Radical Acceptance

Advanced Clinical Fellow Julia Papale

I’ve written before about letting go of control and ending the war of resistance, whatever that looks like to you. Today I’d like to offer a dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skill that can support this process. DBT is all about dialectics, or holding two opposing things at once. This modality embraces the idea of radical acceptance and believes that when we are fighting against what happened, is happening, or might happen, we only bring ourselves deeper into suffering. I could write on and on about control, an underlying mechanism of so many presenting challenges that we face. But for simplicity’s sake, I offer radical acceptance as a DBT term that we can keep in our back pocket when things become rocky or uncomfortable. While profound, it’s also simple and applicable – there for us to reach for even at the height of distress.

As DBT puts it, many situations will bring us to a fork in the road, in which we will have two options – choosing the road that is in full acceptance of our situation, or the road that is in opposition with what is. It’s not difficult to see that the latter road will often be the more grueling, challenging option.

We can radically accept someone for who they are, an uncomfortable emotion, an event that feels less than ideal, and the list goes on. What is something currently happening that you don’t particularly and is causing you an undue amount of stress? What if you were to decide today to be in radical acceptance of that thing? While it is not easy, it is possible. Some helpful coping statements that can be used anytime include:

I can’t change what’s already happened.

It’s impossible to change the past.

The present is the only moment I can control.

Although this emotion is uncomfortable, I accept that it’s here and I will get through it.

Try this reflective exercise.

Write down a list of the things that you are having trouble accepting. It might be the recovery journey you’re on, how your partner doesn’t load the dishwasher the way you like, the grief you’re experiencing, the body you’re in, etc.

Make a list of all the behaviors that occur as a response to refusing to accept this reality, like blaming others which turns into resentment or anger, giving up, isolating, etc. Then journal about how you experience suffering when you are unable to accept reality. Sit with this for a bit to really understand how the need to control causes difficulty in your life. How free would you be if you were to embrace radical acceptance?

Does radical acceptance mean that we stop working towards our goals and give up, becoming complacent? No. It simply means that we are accepting the things that we cannot change and doing what’s possible to change the things we can.