Acceptance: The Foundation to Healing
When you hear the term acceptance, what comes to mind?
Often times, the concept of acceptance is a hard one to grasp and it’s one that you may even fight. However, it is a necessary part of healing. Why?
It allows you to recognize and come to terms with your reality
It allows you to determine how you chose to make the reality you’re facing work for you
It allows you to gain a sense of freedom
Acceptance can be the most challenging to welcome into your process when walking a grief journey, when someone has disrespected and/or betrayed you, or, even, when you’re experiencing unhelpful thinking patterns such as overthinking. However, it’s not impossible; while I understand it may feel that way. The purpose of this blog is to provide you with tools to help you begin walking towards acceptance. Before diving into the steps towards acceptance, it’s first important to understand what acceptance is and what it is not.
Acceptance is not…
A common response I will get from clients when talking about acceptance is “if I accept it, I say it’s okay.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. When talking about acceptance, you are not:
Agreeing with what you’re accepting: when you accept, you are not saying what happened aligns with your values, moral, beliefs or what you wanted for your life. If the situation you’re accepting involves accepting the actions of another person, you are not saying you are okay with how they treated you and disregarding those actions.
Saying you’re okay with what you’re accepting: this one is pretty straight forward; accepting does not equate to you forgetting what happened.
Settling and giving up: you’re actually doing quite the opposite. In accepting, you’re taking the first step in the hard work to create a life living as your best self with this reality.
Invalidating your experience: you can accept a situation as your reality while still leaving room for validation and sitting with the grief and emotion(s).
Acceptance is…
When working towards acceptance, you are:
Recognizing and acknowledging your reality: in doing this, you are looking at what happened (as objectively as possible) and acknowledging it is now part of your story. It can also involve identifying the impacts of the activating event that have placed you in your current reality. Be patient with yourself in this process; this part can and will take time.
Regaining what’s within your control: once you’ve recognized and acknowledged your reality, you can then look at what aspects of your reality are within your control; utilizing those elements as your guide through the healing process.
Choosing how YOU want to move forward: in accepting, you are giving yourself the power to determine how you wish to move forward and allow what’s occurred to continue to impact your life.
Now that we know what acceptance is and is not, let’s dive into how you can begin to welcome acceptance into your process.
Steps to acceptance
Identify where: we can’t begin to work towards and gain acceptance if we don’t know where it’s needed. Identify where in your life you’d like to gain acceptance (hint: if you are currently navigating a life changing transition, acceptance may be needed in this area…not always but it’s worth starting here)
Explore obstacles: once you’ve identified where you’d like to gain acceptance, chances are you have a certain narrative (i.e. a story you’re telling yourself) of obstacles preventing you from reaching acceptance. Listen to that narrative and create a list of the obstacles preventing you from working towards acceptance. In this step, you may find you’d benefit from further guidance with a professional to process and overcome your obstacles; feel free to schedule your FREE 15 minute consultation with me to explore what working through your identified obstacles might look like.
Play out the hypothetical: in addition to identifying and working through the obstacles, you may also benefit from playing out the hypothetical of what gaining acceptance around your identified area would look like.
Give yourself grace: as mentioned earlier, acceptance is not easy. These steps may take time and you may get frustrated along the way. That is okay! Normalize your experience, validate your emotions, and be patient.
Many carry a negative connotation when it comes to acceptance. It’s important to learn how to acceptance while also living a life that’s true to you. I encourage you to use the above steps to begin exploring what that co-existence may look like. If you’d like guidance around this, I invite you to schedule your FREE 15 minute consultation below.
Here’s to living a better life as your best self.
Brittany Squillace, MA, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Grief Therapist
