Whenever we’re faced with an uncomfortable thought, emotion, or situation — our first instinct is to avoid it or fight it. The intention is self-protection. We try to protect our sense of self by rejecting that experience. The rejection usually comes in the form of unconscious avoidance and also provides temporary relief, reinforcing the behavior. This is our default strategy when it comes to handling any form of distress.
This unwillingness to make conscious contact with the difficult experience usually leads to, paradoxically, even more of that experience and greater reactivity to it. When we fight (or avoid) reality, we cripple our ability to manage our emotions and cope with the situation. And running away from the problem only increases the distance from the solution. Avoidance also induces unconsciousness of our inner life, weakening the connection we have with ourselves.
On some level, you know all this. You also “know” the importance of acceptance in such situations and in general. At least propositionally (Or rather, only propositionally).
What does Acceptance even mean?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions associated with the notion of acceptance. Acceptance is not about getting over it. It’s not about minimizing the significance of what happened or how you’re feeling about it. And it’s not about finding the silver lining.
Acceptance is simply about making peace with the idea that it is what it is. You let go of the resistance and allow yourself to experience what you’re experiencing. You embrace the reality of your thoughts, emotions, and life because they’re already here, right now, and resisting won’t make them go away. Stated in the negative, acceptance is a refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with yourself or reality.
But what good comes out of exposing our consciousness to pain? Well, acceptance works counter-intuitively. The more you accept an experience and allow it to be, the more it loses its power over you. Acceptance also sets you up to extract valuable information from the situation and your emotions, so that you can deal with them constructively. It lets you approach a solution.
And we know that any form of resistance or avoidance only amplifies the distress down the line, makes us more vulnerable, and impedes our problem-solving abilities. So acceptance becomes the only logical thing to do. It’s the prerequisite for sustainable change.
Of course, all this is easier said than done. Unless you experientially know how to “execute” acceptance, it’s just an abstract concept that sounds good in theory. It’s not something that comes intuitively to us. You see, acceptance is a skill, like knowing how to play a musical instrument. You develop the ability through training.
Hindrance to Acceptance
As creatures of habit, it’s our unconscious responses that determine how and where our attention flows. When we are in an uncomfortable situation, our attention collapses down to a single point, and our awareness contracts. And so in that moment, the problem or emotion we’re dealing with dominates our awareness. Naturally, this can be overwhelming and does not leave any space or capacity for acceptance.
What emerges out of such a state of mind is a programmed unconscious action aimed at protecting or pacifying ourselves. Like an outburst of anger or a reflexive scroll on our smartphone. Of course, both are detrimental to acceptance and consequently, our ability to deal with the problem. But that’s usually our default mode of operation — various stimuli trigger conditioned responses within us and take away our power to make a conscious choice (making us feel helpless at times).
Executing Acceptance
Acceptance is a mental and physical process that can be mastered. But at the most basic level, it’s just a conscious decision. A decision to expand your awareness and allow yourself to experience what you’re experiencing, instead of closing yourself off. And even then, it’s an act of “non-doing”.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl
Instead of letting automated habits hijack your behavior, you can consciously intervene in the process and simply decide to pause. You can inhibit your conditioned response. And while doing nothing, you can choose to become aware of your body and the space around you (notice all the sensations, sounds, smells, colors) — expanding your awareness. By doing so, you stretch that space between the stimulus and response. (This is the “skill” part we gotta train for.)
Let’s try the “expanding awareness” thing right now. As you read this, your awareness might have narrowed down to the screen. You can expand it by gently moving your attention around the various aspects of your being (while continuing to read this). See if there’s any extra tension in your body (face, neck, shoulders) and release it. Observe how you’re breathing and feel free to take deeper breaths (you are now breathing manually). Notice the ambient sounds in your surrounding and the objects in your peripheral vision. Does the quality of your awareness feel a little different now?
When you have that expanded awareness, your attention isn’t collapsed down on a single point, and you’re no longer a slave to your primal instincts. You get the space to freely choose your actions, using your full mind. You also get the space to distance yourself from your thoughts and see them for what they are, not what they say they are.
Cognitive Defusion
We have a tendency to over-identify with our thoughts. When a thought dominates our awareness, we fuse with it and start believing that it says something true and permanent about who we are. We forget that thoughts are just temporary figments arising from our current emotional state and that they do not reflect reality. All this makes acceptance quite difficult.
But when we have the space to separate from our thoughts and take a larger perspective, acceptance becomes viable. This process of separating from your thoughts and letting them come and go, instead of getting caught up in them is called Cognitive Defusion. Defusion reduces the influence of unhelpful cognitive processes and helps you experience yourself as more than simply your concepts and personal judgments, allowing a broader and less rule-governed form of self-awareness. From this place, you can stop struggling against the content of your consciousness and embrace reality.
If all this sounds a little abstract, here are some cognitive defusion techniques/metaphors that make the process more accessible. But remember, awareness comes first. The core skill is simple. You inhibit your conditioned response and resist the urge to do something. Then you sit with what you’re feeling and expand your awareness by attending to your senses. Basically, get out of your brain and into your body. This breaks the rumination cycle and enables you to accept what is. And from there, you can move on and take action towards the problem.
(If you’re wondering that these ideas sound similar to mindfulness, it’s because that they are. After all, the core tenet of mindfulness is non-judgmental acceptance. I’ve also borrowed some ideas from Alexander Technique)
When Acceptance feels Impossible
What if a thought, memory, or experience is so disturbing that acceptance feels out of the question? What if the mere idea of having to accept something feels viscerally repulsive?
