Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance simply means that you are acknowledging reality. You are acknowledging what happened or what’s currently happening. Because fighting reality only intensifies our emotional reaction.

We might fight reality by judging a situation. We might fight reality by saying “It should or shouldn’t be this way,” “That’s not fair!” or “Why me?!”

Fighting reality only creates suffering. While pain is inevitable in life, suffering is optional. And suffering is what happens when we refuse to accept the pain in our lives.

Acceptance also doesn’t mean throwing our hands up in the air or waving a white flag. To the contrary, once we accept reality, we can consider if we’d like to change it. We can say: “OK, this exists. This is happening or happened. How do I want to handle it?”

In other words, practicing acceptance actually leads the way to problem solving. If you don’t like something, you first have to accept that it is the way it is before you can try to change it. If you’re not accepting something, you’ll be so busy fighting that reality that you don’t have the energy to put towards trying to change it.

Another benefit is that you typically spend less time thinking about the situation. And when you do think about it, it triggers less emotional pain for you. People often describe a feeling of being ‘lighter,’ ‘relief,’ ‘like a weight has been lifted. With acceptance, your suffering dissipates. The pain doesn’t disappear (though it might over time). But because you aren’t suffering, the pain becomes more bearable.

Practicing radical acceptance can be accepting that it’s raining on the day you planned to visit the beach, or something much more significant.

Radical acceptance takes lots of practice. And understandably, it might feel strange and hard. But remember that radical acceptance is about acknowledging reality – not liking it or contesting it. Once you acknowledge what’s really happening, you can change it or start to heal. Radical acceptance has nothing to do with being passive or giving up. To the contrary, it’s about channeling your energy into moving on.