What does Acceptance Actually Mean?

Acceptance has become something of a buzzword in the context of therapy, recovery, meditation, and, dare I say it, mindfulness. But it is much more than a word, and I think it is worth slowing down long enough to consider what we actually mean when we use it. So, let’s spend some time exploring what acceptance is—and, perhaps more importantly, what it isn't.

Acceptance is NOT Comfortable

The avoidance and reduction of discomfort has served an adaptive purpose for humankind. In life-or-death situations, this strategy has helped keep us alive. There is nothing particularly problematic about wanting to get away from something that hurts. However, when we apply this approach like a blanket to our inner and outer worlds, we can find ourselves feeling increasingly stifled.

One cannot receive fresh oxygen without emptying the lungs. One cannot know the light of sunshine without experiencing the dark of shadows. Your most important values and your deepest fears are often always two sides of the same coin.

For example, in session I might say: “I am holding a coin that says confidence. I can give you this coin and you will finally have the confidence you've been searching for. But the other side of the coin says doubt. I know doubt is something you've gone to great lengths to suppress and change. Nevertheless, the deal is that you can't have one without the other. You must take both or none at all.”

Are you willing to pay that price for what you seek? If yes, then you must understand the deal includes suffering from doubt (or whatever your fear might be). If no, you must understand you will never truly know confidence (or whatever value you hold dear). Your search will always be a problem to be solved or a discomfort to be relieved, and never an experience to be lived.

This is one of the things that can make acceptance so difficult. We often think of acceptance as though it should make us feel better. But acceptance is not necessarily about feeling better. Sometimes it means becoming more willing to experience something that is uncomfortable.

Acceptance is HONEST

Short-term comfort can be very persuasive, because avoidance often feels good in the moment. Staying on the couch instead of going to the gym, putting off a difficult conversation, distracting ourselves from a feeling we don't want to have—there is usually some immediate payoff. And for a little while, we don't have to deal with whatever we were trying to avoid.

The trouble is that we sometimes have to tell ourselves a little story to make that choice feel okay. We tell ourselves we'll do it tomorrow. That it isn't really bothering us. That we don't care as much as we thought we did. That maybe the situation will resolve itself.

And sometimes those stories are even partly true. That's what makes avoidance so compelling, but it isn't necessarily irrational--it works! It just tends to work in the short term.

If I want to keep choosing what is most comfortable, I can usually find a reason to do so. But if I am honest with myself, I may have to acknowledge some hard truths about the choice I am making.

Maybe I really am too tired to go to the gym today. Maybe I really do need a break. But if I have been telling myself that for three weeks, there is probably something else worth being honest about. Maybe I am avoiding something that feels difficult, and the relief I get from staying on the couch is part of what keeps me there.

Acceptance asks us to be willing to see that distinction. It asks us to tell the truth about what we are doing, what we are feeling, and what it is costing us, even when the truth makes the more comfortable choice a little harder to justify.

Acceptance is NOT Problem-Solving

Trying to find a clear answer, or problem-solve, begets a sense of accomplishment and often a tangible reward. However, there are costs to this. When we are a slave to the problem-solving game, two things can start to happen.

First, we begin to see things as black or white and lose our sense of grey. There are things we miss out on when we dismiss ambiguity in the pursuit of a solution. We are unable to hold double meanings or multiple interpretations, or to sit with two seemingly opposite things coexisting, despite that being the true nature of things.

Second, when all we are comfortable with is problem-solving, we start to create more problems for ourselves. A mind that is over-occupied with finding problems can make it so that problems are all that we see—everywhere. And likewise, when the mind is hyper-focused on any one problem, that issue grows to occupy our headspace in such a way that obscures our view. In either case, the greater picture often falls away and we can no longer see the forest for the trees.

The trouble comes when we treat every uncomfortable thought or feeling as a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes there is something we can do, and sometimes there isn't. Sometimes the uncertainty is going to remain uncertainty, the loss is going to remain a loss, or the feeling we would very much prefer not to have is going to be there for a while.

Acceptance is AMBIGUITY

There are some things in life that we can work out, and there are others that we simply cannot. And sometimes the difficulty is not that we don't have enough information, but that we are asking a question that doesn't have a single answer.

Sometimes two things can be true at the same time, even when we would prefer one of them not to be. We can want something and be afraid of it, be grateful for something and still wish it were different, or love someone and be angry with them. One doesn't cancel out the other. We don't necessarily have to decide which feeling is the “real” one before we can move forward.

