Acceptance: What is it good for?

Yesterday (if I scheduled this correctly), we started a Sunday morning series on spiritual growth and we began that series with a conversation on "acceptance."

Perhaps we should first ask the question: Why is acceptance important?

I suppose we could answer this in no less than 1,000 different ways. For starters- we all have things happen in our lives that we wish didn't happen. Things we don't want to tolerate. Things we don't want to "accept." Things we want to fight. You know what these things are: financial hardships, difficult relationships, losses, disappointments. Wishing these things didn't happen does not help us feel better and it does not help us solve our problems. This is why acceptance is important. If we don't do it- our problems will stay right in front of our face. Or they may increase. We accept things in order to confront our problems head-on and, potentially, to help us resolve these problems.

The next question is: What is acceptance? As will become a theme in this post, I don't want to overthink this. Acceptance is heart or gut territory, not so much head territory.

As far as I can tell, acceptance is the sense that, "The past does not need to change for me to be okay." Or a sense that, "I'm going to get through this." Or, "Even though I don't like this, I will survive." It's a matter of tolerating things that are uncomfortable. It's not learning to like things that are hard or appreciate things that hurt us. It's learning to live with them.

I personally have mixed feelings about the term "acceptance" and the role it plays in a spiritual life. On the one hand, it's a concept that resonates with many (if not most) people, including myself. I see it, at a minimum, as a significant step on the journey towards a contented life. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure how to describe the process of learning to accept things. I would love to be able to tell people exactly how to do it, and I'm not sure I know how.

When I'm counseling, acceptance comes up quite often and there are counseling techniques that exist to teach people how to accept difficult circumstances. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, radical acceptance is a multi-step process that involves making room for emotions we would rather just push away as well as making plans for coping with whatever challenging circumstances we're facing. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy relies on very similar ideas- emphasizing the importance of tolerating all emotions because of the belief that fighting how we feel (i.e., "I shouldn't feel this way," or, "If I were good I wouldn't feel this way") only leads to further suffering.

While these ideas are good and helpful, it seems to me that acceptance, from a spiritual perspective, is about something more, and I can't pinpoint what that thing is. For one thing, acceptance isn't just about uncomfortable emotions. We may need to accept situations themselves or people's attitudes or behavior towards us, not just the feelings that come up as a result of hard life circumstances or being in relationship with difficult people.

For instance, if someone punches me in the face, I might feel humiliated. Is it important that I learn to accept that humiliation? Yes. However, it also seems to me that I need to find a way to accept 1. the fact that I got punched in the face (I might feel, for instance, like "this should not have happened to me") and 2. the person who punched me in the face (so as to fend off resentment, as well as the possibility of retaliation). All that to say, acceptance isn't just about embracing difficult feelings and it's not just about making plans about "what to do differently next time." It's also the sense that despite what's happened, everything is going to be okay. (Let's be clear- "Okay" can be defined quite broadly. It doesn't mean everything returns to how it was, or that everything will turn out exactly as we hoped it would.)

Let me back up for a second. I find myself sitting here typing all these various components of acceptance while I try to figure out how to describe what acceptance is. The problem with all this is- acceptance simply is not a "headspace" type of activity. It's not about having the correct definition nor is it about knowing all the correct steps to take in order to guarantee that, at the end of the process, acceptance takes place. (At least, in my opinion).

Acceptance strikes me as being similar to so many other facets of faith and recovery where we enlist the famous Potter Stewart quote, "I know it when I see it." Or, perhaps in the case it's something more like, "I know it when I experience it."

So, how do we experience it?

Well- that's another question that could easily transition us into the head space. I'll try to avoid that and comment on two things that seem to open the door towards acceptance for me, and hope that this somehow resonates with someone else.

1. I have to want to do it. I don't know how to make myself want to accept something difficult. However, I know when I don't feel like doing it. I know when I'm resisting doing it. Perhaps this is a matter of "readiness." I know when I'm ready, and I know when I'm not. I do not know how to make myself ready. However, following the path of DBT and ACT, it seems important to be able to offer myself compassion when I am not ready and to tell myself, "I would like to be able to accept ____, but I find myself resisting it at the moment."

2. I have to create some space in order to do it. I need some silence and some time to sit in that silence. Could I tell you exactly what to do with that silence and space? No. I don't have that answer. But there is some part of me that intuitively knows it helps.

Is this an exhaustive list? Certainly not. I hope that you readers will chime in with your own ideas and practices (our Facebook group is a good place for this). I also hope that it is a starting place. And so maybe in this spirit I'll leave you with some questions as opposed to "wrapping up" acceptance.

• Is there anything you're currently struggling to accept?

• Why is it important to you to accept it?

• What steps do you think you need to take in order to practice acceptance?

• What's the first, small, simple, step you could take?