By: Camden Baucke MS LLP
Terrible issues arise when we deny our reality – the reality of what’s inside of our heads and what’s all around us.
What’s inside of our heads are our thoughts, emotions, perspectives, and beliefs.
What’s outside of us are often challenges, loss, relationship issues, and/or global turmoil.
You might disapprove of something in either place, tempting your brain to deny its existence.
However, pain only festers when we ignore something simply because we don’t believe it should be there in the first place.
In this article, I’m going to teach you about acceptance – embracing everything happening inside of your body and everything happening in the world around you.
What is Acceptance?
Acceptance is a central tenet of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
ACT is a 3rd wave cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that focuses on something called psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is the practice of staying grounded in the moment and behaving in a way that fulfills your personal values.
Acceptance is a gateway to psychological flexibility because it’s what grounds you to your reality – which you can choose to react to.
Acceptance isn’t Approval
Acceptance is for the purpose of decision making – either to (1) let something stay the same or (2) to make changes.
Acceptance is NOT trying to manipulate yourself into loving something you hate.
It is not a directive for how to feel about the situation inside or outside yourself – it’s simply about physics.
For example, if I witness someone being robbed in the parking lot, I have the choice to accept or deny the reality of my situation.
I can skip over to my car and deny that anything is happening or I can accept the situation.
I can see that someone is plainly being robbed, what do I want to do now? Do I yell, intervene, or call the police? At the same time, you can choose to do nothing to not escalate the situation.
In situations like this, acceptance leads to choices.
Meanwhile, I’m also not cheering on the robber – nor am I encouraging myself for how scared I feel.
Acceptance is not approval – it’s grounding yourself to the reality that you can make decisions in.
Why is Acceptance so Hard?
Acceptance is difficult because it’s often an invisible choice stuck between two more common options.
We can become aware of a situation, but then we might judge others and ourselves quite harshly.
If you recognize you’re feeling depressed, you might think “well I shouldn’t and I’m weak“.
Turns out acceptance quickly turns into self-shaming and a spiral of negative emotions.
You can also develop an avoidant response to negativity – ignoring it altogether.
However, the point of negative emotions is for them to be addressed – either by processing emotions, challenging thoughts, or solving painful problems.
Unfortunately, if you don’t process your negative emotions and bottle them up, the bottle eventually bursts in panic or rage.
If you don’t challenge thoughts, they become louder without end.
If you don’t address your pain by pulling the metaphorical “thorn from your foot” then you are neglecting your own wellbeing and quality of life.
Essentially, the only two options (other than healthy acceptance) seem to be either (1) abusing yourself or (2) neglecting yourself.
For many, this might feel normal because this is how they were taught to treat themselves as a child.
Acceptance is the third option – a habit you can begin to build yourself.
Keeping Acceptance & Meaning Apart.
Acceptance might require you to tear this process in two.
There is acceptance of what something is, then there is the processing of what your situation means.
Again, acceptance is just the physics – the “what” of the situation.
“What” is happening and “what” are you feeling and thinking?
It’s important to first take in what everything is before you start accounting for what it could mean.
Because acceptance embraces reality, meaning needs to come second because it embraces subjective interpretation.
This means your interpretations of meaning are not always accurate and can often be shaped by plenty of ill-earned biases – especially against yourself.
When you try to accept the reality of meaning, then the lines begin to blur – you could think you’re accepting, in reality, that you’re a worthless human being.
This is the reason many people might opt for denying reality – because it can be fused with the most debatable and devastating meaning.
If you tease these apart, it resembles another aspect of ACT called cognitive defusion – which means splitting apart a perceived meaning from its actual definition.
If you want to become more accepting of reality, you need to resist the initial pull of meaning.
What does it mean that you’re struggling to manage your work?
If someone’s more likely to believe they’re a bad person, they’re more likely to interpret struggling at work as meaning they’re a bad worker.
However, that’s not reality, that’s perspective.
What does it mean to be feeling anxious? Only that your body is in a state of alert.
What does it mean to struggle with lifting a 300 pound weight? That it’s a heavy weight.
If internal and external experiences are only interpreted to identify your weaknesses – you’re not accepting life. You’re finding ways to interpret reality into possibly confirming your worst fears.
How to Start Accepting
Acceptance really takes less work than you think.
Look around at the room you’re in – all the tiny details are worth accepting because, in reality, your body is in that room.
Listen to the noises – all the little sounds you hear are worth accepting because, in reality, your body is in that room.
Look internally and examine how you’re feeling – all the swirling pools of negative and positive energy are worth accepting because, in reality, that’s what is happening in your body.
Look internally and identify what you’re thinking – all those scattering thoughts are worth accepting because, in reality, they just came across your mind.
Acceptance is about recognizing the state of your reality to see what you can work with.
You don’t have to allow your thoughts to be true nor let your emotions dictate your behavior – you can even get up and leave the room you’re in if you don’t like it.
Your choices really matter most after acceptance.
Here are 5 lessons to have in mind while you continue to accept the entirety of your life.
(1) Acceptance is simply acknowledging the grounded physics of your reality – inside and outside.
(2) Acceptance is not approval, as reality doesn’t have to dictate how you should feel about it.
(3) Acceptance is separate from meaning-making, because it does not deal in beliefs – only in reality.
(4) Acceptance is not for the purpose of beating yourself up for what “shouldn’t” exist in reality.
(5) Acceptance is paramount to overcoming avoidance, because your reality deserves purposeful choices.
Acceptance is the Beginning
Acceptance means seeing yourself and your life for what it is – not what it could, should, or would be.
In reality, could’s, should’s, and would’s don’t exist – only what is and what is not.
If you want them to exist, you’re going to have to make them exist with your actions.
If you want to start making meaningful decisions to change or stay the same, you’ll need acceptance.
Not to change a meaning, but to change behaviors which create different outcomes.
Shift around enough outcomes and you might end up with a life just a little more fulfilling than yesterday.
Reflections 
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