Acceptance. What it Is…and Isn’t.

You may have been hearing people talk about acceptance more and more in past years, particularly those people who have been introduced to mindfulness, yoga, or many other mind/body approaches. 

People promise that it’s good for us to accept, but what do we actually MEAN by acceptance?  And maybe more importantly, what don’t we mean?  Acceptance, as it’s meant to be understood in Mindfulness or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is a nuanced concept.

Initially you might think, “Okay, I’m being told to accept everything.  Guess I’m going to just give up, throw in the towel, and wait for the end to come.  I’m not supposed to care about anything…I suppose that’s one way to fix my problems. (insert eye roll)”.

That is precisely NOT what acceptance is.  Acceptance does not mean giving up, not acting to make our lives better, or not caring about anything. Acceptance is allowing yourself to be fully present to whatever experience is already happening without trying to judge it, fight it or alter it.  As so eloquently put by Dr. Kelly Wilson, acceptance “is more like opening up than is it like giving up”.

Why would we want to do that?

Because fighting the reality of an experience wastes energy, causes even more distress, and reduces our ability to effectively respond to that experience.

Say you are about to go into a job interview and you are nervous and your hands are sweating.  You might say to yourself, “I can’t do this” or “I need to make my hands stop sweating.”  You are now judging and fighting your experience and because of it, your distress has gone even higher (i.e., you are distressed about your distress).  Not only are you nervous, but you are also judging that your experience of being nervous is unacceptable and must be changed.

Imagine now if you just notice without judgment and accepted your nervousness.  Instead of trying to stop your hands from sweating (which is a fool’s errand) and stop your feelings of nervousness, you open up to them.  This might look like the following:

You let those nerves wash over you, letting them touch every part of you.

You notice your sweating hands.  You feel their clamminess.

You notice your thoughts of “This is horrible” and “I’m so embarrassed”.   You don’t try to stop those thoughts or judge them.  You just see them go through your mind.

When you open up like this you change your experience into what it is: An experience.  That’s it.  It is just an experience.  Sure you don’t like it, and you don’t have to, but it is still just an experience. 

By seeing it in this way you take away some of its power and you build resilience and a greater capacity to handle the situation.  You are also able to have more flexibility in the moment, because you are not rigidly fixated on what must be.  This leads to better problem solving in the midst of stress. 

So the next time you are trying to infuse a little acceptance into your day, remind yourself “I am opening up, I am not giving up.”  Then let your experience wash over you.

Doing It Anyway

Within the last decade, there has been a revolution of sorts in therapy techniques.  What are now being called the 3rd wave cognitive behavioral therapies are gaining momentum as research demonstrates the effectiveness of these therapies.  ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is one of these 3rd wave treatments and it places less emphasis on changing your thoughts and more emphasis on accepting your thoughts, whatever they are, and not letting them stop you from doing what you value.

Traditional CBT identifies maladaptive patterns of thoughts and seeks to try to replace these thought patterns with more accurate ones.  For instance, say I have the thought “I am stupid”.  That thought is both upsetting and likely untrue.  Further, this thought may prevent whoever thinks it from engaging in things they find enjoyable.  Maybe they would like to play cards, propose a project at work, or remodel a room in their home.  The thought, “I am stupid” may prevent them from doing any of these things. 

Many therapists would work with that person to help them see that this is a mistaken thought and that there are many examples that show that person to be skillful and clever.  Hopefully in time, that person would see that they have many intellectual talents and then propose that project at work or remodel that room.  In the process, their mood would improve.

ACT handles these distressing thoughts differently.  It basically says, “We are humans, we have all kinds of random thoughts, some distressing and some not, many not even remotely true and we don’t need to listen to them.”  Instead of wrestling with these thoughts, why not let them come along for the ride (because they might anyway), but still do all the things that you value and bring you meaning. 

Research suggests that trying to get these distressing thoughts to stop (i.e., thought suppression) actually increases the thoughts anyway.  There are linguistic reasons for this that are part of the ACT theory, but for now, just do the experiment of not trying to think of a pink elephant and see what happens.  You know what happens...

You’re thinking of the pink elephant, aren’t you?

One of the most powerful parts of ACT that you can start putting into action today is doing it anyway.  Say you’re having all kinds of negative and doubting thoughts about that halloween costume you really want to try out.  “People won’t get it.” “The robot’s head will look too big.” “It’s too much for this party.”  But you REALLY want to wear this costume.  This costume is calling to you.  You’ve dreamed of this costume since childhood.  

Don’t argue with those thoughts, just let them be, and put that costume on and walk out the door.

Obviously a halloween costume isn’t life or death, but this strategy of just acknowledging your thoughts, but not letting them stop you and not trying to stop them can be applied to many areas of your life.  You can co-exist, peacefully.