Myth 1: Acceptance means excusing wrongdoing. Acceptance doesn’t mean you’re condoning something hurtful now or that occurred in the past. It’s about acknowledging your experience without getting caught up in the hurt, anger, or pain.
Acceptance doesn’t mean staying still when someone tries to harm you. If anyone tries to harm you, you have the right to defend yourself to stay safe. However, holding onto a past hurt, like a mistake, failure, or bad incident, doesn’t change what happened. You cannot change the past, but you can change how you respond to it in the present.
If you don’t let go and forgive yourself or others for past hurt, the hurt might continue to haunt, harm, and have a hold on you. Yet, your mind might say, “Why should I let go of my anger and forgive those who have hurt me?” Each day you hang on tightly to a past hurt, you harm yourself and perhaps others again. It’s what we call suffering, which can be like self-torture. The way to take back the life you want to live here and now is to acknowledge what happened in the past and let go of your pain, such as anger, blame, or resentment.
Myth 2: Acceptance is a weakness. Acceptance requires strength and courage to sit patiently and allow the intensity of painful thoughts and feelings to surface without acting on them. It’s like riding a wild tiger that could eat you up. Acceptance takes strength and courage to open up to the full force of painful thoughts and feelings and say to yourself, “Oh, there’s pain. I see you. Welcome, I’m not afraid of you. I can sit with you and be uncomfortable without a need to fix, resolve, or get away from the situation.” In that moment, painful thoughts and feelings can lose power over you, getting fear-less in the long run when you acknowledge them and patiently wait for them to drift away on their own.
Myth 3: Acceptance means liking my experience. Having painful thoughts and feelings is uncomfortable. Acceptance is not about liking or wanting them to show up. It’s about letting go of fighting with them and seeing them for what they are, thoughts and feelings, and where they are, only inside you, instead of what your mind tells you they are—perhaps terrifying monsters. Acceptance can feel like a burden has been lifted when you stop struggling with the pain.
Myth 4: Acceptance is a way to prevent painful thoughts and feelings. Acceptance cannot stop painful thoughts and feelings from showing up, like after losing someone you love, being hurt by another person, or making a mistake. They are a normal part of life. It happens to everyone. Not even Zen Masters can avoid that painful stuff. However, acceptance can prevent painful thoughts and feelings from turning into suffering.
Suffering occurs when you try over and over again to make the pain go away, expecting that it will never come back. Pain increases the more you try to control it. After all, if you could control your thoughts and feelings, you could eliminate them. Right? And how has that worked for you? What does your experience tell you? In the long run, accepting painful thoughts and feelings without any effort to change your experience frees up more energy and your body to take action toward what matters most to you in life.
References
- Eifert, G. H., McKay, M., & Forsyth, J. P. (2006). ACT on life not anger: The new acceptance & commitment therapy guide to problem anger. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.