Excuse me? You’re my therapist. Aren’t you supposed to have the answers to how I can fix this? Rather, you’re choosing to allow it to be there when you can’t change it in that moment. To make space for it. To give yourself permission to be as you are, feel what you feel, or have experienced what you’ve experienced without creating unproductive shame or anxiety. The pain might still be there, but some of the suffering will be alleviated. It can require effort at times (or most of the time, at least initially). It can be frustrating at times. But, like creating a clearing in a grass field by walking the same path many times, every time you practice acceptance toward something, you create and strengthen neural pathways in your brain, facilitating ease in the future. It’s natural to vacillate back and forth between feelings of acceptance and feelings of resistance. Make space for the spectrum of experience, and notice your internal critic get quieter. Try to focus your acceptance on the present, alongside an open and realistic gaze at the future. Focusing too much on the present can be counterproductive, as a large part of acceptance involves letting go of the desire that things will change—detaching from hope that, in some cases, creates suffering. But sometimes imagining practicing acceptance forever can seem daunting, overwhelming, or impossible, so try to find that sweet spot where you’re accepting the current moment but not under the pretense that things will change in the future. Again, this doesn’t mean you necessarily endorse whatever it is that you’re accepting in these realms; rather, you recognize that you can’t change the current nature of this exact moment, and accepting manages anxiety and helps calm. I encourage you to consider how acceptance has benefited your life in the past, and how you can practice it more in the present.
