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The idea isn’t a new one. It has basis in many ancient methods of seeing the world for what it really is. But let’s borrow the term from DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy), Radical Acceptance. We know that acceptance is about consenting to receive or take on something offered, and that radical in this case is about thorough or completely doing something in a different way, so when we put the two together it sounds like completely taking on what is offered. In this case, it is the reality of a situation you are being asked to radically accept.
Radical acceptance is: fully and completely accepting reality, with the caveat that they may even be difficult and painful situations, but we still accept them.
It’s important to point out that in this case acceptance does not mean approval. You can still disapprove of a situation, but be in a position to radically accept it regardless of that disapproval. As stated above, the term comes from DBT where dialectic is dual, or two. I can have anxiety AND I can be okay, both at the same time. I can radically accept my anxiety without approving of it or agreeing with what it tells me. What I am accepting is that it exists and is a part of my reality.
The crux of it is, that life will always throw you a curveball. We know this. We have experienced this time and time again, and many people get stuck in the “why-me?”’s. Rather than accepting the situation, they try to focus on the why-it-happened piece. And while this can be helpful in retrospect to sort out how to avoid it in the future, in the fresh moment of the issue, it doesn’t often help to stop and ponder the secrets of the universe — what we need is radical acceptance. What it can sound like is:
Well that happened, this sucks, what now?
I like to think of specific situations here, like suppose you’re heading to a pot-luck and you trip, dropping the dish you prepared, the casserole pan shatters and the food is all over the floor.
If you yell and scream, or pause to check out the level of the floor, to see what you might have tripped over, or write an angry letter to the casserole company to express your frustration over the pan’s demise, you are avoiding the situation and are still left with a mess and no food for your pot-luck.
Instead, if you radically accept this moment, “well, that happened”, and acknowledge how it makes you feel, “this sucks”, and then ask the important question, “what now?” you are able to move through the problem and start finding solutions.
Your next steps might look like this:
1) You do a cursory clean up of the mess, likely to come back and do a better job of it once you return home. (Or, depending on your time or the likelihood of pets/other people discovering shards of glass with their paws/feet, you might need to take the time required to do the ‘better job’ from the start.)
2) you decide whether you have time/energy/ingredients to make something new at home, or plan to pop by a store on your way to the pot-luck to pick up something not home-made.
3) You make it to your event a little later than intended, and now you have a story to share.
Radically accepting the reality of the situation allows us to move from the “why me!” to the “how am I going to deal with this?” stage much quicker.
If the above scenario happens and you don’t know anything about this great tool, you might wallow in the self-pity of the loss, you might get angry at yourself, or even cry over spilled food. It happens, for sure, so give yourself grace because this tool might be new to you. Take a deep breath, pull it out of your tool-box and remind yourself that what you need in this moment is “what’s next”, not “let’s examine what happened”, that might be later, when you are reflecting on your day: What could have happened differently?
Radical acceptance can save us from spiralling down into the why-me’s and instead encourage us to get curious about things. If you look at life’s challenges as opportunities to hone your skills, or as ways to play — imagine how different you’d show up in your own life
Dr. Marsha Linehan has published the 10 Steps to Radical Acceptance and they go something like this:
1) Observe – when a situation happens, you may be questioning or fighting reality, it shouldn’t have happened this way, or why-me?
2) The reality – what happened, happened, even if it is unpleasant, we can’t make it unhappen.
3) The reason – there are reasons for what happened, even if we can’t see them now.
4) Practice – take the time to accept your whole self in this moment, use mindfulness or relaxation tools.
5) List – make a list of what it would look like if you did accept this reality, and then do those behaviours as if you already accepted it.
6) Imagine – what would it look like if you accepted this situation, what would you do next?
7) Attend – notice the sensations in your body as you think about what you need to accept.
8) Allow – allow emotions to arise, whether they are disappointment, sadness, grief, anger, etc.
9) Acknowledge – note that even when there is pain, life is worth living.
10) Pros & Cons – if you still find yourself resisting this acceptance, do a pros and cons list.
When it comes to acceptance, radically choosing to focus on what we can control, rather than what we can’t, can feel liberating. It gives us more energy to effectively cope with the situation and take care of ourselves at the same time.
I can recall an incident in my childhood, I must have been 15 or so, where I was making home-made pizza. It was in the oven right on the rack, with a timer on, and a few minutes before it was time to take it out the oven, but I received a rare long-distance phonemail. When the timer went off, I hollered to the other room to see if someone else would remove it from the oven. And when they went to take it out, it was hot and they didn’t use the tools available (which I hadn’t taken out of the drawer/cupboard yet) and the pizza fell and made a mess all over the inside of the oven and down the front of the stove (it fell between the gap of the open oven door).
I remember how much “trouble” I got into for the incident. The yelling and the blaming, and I wasn’t even THERE when it happened. We had a long flipper left over from summer barbecue days which we used to maneuver the pizza out onto the tray, while wearing oven mitts. Unfortunately, the one taking the pizza out didn’t use two of those tools, and simply tried to pull the pizza onto the tray with bare hands. The worst part of this was — he was the one who had taught me to use the flipper and oven mitts in the first place, so why wasn’t he following his own advice?
In this situation it was my only option to choose radical acceptance, even though I didn’t know the terminology back then. It had happened, I hadn’t been there to do my part, and now I needed to say “what now?”
1) I needed to wait for the oven to cool down before I could clean it off, but I picked up what I could right away.
2) We still needed to eat dinner, so I made a pot of pasta with some sauce (not nearly what I’d had in mind, but it was my night to make dinner).
3) We all ate and I eventually was able to clean the oven inside and out.
But what I remember most about this incident — why it is even something I remember 30 some-odd years later, was how much trouble I got into for something I hadn’t even done. If only my parents had known about radical acceptance. If only it was realized that life always throws us curveballs, but we get to decide how we handle them.
Radical acceptance supports healthy outcomes by reducing stress and anxiety, and deeply limiting the amount of frustration and anger one might feel over a situation. It gives us the opportunity to have more fun in life by looking at the possibilities for salvaging a situation. We end up being more solution-oriented when we avoid the why-me’s of reality, empowering us to take control of our own story. How might my memory of the pizza event have changed if instead of yelling and blaming, my parents had radically accepted the situation and we’d all moved forward into the what now of it?
A really good quote I came across recently is reminding ourselves that “Life is NOT happening TO me, it is happening FOR me and THROUGH me.” If you’re struggling to see how to radically accept your reality or situation, reach out for a free 30 minute discovery call and lets chat.