This is an interesting problem. A good place to start would be to stop resisting the resistance. If you cannot accept an experience, accept the resistance. And if you can’t accept your resistance, accept your resistance to accepting the resistance. As you sit with the resistance, it will slowly begin to dissolve and you can then move forward from there.
But this problem originates because of our rigid ideas about what is good or bad, right or wrong. Our attempts at acceptance get blocked by certain preconceived notions around morality and goodness. We make value judgments based on societal conditioning and then reject or suppress things that make us uncomfortable.
The Dark Side
Starting in early childhood, we begin psychically cutting off parts of ourselves that don’t get acceptance or approval from our parents, teachers, family, and friends. We are programmed through shame to suppress anything that doesn’t sit “right” with society. These not-so-pretty parts consist of repressed ideas, impulses, weaknesses, desires, perversions, and embarrassing fears.
But of course, hiding the dark side doesn’t erase its existence. Whatever we resist not only persists but gets stronger. Our shadow self unconsciously influences every aspect of our behavior. And from time to time, it rears its ugly head and makes us think or act in destructive ways.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” — Carl Jung
You cannot truly love and respect yourself if you don’t embrace your dark side. This is why your acceptance can not be conditional. You have to drop your judgments and accept your self in all its entirety.
What helps is to remember that your dark parts are just that — parts. They are not the sum of who you are. They do not define you. Most of them originated as a result of traumatic events. And the actions/thoughts that emerge out of them are just misguided attempts at self-preservation.
Unconditional Acceptance
Our self-acceptance is conditional because, more often than not, conditional acceptance is what we received in our childhood. Most parents praise their child’s accomplishments but do a poor job of conveying his/her intrinsic lovability. They inadvertently plant the idea that he or she must “do”, in order to receive acceptance and love. The outcome is even worse if a parent is overly critical of their child. The child internalizes that criticism into his sense of self, leading to a lifetime of self-doubt and self-loathing.
Also, our “success” (as society defines it) is largely dependent on how well we perform. So we get conditioned to evaluate our worth in terms of “performances” in every area of life. We constantly judge ourselves in terms of how well we are living up to societal standards and our self-worth becomes conditional upon these arbitrary standards. And then inevitably, we are easily disturbed by any perceived imperfections or flaws in ourselves. Our life becomes this constant battle where we have to perform and win to stand any chance of receiving acceptance from our own selves!
Moreover, the investment of personal worth in any performance makes it very “dangerous” to attempt that thing. It’s risky to play a game where you have to bet your identity and self-worth on external achievements. So we often cop out under the guise of perfectionism. We try to make things perfect to avoid feeling any kind of judgment and shame. We fear being seen. Hence, we protect our sense of self by unconsciously sabotaging ourselves.
Setting difficult standards for ourselves gives us an easy way out. When the goal seems unachievable, we have the perfect rationalization to give up (or procrastinate) and not risk failure or rejection. The funny thing is we then beat ourselves up for not living up to those standards, chipping away at our self-esteem in the process. Do this long enough and you’ll cultivate an inner bully with an unconscious reflex to put you down for every minor thing, creating a vicious cycle.
The antidote to this entire problem is to stop rating yourself in terms of your performances and instead unconditionally accepting yourself in terms of your being, your existence. Unconditional self-acceptance involves acknowledging that as a person you are human, unique, complex, in flux, and fallible. You are bound to make mistakes, come up short and fail. And that’s okay because your worth does not depend upon societal notions of sexual, social, or professional success.
Why do you even need to evaluate yourself? So much time and energy go into self-evaluation and self-comparison — ego games that not only create stress but also interfere with your performances. You may rate some of your traits — like your ability to write, sing, do maths, or whatever. But you don’t have to jump from rating these traits to rating yourself. There’s no objective yardstick or benchmark you can come up with to validly rate your “self”. You do not have any intrinsic worth or worthlessness, but merely aliveness. You are not good or bad — you are merely you.
You may think that these radical and idealistic notions of acceptance don’t work in the “real” world. But if you are truly ambitious about what you want to achieve in life — emotionally, professionally, creatively, relationally — then the first step should be to opt out of the ego games we are wired to play. As long as we don’t completely let go of the need for external acceptance, our internal struggles will perpetuate and prevent our true selves from coming through.
Accepting our Bright Side
We run not only from our dark side but also our bright side. We instinctively fear anything that threatens to make us stand out, that calls for the hero within, that asks us to break through to a higher level of consciousness. Our genius, ambition, or beauty can be as scary as our rage, greed, or addiction.
The reason being that these powers pose the challenge of responsibility. We shy away from owning our positive qualities because it means being accountable. You hold this amazing potential and you might fail to actualize it. That’s a scary thought. And so we often disown our gifts and instead choose to stay in the comfort zone. What a grave travesty.
This is why acceptance should not only be about accepting our flaws and shortcomings, but also our assets and higher callings.
Closing Thoughts
The glorified idea of being at war with yourself and fighting your emotions to do what is “necessary” is bullshit. It’s a losing strategy that just sucks up your mental energy and makes life a drag. On the other hand, acceptance liberates you. Once you accept yourself and your life with all its imperfections, you don’t have to expend energy on trying to deny your flaws or hide them from yourself and others. Instead, this energy can be channeled into your personal growth.
As you can imagine, acceptance is not something that you do once and then hold on to (because your life and self are always in flux). It’s a dynamic process that’s to be reasserted from moment to moment, until it becomes your default way of being.
Go forth and embrace every aspect of your being. You are nature in all its glory.
Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you. Every other Sunday, I send out an email dissecting some aspect of the human mind.
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