Acceptance as Radical Honesty
Psychotherapists love to talk about acceptance. Nonetheless, there is a lot of confusion surrounding the term, and part of this is our own fault. We talk about it in vague terms and what we usually get across is a feeling, more support than a concept. In this short text, I will try to bring acceptance down to Earth and define it more precisely.
Let’s begin by providing a concise definition, so that we know what we’re talking about. Acceptance is seeing clearly. That’s all there is to it. It’s that simple. Seeing means looking at the problem in whatever way it appears to you and regardless of its emotional impact. The word clearly here means without flinching, shame, guilt, pushing away or clinging, all of which obscure the clarity.
Acceptance is not a state we ever achieve, and this is important to point out. It’s more useful to look at acceptance as a skill to cultivate, a method of befriending your reality, rather than a goal that you need to get to and then you’re done with the race. We change all the time, and that means that there is always something new to see, something new to accept. Most of it isn’t particularly difficult or emotionally challenging so we go about our lives unaware of how much acceptance we already successfully do!
This may sound simple but if it were easy, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Acceptance is often so difficult that we spend numerous sessions returning to it and working on it. The mere suggestion that they need to accept something can often provoke, sadden, and upset our clients.
What exactly makes it so difficult?
When you get to the bottom of it, we humans are not terribly fond of reality, and we often choose to live in what we think reality should be, our fantasy about it, ignoring the information we have. We see ourselves a certain way and we prefer it if this doesn’t change. If we look to reality, we risk having our ideas, our identities tested and proven wrong. That’s a scary place to be in! Acceptance counters our propensity to live in fantasy land, it does it directly and it can be quite painful. Acceptance means that we will see exactly how accurate, useful, and functional our self-image is, or indeed, our construction of other people and the rest of our reality.
On one hand, this means that we get new empirical evidence that we can use to build a better construction of ourselves and the world, but on the other, it means that we’re about to be faced with every little piece of evidence that invalidates our existing constructions. That means that you may learn that you’re not at all the person you see yourself as, and the threat of this situation is usually enough to get us to throw reality out the window.
Another important reason why we shy away from acceptance is that it will allow us to see the full scope of the problem we’re dealing with. As if the pain of having a problem isn’t enough, what we see as a symptom is often half of the picture only. We can say “I struggle with panic attacks” or “I have anxiety” or “I pull my hair”, but this statement alone is not acceptance. It’s a type of very basic acknowledgment of the situation which is often only intellectual and, therefore, superficial. Acceptance entails a lot more.
To talk about acceptance means to see our problem as a part of who we are as persons. “I pull my hair”, for example, can imply many different things for different people. Let’s consider an example. In psychotherapy of trichotillomania we often see it as a mechanism of self-soothing, one that provides relief without having to come into contact with difficult emotions. Acceptance, then, includes understanding what the consequences of this are for how we see ourselves. This is often a place where judgment rears its ugly head. If I can’t deal with my emotions, I may see myself as a weak person. That too is what I need to accept. If I have too many emotions that I can’t deal with, perhaps I will start seeing myself as an overly sensitive person, or I may begin to think that I’m unstable. Acceptance means that we embrace this too! Implications of a problem will be different for everyone, but whatever they may be, acceptance includes them too.
Wait, Vladimir, what do you mean, to embrace potentially seeing myself as weak or unstable? Who wants to be that?
No one wants that but pretending that things are different doesn’t make us different, it makes us more detached from the outside world and from our own internal psychological reality. Not embracing the consequences of our problems means that we’re choosing to live in a fantasy as opposed to trying to make useful sense of reality we’re ultimately always condemned to and that we can’t escape.
Acceptance is not about self-judgment or being hard on yourself. It’s about seeing what is the case. Once you get to the point where you accept a problem, you also stop shaming yourself for it, as you begin to adopt a more pragmatic attitude. The presence of guilt or shame or anger, etc. are all valid emotional experiences to have and acceptance puts a different spin on them. They may be indications of what needs to be changed rather than what we’re not doing well. Acceptance is not a passive state of surrender, but a clear view of the terrain that you need to traverse to get to where you want to be.
Wait, Vladimir, why should I accept something I don’t like?
This seems like an obvious question to ask and let me retort with another obvious question: do you have a choice?
It’s always difficult to admit that we are not living up to our self-image, but accepting it is, I’m afraid, inevitable. You can’t become anything different unless you build on firm foundations. Firm foundations mean that we investigate and test our identity and our ideas about the world. Second, you may not be the person you want to be, but you can likely become that person with a little bit of effort. If your self-image is fundamentally unattainable, acceptance will allow you to build and work towards something that is.
Practically the only way to become the person you want to be is to build from where you are now. You can’t arrive at your destination if you don’t know where you’re starting from. Think of the most banal situation. If you want to use an app for navigation, the phone has to know your current location and it needs it precisely. It’s not enough to say “I’m located somewhere on Earth” but set your destination as “1234 SW 32nd Ave., Miami”. There is no other intentional way of getting to your destination other than knowing your starting coordinates precisely.
Acceptance is a form of radical honesty. It’s not lazy, it’s not giving up. If you accept something you won’t lose the desire to change. Quite the opposite! It is the first thing we have to do to change. Acceptance can often bring a lot of relief because once we see things with precision and clarity, they often lose their seeming apocalyptic intensity. When our problems are wrapped up in the mist of vaguely defined but powerful and uncomfortable emotions, problems cast long and menacing shadows, and we project our worst fears onto that vagueness.
Learning to see clearly is already a form of liberation. You are liberated from all the superfluous fears. You are liberated from anxiety. You know where you stand and what you need. And only when you know that, when you embody it, you can be something else.
