingly completely unexpectedly and we have little power over resolving the situation, at least in the short run.
So what often happens when a difficult situation arises? Say, I’m passed over for a promotion at work. I worked very hard for the company for several years, took on extra projects, working overtime, and by all objective criteria seem to deserve the promotion. But instead, management picks my colleague, who has not been in the company as long as I have and who while speaking eloquently at team meetings, often does not follow through on agreed-upon tasks. And let’s say, the decision is final. The situation is unfair, frustrating, and upsetting. And understandably so.
How does Radical Acceptance help?
The question is, what do I do about it now? I could become angry, storm into my manager’s office, and let him or her know how unfair the decision was. I could complain to anyone who is willing to listen to what had happened. I could begin slacking off at work since I’m not being appreciated anyway. I could even quit my job. The problem is, neither one of these courses of action changes the situation or the way I feel about it for the better. That’s when Radical Acceptance comes in. Accepting radically does not mean approving of the situation.
You may still know that the situation is unfair. You may be aware that this is not at all what you were hoping for as well as aware of the emotions you experience at the moment, be it sadness, disappointment, or anger. But it does mean that you fully accept that this the way things are right now. You accept reality just as it is and is gazing at it with eyes wide open, rather than getting stuck in a vision of what “should be”. And it is this acceptance that allows you to either calmly uses problem-solve when possible or to at least decrease the negative emotions you may be experiencing.
Using Radical Acceptance to cope with everyday problems
While the concept of Radical Acceptance may make sense in theory, in practice it can be a tricky one to implement, especially when a situation is undeniably unfair, yet you have little power to change it. The skill of Turning the Mind can be helpful when you find yourself having difficulty accepting the situation for what it is. Imagine standing at a fork in the road, one path of which leads to rejection of reality and is filled with “it’s so unfair!”, “it shouldn’t have happened!” and “I’ll show them!”s, while the other path is the radical acceptance path, filled with awareness of one’s feelings and bodily sensations, with allowing oneself to experience them fully, and with wholehearted attempts to accept what is. In short, the skill of Turning the Mind involves:
- Becoming aware of and observing one’s own non-acceptance;
- Making an inner commitment to accept reality just as it is; (which will likely not last very long initially and the mind will again turn towards rejecting reality… at which point we catch ourselves and):
- Turn the mind towards acceptance, again and again, and again.
Ask yourself, in which situations do you tend to reject reality rather than accepting it? Was there anything that happened recently when you felt stuck and unable to move past a situation even though there was no way of changing it? In order to practice Radical Acceptance, you may want to make a list of such situations, both easier and more difficult ones. Using Radical Acceptance may not change the outcome of the situation (although it can make it easier to problem solve once the intensity of the negative emotions decreases), but it can certainly take away the unnecessary suffering that comes along with non-acceptance.
Practice, practice, practice!
Some practical strategies to keep in mind as you are starting to make use of Radical Acceptance is that it is a good idea to start with easier situations to practice, rather than, for example, right away trying to accept that your loved one will never change. Another important point to keep in mind is that turning the mind towards acceptance needs to be done wholeheartedly and repeatedly, or it will not work.
Going back to our earlier example, trying to radically accept that the promotion at work was offered to someone else, while at the same time deep inside hoping that the manager will change his or her mind, will only lead to more negative emotions. Also, in trying to wholeheartedly accept, keep in mind that our bodies are constantly sending signals to our brains, so adopt an open posture, make sure your fists and jaw are not clenched, and try smiling just a bit, projecting to the world and to yourself inwardly a Mona Lisa smile (in DBT called “half-smile”).
In this video, psychologist and author Marsha Linehan discusses how she learned radical acceptance and how its regular practice has transformed her life.
Accepting reality radically is hard work. It is also not all-or-nothing, so the mind often needs to be turned multiple times towards acceptance before any meaningful change can be felt. However, when true acceptance comes and as you strengthen that skill over time, it can eventually take such a load of unnecessary suffering off one’s shoulders.
Reference:
Linehan, M. (2014). DBT skills training manual. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
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