Reality acceptance skills

One way to tolerate distressful, upsetting, or overwhelming situations is to practice accepting things exactly the way they are (Linehan 1993b). To do this, try your best to let go of your struggle to change your thoughts, emotions, or the situation right now in the present moment and to allow things to be exactly as they are.

This sounds kind of strange, doesn’t it? If you are paralyzed with fear about leaving your home or being in company, or are tormented by worries, why would you want to let go of the struggle to change things? Why on earth would you want to accept things the way they are? Well, paradoxically, many people we have worked with have found that accepting things just the way they are, at least for right now, has often been the only way out of their suffering. Also, acceptance is the antidote to emotional avoidance, and many people have found that acceptance can be a life-­changing, new way to relate to their own experiences.

By “accept, ” we don’t mean surrender, give up, or even like or enjoy your experiences; we simply mean stopping the constant struggle to run away or escape from your experiences and allowing them to be what they are. You can accept something and still work to change it. In fact, to successfully change something in your life, you may need to accept it first. For instance, you can accept that you struggle with an anxiety disorder, and doing so might make you feel more at peace with yourself and less judgmental about your problems. At the same time, you can read this book and seek therapy or treatment to help yourself change.

Another important point about acceptance is that you do not need to accept the future. We know that you can accept the past because the past has already happened, and realistically what else are you going to do? It also makes a lot of sense to accept the present, because it is happening. But, you can’t know exactly what will happen in the future, so we would suggest that you be careful about accepting what might or might not occur in the future. If it helps you to accept things about the future, make sure that those things you choose to accept are very likely to happen. Otherwise, acceptance can easily lead to hopelessness about the future (I have to accept that I’ll never have a job or a romantic partner, make decent money, be happy, be less anxious, and so on).

Here are a few other important points about acceptance:

· Acceptance is something you continually practice but never complete. Acceptance can be a lifelong practice; it’s not like passing a test or finishing a course.

· Acceptance gets easier and more effective the more you practice it.

· Acceptance does not get rid of your emotions or thoughts; it helps you to have them without as much suffering.

· Don’t use acceptance to avoid your emotions, thoughts, or life.

· Acceptance can feel invalidating (that is, dismissive of the gravity of your problems) if someone else tells you to do it (“Just accept it! ”). Don’t let that stop you, and don’t use it in an invalidating way with yourself. Just encourage yourself to drop the struggle against reality, and practice allowing things to be the way they are right now (but not necessarily forever).

Acceptance also can help you to allow things to be the way they are and to do what is effective or needed. Often, people resentfully refuse to accept things the way they are or even to do anything that might help their situation (because they don’t want it to be the way it is in the first place). Dr. Marsha Linehan (1993b) calls this willfulness, which involves railing against reality, refusing to accept things the way they are, pretending that things are different or acting as if things were not the way they are, trying to force things to be different, and refusing to do what is effective or required (ibid.).

Let’s say, for example, that your boss uses an incredibly blunt manner when giving you feedback on your performance, and you and your coworkers have found that this is not going to change anytime soon. You feel hurt and angry when your boss gives you feedback in this way, and you don’t want to accept it. In fact, you keep saying to yourself, My boss shouldn’t be this way! This is not appropriate! Then, feeling angry, you refuse to accept the feedback from your boss (even if the delivery is poor but the message is valid) or to do anything to help yourself cope with your emotional reactions to that feedback, because you think, This shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Therefore, you just end up more upset and, during the next performance review, get the same feedback in the same annoying manner, because you haven’t changed anything. This would be an example of willfulness.

In contrast, if you were practicing acceptance, you could work on accepting that your boss has this unfortunate interpersonal style and that it hurts you, and then figuring out what to do about it. For instance, you might use an emotion regulation skill (see the next chapter) to deal with your hurt feelings, use mindfulness to allow the comments to roll off your back, or start looking for a different job with a boss whose style is more compatible with your needs.

Finally, when you practice acceptance, it often helps to make a commitment to yourself in the moment to take that path. Sometimes, when difficult things happen, it’s as if you have reached a fork in the road, and on one path (let’s call it the “Path to Misery”), you have avoidance, denial, worry, rumination, willfulness, and all the things you could do that lead to more suffering. On the other path, the road leads to acceptance, where you might still have upsetting thoughts or emotions but are able to come to some kind of peace with them. Do your best to remind yourself, whenever you need to, to take this latter path, toward acceptance.