Acceptance and Change
We engage in therapy because something hurts and we hope to see it change. The safety and ease we once felt in a relationship is gone. Our outlook on the world has changed from rosy to gloomy. Perhaps we feel stuck in a traumatic moment or notice lingering anxiety in our minds and bodies even after a threat has passed.
Because we don’t want pain in our lives, many of us begin our therapy journey in a place of high emotional reactivity. We don’t want our marriage to be broken! We don’t want our depression, our anxiety, or the reality of our trauma! When we see evidence that it is there, we judge it and try to push it away. It feels so unsafe to make contact with our pain that we may cope through blaming others, shaming ourselves, trying to control the situation, or unhealthy escapes. Many of these behaviors can be classified as fight, flight, or freeze reactions.
Acceptance of pain is counterintuitive, but is an important and empowering first step to change. Through acceptance, we can learn to work with our pain in a way that increases our ability to respond rather than react. This opens up the potential for mindful, healthy, constructive choices.
You cannot change what you cannot accept. If you cannot look at your pain, tolerate it’s existence, and learn to stay present, your brain will not have what it needs to do wise problem solving.
Here are a few tips to help you approach your pain so that you can work toward acceptance:
Name the emotion you are feeling and describe it. If it had a color, a shape, and a size, what would those be? Where do you feel the emotion in your body and at what degree of intensity? Allow yourself to consider why you might be feeling this emotion. As you review the reasons why, stick to the facts and work to practice self-compassion. The process of describing is grounding, validating, and reduces emotional arousal.
Find a new way to evaluate how things are going. Choose some personal values that you can use to guide you through your painful season. Instead of evaluating your day based on how anxious you felt, focus on living consistent with your chosen values in the midst of difficulty. Return to your courage, your perseverance, or your faith in the midst of your pain. Instead of avoiding what hurts or judging the amount of pain your are enduring, celebrate that you continue to show up.
Recognize that the qualities that earned you a fantastic grade point average and make you a successful employee aren’t very helpful when it comes to your inner world. You can’t “figure out” or “muscle through” a mood disorder. You can’t change your partner or your family through your hard work alone. There is an inherent powerlessness that, if embraced, can give us the humility and patience needed for change.
Check in with your expectations. Recognize the limits of your humanity and the humanity of others. Your struggles are particular to your story, but struggle is common to humankind.
Consider your spiritual resources. Consider the benefit of prayer, meditation, Scripture, singing, and community to strengthen your ability to accept the trouble that is part of being a human in this world. Jesus took this world as it was, not as he would have it, and he lived a life of love.
The words of the Serenity Prayer may assist you in cultivating acceptance:
God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change...
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it.
Trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Use these words or find your own way to connect with an embodied sense of acceptance. And as you do, stay curious. Look for the next right step that you can take to improve your life and take it.