Recall the coin analogy and let's pretend for a moment that you took the coin. At first, your relationship with the coin might be that of flipping it from one side to the other—but what would it be like to learn to spin it? That is ambiguity.

We don't have to like both sides. We don't have to make peace with them. We don't even have to know how they will resolve themselves. We can be willing to let them both be there while we figure out what comes next. The uncertainty doesn't have to be resolved before we can participate.

Acceptance is NOT Approval

This is where acceptance gets particularly tricky, because accepting something does not mean that we approve of it.

I can accept that something happened without conceding that it should have happened. I can accept that someone has behaved in a particular way without deciding that I am okay with their behavior. I can accept that I am afraid without deciding that fear is something I want to act on.

In this way, acceptance is less of a moral judgment and more of an acknowledgment of reality.

We replay the conversation, revisit the injustice, imagine how things should have gone, or wait for someone else to acknowledge what happened. We stay stuck here, spending a ton of energy insisting that something shouldn't have happened. None of that means we are wrong to be angry, hurt, or disappointed. It simply means that there is a difference between recognizing that something is wrong and remaining caught in the argument that it should never have happened. But if we stay stuck here, we may never get around to asking what we want to do now.

Acceptance does not erase the wrongness of something, make it fair, or require us to like it. It simply allows us to stop arguing with the fact that it happened. And that distinction matters, because it allows us to drop the rope.

Acceptance is GRACIOUS

There is something gracious about acceptance. To accept something as it is requires us to loosen our grip, at least a little, on the way we think it should be.

This can be surprisingly difficult. We have ideas about how we should feel, how other people should behave, how our lives should unfold, and how quickly we should be able to recover when they don't. We can be particularly unforgiving with ourselves when reality fails to match those expectations.

Giving ourselves grace does not mean letting ourselves off the hook. It does not mean that everything we do is okay, or that we shouldn't take responsibility when we have caused harm. It means allowing ourselves to be human in the midst of all of that. I can acknowledge that I made a mistake without deciding that I am a terrible person for having made it.

The same is true of other people. Grace does not require approval. I can accept that someone behaved badly and still think that their behavior was hurtful or unacceptable. I can understand why someone did something and still hold them responsible for having done it.

And sometimes the thing we need to give grace to is the situation itself. There are circumstances in life that we would never have chosen. There are losses we would never have volunteered for, mistakes we wish we could undo, and changes we would have preferred not to make. Grace does not make any of those things good. It simply makes a little room around them.

Acceptance is NOT Resignation

Acceptance also does not mean resignation. Resignation suggests that we have given up our ability to influence what happens next. Acceptance, on the other hand, asks us to acknowledge what is actually happening so that we can make decisions based on reality rather than on what we wish were true.

If I am spending all of my energy arguing with the fact that something happened, I have considerably less energy available to decide what I want to do about it. Acceptance doesn't necessarily tell me what to do next. It simply allows me to stop pretending that I am dealing with a different set of circumstances than the ones actually in front of me.

There are times when acceptance can feel a lot like giving up, particularly when what we are accepting is something we desperately wish we could change. But resignation says, this is how things are, and there is nothing I can do. Acceptance says, this is how things are, so now what?

That distinction matters because acknowledging reality does not mean that we have to stop wanting something different. We can recognize that a relationship is not what we hoped it would be and still decide whether there is something worth trying to repair. We can accept that something has happened and still grieve it, challenge it, set a boundary around it, or decide what we want to do differently going forward.

Acceptance is CHOICE

Perhaps this is where acceptance and willingness meet. We may not be able to change what is here, and we may not know exactly what comes next, but we can become willing to respond to what is actually in front of us.

I may not be able to change what happened, but I can decide what I want to do with what happened. I may not be able to make someone understand me, but I can decide how much energy I want to spend trying to convince them.

That choice may not always be easy, and it may not always be the choice we would have made if things had been different. Sometimes what remains available to us is small. Sometimes we are choosing between two things we don't particularly want. But acceptance allows us to see those choices more clearly, rather than spending all of our energy wishing we had different ones.

So what about the coin? We still have it. We haven't gotten rid of the doubt, the uncertainty, the vulnerability, or whatever else was on the other side. We have simply stopped spending all of our energy trying to get one side to disappear.

And maybe that is why acceptance can be so difficult. We are being asked to make room for the entire coin—to acknowledge that the things we value may come with experiences we would very much prefer not to have. Perhaps acceptance is less about becoming comfortable with what we cannot change and more about becoming willing to make room for what is here, in service of what matters to us.

The question isn't whether we can get rid of the other side of the coin.

The question is whether we are willing to carry it.