Radical Acceptance (Part 5 of the How To Heal series)

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When we set out to create positive change and healing in our lives, those actions must come from a place of love and trust in ourselves. The key is practicing radical acceptance of ourselves and our circumstances. 

As you move through your healing journey, you may have experienced times when you made a decision to change something in your life. You made a checklist or a set of rules to follow, but then you didn’t end up making as much progress as you wanted. You thought you just must not be good at healing or taking control of your life, so you gave up.

Often, this happens because your actions are rooted in shame, guilt, buffering, or trying to avoid pain. To make positive change, you have to come from a positive place. This starts with our previous steps of radical self-love, self-trust, honesty, and listening. 

The next step in the hierarchy of healing is to accept where you are, accept your current circumstances. 

Radical Acceptance

Acceptance is the idea that you are okay with what’s happening in the present moment. You don’t need to judge the moment or your behavior. It’s saying, “This is the way things are right now and that's okay.”

We’re often afraid to fully accept our circumstances because we think that if we’re okay with how things are, it implies that we don’t care. That we’re powerless, defeated, and we’ll never take action to improve or grow.

But the opposite is true. Acceptance is not about excusing yourself from responsibility or giving up. In fact, the faster you accept your current reality, the easier it will be for your nervous system to calm down and to problem solve. It will be easier for you to show compassion to yourself and get into action.

It reminds me of the Buddhist saying that “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

There are facts, and there are our interpretations of the facts. Often, it’s what we make things mean that hurts us the most. And it is entirely unnecessary. 

Imagine that you’re sitting in horrible traffic. It’s unpleasant and uncomfortable to be sitting there waiting for so long. But when you become frustrated, angry, and try to resist it, that’s where suffering comes in. You are adding more pain to the moment. Instead, you can choose to accept that there is always a lot of traffic on that particular road, you plan for it, and take different actions (e.g. driving a different route or leaving earlier). 

When we struggle because we believe something should be different from how it is, we’re fighting reality. When we resist our feelings, ourselves, and our experience, we create suffering.

Acceptance is going with the flow, and it’s what you see in people that seem to be at peace, even when things are chaotic. 

Accepting Other People’s Behavior

Radical acceptance applies to other people’s behavior, as well. Maybe your spouse or partner committed to doing something and didn’t follow through. Or your kids are misbehaving. You can choose to accept that they are acting the way they’re acting. 

Of course, as parents, we also have a responsibility to teach our kids better ways to behave, manage their feelings, get their needs met, and demonstrate their emotions. So, we do have to take action (more on that next week). 

For example, you’re going through the bedtime routine with your child, and they start kicking and screaming. Try thinking something like, “Okay, this kid is having a big feeling cycle. I thought we were going to bed, but now here we are. This is hard. I didn’t anticipate this (Soothe yourself a little bit). Well, what’s next?”

It’s an exercise, a practice:

• Look at the situation
• Narrate it as true and factual
• Accept it
• Decide whether you need to take action or not

The faster that you get to the point of accepting what is happening right now, the faster you can give yourself some compassion and figure out the next right thing. 

Challenges to Acceptance

Lack of Self-Trust. For many years, I had a lot of trouble when plans changed because I felt out of control. I felt like all my planning and work was for nothing. I would then get defensive. I would blame. I would get frustrated.

The reason this was so hard for me was that I didn’t trust myself to be able to handle what was going on if I hadn’t anticipated and planned for it in advance. That’s why it’s so important to start with a foundation of self-love and self-trust as you begin to heal.

Comparison. Another challenge to acceptance is comparison. When we don’t feel comfortable within ourselves, we look to the world or our social groups to tell us how we’re supposed to act and how we should be. We look at others and think, “That’s the right way to be a mom,” or “That’s the right way to be a woman,” rather than accepting ourselves as we are.

Difficult Emotions. Another big thing is our emotions. We have to be honest with ourselves about how we’re truly feeling and accept those emotions. You are going to feel angry sometimes. You are going to feel jealous, greedy, impatient, disappointed, and hurt. It’s a part of life. 

As Sharon Salzberg says in her book, Lovingkindness, “Pain is not a sign of things gone wrong. Our lives are actually a constant succession of pleasure and pain, getting what we want and then losing it. We experience pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, constantly changing out of our control. This is what the world is naturally providing, and still we can be at peace.”

When you allow the pain to flow through you, the feelings will pass, like clouds in the sky. Seasons in your life that are painful will end, and new wonderful moments will come. That is the nature of this experience of being human on the earth.

Buffering. We all have behaviors that we sometimes do that help us avoid reality. This resistance comes from a natural desire to be safe. We want to feel like we have control. We want to be able to influence our world. And we don't want to feel pain.

So we buffer. We create distance between ourselves and the pain. Maybe you create a distraction, like watching a funny movie. Some people might take a bath, go for a walk in nature, have a nice conversation with a friend, have a drink, or buy something. 

Whatever you’re doing to create that buffer, just be honest about it. With full love and full trust, accept what you are doing and know that you can shift that behavior whenever you need to. 

Buffering can also take the form of people pleasing if you are doing things for others so that you can feel better, safe, or more loved. 

Procrastination. Another strategy is procrastination. You want to just put your head in the sand, numb out, and ignore the situation altogether. 

4 Steps to Radical Acceptance

Our mantra for radical acceptance is:

This is the way things are right now, and that’s okay.

Here are 4 steps you can use to walk yourself through the process of accepting:

Step 1: Acknowledge the facts. Figure out what’s actually happening without judging it. 

Step 2: Accept the facts. Use phrases like, “This is happening,” or “This thing happened.” When you’re not editorializing the situation, it makes space for new thoughts and feelings. It creates clarity and perspective. 

Step 3: Attune to your feelings. Give room to your thoughts and feelings. Go back to the tools of radical love, trust, honesty, and listening. Process the negative emotion, and soothe yourself if you need to.

Step 4: Act. Take positive, intentional action. This is also the final step of the hierarchy of healing. Tap into your internal wisdom and creativity. Take action from a place of deep acceptance, love, and trust (rather than fear, anger, insecurity, or resistance). 

When in doubt, always come back to self-love. 

There are going to be difficult aspects of your personality or behavior that you want to change. That's okay. But at your core, you want to accept yourself and accept the truth about where you're at right now and who you're showing up as. 

When you embrace all the different parts of yourself and accept those parts unconditionally, you’re so much more likely to make shifts with love, compassion, generosity, and grace. Accept your body, your mental health, your personality. Take really good care of yourself. 

The faster you can accept the hard things in life as reality, the less you resist those things, the faster you will be able to take that next right step.

You’ll Learn:

• Why we struggle to accept reality
• The truth about acceptance and taking action
• Real life examples of challenging circumstances and how we can be more accepting of them
• 4 steps to practice radical acceptance

Resources:

• Episode 161: Radical Self Love [How to Heal, part 1]
• Episode 162: Radical Self Trust [How to Heal, part 2]
• Episode 163: Radical Honesty [How To Heal, part 3]
• Episode 164: Radical Listening[How To Heal, part 4]
• Episode 123: 3 Unavoidable Aspects of Parenting
• Calm Mama Confessions: Getting Sober
• Episode 157: Practicing Attunement to Create Emotional Health
• Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg