Guest blog by Sarah VanMeter, LCSW
If you’ve been alive for any length of time at all, you know that life is full of situations, people, and circumstances that you just don’t like. Every human being faces this. But how do you deal with it?
You may find yourself falling into the trap of saying things like “it shouldn’t be that way,” “it’s not fair,” or “it shouldn’t have happened this way.” Why is it a trap? Because it sets up a cycle of not accepting the situations, people, or circumstances in your life. And this cycle of not accepting can increase your level of personal suffering. Now, I know you may be thinking, “No way! Just because I don’t agree with something doesn’t mean I’m suffering.” To that person I say, “Hear me out.” Let me tell you about Radical Acceptance.
In the 1970’s a therapist named Marsha Linehan started researching ways to aid people who have borderline personality disorder, a mental health condition she herself had. Out of that research the model for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) was born (Linehan, 2014). Her DBT model is broken into four modules: Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance.
Now, your frustration and maybe even skepticism may be building because you’re wondering what this all has to do with acceptance. I’m getting to that. Tucked away in the Distress Tolerance module are the Reality skills. The main Reality skill is Radical Acceptance.
What is Radical Acceptance?
I have taught DBT in a lot of groups (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced) along with teaching this concept/skill to clients individually. And I’ve noticed that it is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, DBT skills for clients to grasp.
Radical Acceptance is hard because it challenges us to accept things that we don’t necessarily want to accept. We feel that by accepting them we are saying that it was okay that this thing took place. What person wants to accept that they were assaulted? Or that their father was verbally abusive? Or that their spouse was cheating on them? The short answer is No One!
But here is the thing with Radical Acceptance. It isn’t just a passive acceptance like “yeah so that happened.” It is accepting the situations with 100% of your being. Accepting it on all levels. That’s what makes this skill so challenging. You have to be willing to accept the situation with your mind, heart and body. Every part of you must accept that the situation took place.
Related Reading: How to Manage Grief and Loss: 4 Coping Strategies
To radically accept you must be willing to let go of your reactions to the situation and instead allow yourself to move beyond that reaction. For example, if you are angry at an aunt who interfered with a situation with your parents, you have to be willing to let go of that anger. Allow yourself to move past it to a place of peace.
Four Steps of Radical Acceptance
If you were talking to Marsha Linehan, she would tell you that there are four things that everyone needs to work on (Linehan, 2014):
1.Accepting Reality as It Is
The facts of a situation are the reality of the situation. You may not like the facts but that does not change them. To continue to complain about the facts, according to Linehan, is to fight against reality. That gets you nowhere. If you want to change something you must first accept the facts of the situation so that you can work on changing them going forward.
2.Accepting Every Situation Has a Cause
The next thing Linehan suggests you work to accept is that every situation has a cause. There was a sequence of events that took place which led to the event happening. Unless some aspect of that sequence changed, then the events played out as the pattern dictated.
For example, to say that someone should not have died in a car accident is fighting against reality. If the driver was speeding, then blew through a red light, hitting the passenger side of the other car head-on, then it would make sense that the passenger in the car that was hit was horribly hurt or died. Something in that pattern would have had to change in order for the person to not have been hurt or died. If the driver wasn’t speeding, or had hit another part of the car, this would have changed the pattern. But the facts as they were led to the sequence that led to the outcome.
3. Accepting The Future Has Limitations
The third part you need to accept is that the future has limitations. No matter how much you wish or hope, there are certain things that cannot happen.
4. Accepting Our Lives Are Worth Living
Lastly, the most important part to accept is that your life is worth living even if bad things have happened. Regardless of the pain that you feel or the nightmares that haunt you, life is worthwhile. I think this is such a powerful message. I know – from seeing it happen so many times with my clients – that a person can go through hell, and can still have a wonderful and fulfilling life.
Is your inner skeptic practically jumping up and down with “But, but, but…!”? I can practically hear them say that they don’t want to accept the thing that happened because that would mean that they are saying it was okay. Well… that isn’t the case. Accepting a situation is not the same thing as condoning it.
Let me explain by jumping back to my earlier example. I wasn’t saying that it is okay that someone died in a car accident. Or that it didn’t create pain for those who knew the person who died. What I am simply saying is that yes, the accident happened, and it is horrible that someone died. Realizing that the accident happened and there wasn’t a factor to change it – accepting this – is a huge step towards allowing yourself to move through the grief process and start healing.
Related Reading: Is it Depression, Anxiety, or both?
The reality is painful situations happen. There is no way any of us can prevent them. However, you can move to a place of acceptance and healing. It won’t be an easy journey. As I said earlier, this is one of the hardest skills to engage in, but it will allow you to move to a sense of peace.
Radical acceptance can be a helpful tool and it is used in therapy for many mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression. There are many guided meditations that use radical acceptance, and here’s an example.
If you could use some help to get to acceptance of a difficult situation, therapists at Life Care Wellness are trained in DBT and many other forms of therapy. Please reach out to us in our Glen Ellyn, Chicago (Jefferson Park), or Sycamore locations.
Sarah VanMeter works with all ages and specializes in working with at-risk youth, youth in foster care, and those with complex trauma. Sarah utilizes Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT). She has completed training in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Somatic Experiencing (SE), Health Coaching, and Fostering and Adoptive Concerns. Sarah also has advanced training in working with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Reference
Linehan, Marsha.2014.DBT Skills Training Manual.The Guilford Press
