Transcripts

Acceptance

Welcome to the Taking ACTion podcast, where we explore psychological flexibility through Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. ACT has six core principles that make up this psychological flexibility and the core process that we are reviewing right now is Acceptance. Acceptance is short for “experiential acceptance” and is defined as agreement with or belief in an idea, opinion, or explanation. At this stage in the psychological flexibility, we are opening up.  It is important to note that acceptance is not the same as understanding. It is accepting your inner experiences which are emotions, thoughts, urges, memories, sensations and more.

Acceptance is thought of in the four A’s of acceptance; acknowledge, accommodate, allow, and appreciate. These A’s don’t necessarily happen in the mentioned order but most of the time, we still follow it. Acknowledge means we mindfully notice and name our inner experiences. Next is accommodate, this is when we open up and start to make room for our inner experiences. Allow is when we are permitting our inner experiences to happen and to be present instead of trying to bury them away. Last is appreciation, where you are seeing your inner experiences as an ally and cherish what it has to offer you even if an experience is negative.

It is important to note that it does not necessarily mean that you wanted a negative experience and these “negative” emotions still have important things to offer. Unpleasant feelings that are labeled negative have positive functions, which are life-enhancing effects on behavior. These positive functions are: communication, motivation and illumination. With our emotions, we are able to communicate with others, become motivated to behave in a certain way and illuminate important things to us. Acceptance is taking our emotions - good and bad - and extracting knowledge from them. What is this emotion suggesting that you need to do differently? What does it tell you about what you care about? 

Our acceptance exercise is titled “Understanding The Car” by Hank Robb.

Many people drive cars which are now complex vehicles. Cars these days are large, moving computers with small and big computer chips that control everything in the car from the temperature to the brake system. Very few people understand exactly how these computer chips in the car work aside from the small percent of folks that work with computer chips or cars. Do you need to understand all the inner workings of a car to accept how it works to get in and drive home if the goal is to drive home? Will understanding the intricacies of the car help you get home?  The typical answer is usually no. Most people drive cars without understanding exactly how they work. You do not have to wait to understand the specifics of a car in order to successfully go home.  This does relate with the connection to feelings and valued direction. You do not have to understand the full details of your feelings to reach your goals and valued directions. We can get rid of the barrier of intellectually understanding so we can reach acceptance. 

Thank you for participating in the Acceptance section of this podcast.