Stop Trying to Accept Everything: A More Realistic Approach

Working with many clients (and being a normal human myself), I've noticed a recurring pattern in the interpretation and usage of the word acceptance. I often hear questions like:"How can I accept my shitty father?""How can I accept my wife who stonewalls me?""I just want to accept that XY is not meeting my needs and feel good again."

In these examples, and many more, acceptance is directed towards one thing: the negative, unpleasant aspect. It's aimed at the uncomfortable emotion, the hurtful person, or some other internal or external occurrence. Naturally, you don't want to be bothered or consumed by it, so you view acceptance as a panacea, a medicine to make you immune to any kind of frustration.

But when the negative emotion persists (because you've made it the star of your mental stage), secondary emotions disguised as judgments creep in, and you spiral deeper. You focus not only on the lack of acceptance but now also on the shame you feel for your perceived inability to be an all-accepting holy spirit. You find yourself in a whirlpool of unfulfilled desire for acceptance, guilt towards yourself and others, shame for your inability, and fear of how to move forward. This hyper-focus on the situation, mixed with a cocktail of emotions, consumes you more and more. How could it not? Your whole being responds to a situation that could have been handled more easily, all because of a misperception of acceptance (and the habit of beating yourself up).

Let's break it down:

Acceptance = seeing reality for what it is, acknowledging your emotions and thoughts regarding the situation, and not fighting against it. This means not avoiding your feelings by withdrawing, fleeing, or denying; instead, be present with yourself!

Wanting to be emotionless when there are emotions present is not acceptance. True acceptance involves going through the cycle of an emotion, integrating it, and then making an informed decision. Often, we interrupt this process by reacting to an emotion before fully digesting it. Don't train yourself to be numb, spaced out, or disconnected. Stay connected. See the emotion, feel it.

How can you accept something you hate? Does acceptance contradict recurring strong emotions? Does acceptance mean you need to LIKE that your partner is messy and leaves dirty cups everywhere?

There's one question (or answer) to all of these: What exactly can you accept? There must be something, even if it's not what you initially want to accept. Let's start somewhere and remove the blockage of shame. Can you accept the anger or frustration you feel when you see your partner's dirty coffee cups around the house? Or can you accept that the cups are dirty? Maybe your partner being messy? Maybe none of these, but instead: are you able to accept that you are not able or willing to accept this?

Why do you feel the need to accept your partner's messiness (or whatever fits your situation)? Sometimes, the desire for acceptance masks an inability to handle and sit with our painful emotions and is more directed back at us and not really at the object that sucks up all of our energy. Often, we are the ones seeking our own presence amidst the emotions occurring in response to a certain situation.

Generally, we tend to confuse strong emotional reactions with a lack of acceptance. However, this is a misconception. It's possible to have accepted a situation intellectually while still experiencing intense emotional responses to it. An emotional reaction doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of acceptance.

We need to expand our view on what constitutes acceptance while limiting the over-focus on what we can't or are unwilling to accept. Having certain emotions is not always within our control, so making the existence of uncomfortable emotions the measure for acceptance is not the solution. Instead, ask yourself: What can be processed and integrated, and why?

The process of acceptance often involves acknowledging both the situation and our feelings about it. It is more about how we relate to our experiences and emotions, rather than about controlling or eliminating them!