Working as a therapist I have often experienced significant push-back and anger from clients when exploring the concept of acceptance. This is so understandable! I often approach this with curiosity and ask clients to define acceptance and what it means to them. More often than not I hear clients describing acceptance as a form of approval, passivity, or even going so far to say acceptance means love or compassion. When people define acceptance this way it makes complete sense they get angry at the concept—as they should! Additionally, I hear the word being used in the sense of telling someone to “just get over it.” Whatever the “it” may be. However, the idea of acceptance being equated to approval is not only wrong, it can be extremely invalidating and harmful. The last thing a survivor of trauma wants to hear is they “have to accept” the behavior of the abuser when they equate acceptance with either compassion and love or approval. Moreover, being told we need to “accept” someone is an asshole, or, “accept” social injustice can be infuriating when we believe acceptance means approval or perhaps believing accepting is something we need to do for someone else. Thus, while I validate the client’s emotional reaction and spend time processing past experiences they have had with the word; I spend a great deal of time discussing how the word is not pejorative; explain what it truly means; explore how healing it can be; describe how courageous the action of acceptance is; and emphasize it is one of the most difficult things in life to do. Seriously.
This leads me to describe what is acceptance is not. I think understanding what it is not creates a path to understanding what it is. Even more so, learning what has to be accepted in our lives. Let’s start with what acceptance is not. It is not approval (I know, I know, I’ve said this. But it is worth repeating extensively). It is not love. It is not compassion. It is not giving up. This is what I constantly hear people think it is; so no wonder it pisses us off when we are told to accept something we truly believe should not be accepted!
What acceptance actually means is actively participating in life and seeing what is truly happening in the present moment. With this definition… what has to be accepted? Life and reality. Life and reality have to be accepted as it is happening. This does not mean once we accept it everything is fantastic—NOT AT ALL! By accepting facts about the present and past (and reasonable probabilities about the future) we are able to see what is real, true, and factual. We are then free to engage in effective behavior to change it. I often hear the question, why do we have to accept reality? Whether or not we accept reality it is happening anyway; if we do not accept what is happening, we become immobile, ineffective, and lose our own sense of agency. And…. in order to change reality we first have to accept reality, right? If we don’t see that things suck, we don’t do anything to change it. If we don’t see the full truth of the situation, we then are impassively living. Moreover, rejecting reality can turn pain into suffering because by losing our sense of agency we feel disempowered and feel we do not have any choices or a way out of the painful present. Rejecting reality causes us worthless, and can create despair; whereas, accepting reality can open our minds up to the possibilities we have, the power we have, the choices we have, and allows us to accurately listen to our emotions which are motivating us to take action with someone we cannot and will not tolerate.
Acceptance is purely the ability to see things as they really are and see reality for what it is. Only after being able to accept something are we able to make effective and meaningful changes because our eyes are finally open. Therefore, acceptance is the most active, difficult, and challenging skill to do in life. The biggest factor getting in the way of acceptance are the beliefs that if we accept something, we are minimizing it. Again, while this is a valid fear, this is not true. We are only minimizing things when we do not accept them because we are not acknowledging the full impact of life and are not allowing our emotions to truly come into fruition.
How do we know we are not accepting something? We feel powerless. We feel stuck. We feel hopeless, and we have no course of action. Acceptance brings us freedom to see things for what they really are and then see how and what we can do. Acceptance can offer us a sense of agency, and the power to truly feel our emotions and allow them to motivate us rather than feeling we “should not” be feeling a certain feeling. For example, anger is consistently rejected from our reality. However, anger can be an incredible catalyst to fight injustice, which we are only able to accurately see with acceptance of reality in the present moment. We can start seeing our own power and what changes we are capable of making. We can start seeing things are not okay and will not be tolerated. For example, the only way to end an unhealthy relationship is to first accept it is in fact, unhealthy. The only way to mobilize a protest is to first accept what is currently happening is unjust.
Acceptance truly opens our eyes to what is, not what we want it to be or are hoping it to be. We can avoid and pretend certain things are not occurring by not accepting them, but when we fight with reality; reality is always going to win. The only way to be an active participant in our own lives, community, and the world is to accept reality.
Acceptance is not the end goal. Acceptance is the first step. We might have to accept something multiple times in even an hour to truly see the reality of the situation. But just because we accept something, does not mean it is okay. It does not mean we approve. It does not mean we give up. It just means we fully see it and acknowledge it as the current reality, which can give us great power to do something about it. When we are not clouded with constantly feeling and thinking in absolutes (have to, must, should, never, always), we gain the freedom to see the possibility of life and truly living. We gain the strength to take control of our lives, make meaningful changes, recognize our power, and mobilize into action.