Radical Acceptance Coping Statements

[Daniel E.]

Radical Acceptance Coping Statements

To help you begin using radical acceptance, it's often helpful to use a coping statement to remind yourself. Below are a few examples:

• “This is the way it has to be.”
• “All the events have led up to now.”
• “I can’t change what’s already happened.”
• “It’s no use fighting the past.”
• “Fighting the past only blinds me to my present.”
• “The present is the only moment I have control over.”
• “It’s a waste of time to fight what’s already occurred.”
• “The present moment is perfect, even if I don’t like what’s happening.”
• “This moment is exactly as it should be, given what’s happened before it.”
• “This moment is the result of over a million other decisions.”

excerpted from: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, & Distress Tolerance

 

[Daniel E.]

...The first set of Reality Acceptance Skills can be remembered by the acronym “ACCEPTS”. The goal of the “ACCEPTS” skills are to distract you from the emotional pain; to buy some time to think before reacting impulsively or getting swept up in rumination.

A ctivities that are fun and meaningful. What do you like to do?
C ontribute by adding value to someone else’s day or life.
C ompare yourself with the less-fortunate or with yourself when you were less skillful.
E motions (other) –do something to shift your emotional gears—laughter, enjoyment, pride.
P ush away the hurt to the background. Focus instead on something productive and affirming.
T houghts—force your mind to think about something else.
S ensations—stimulate your senses—smell something sweet; taste spicy candy; see art.

There are more Reality Acceptance skills—but first, you should practice these. Write these skills on an index card and put somewhere that is easily accessible. The next time you feel the sting of interpersonal pain, pull out the card and go down the list...

How to Accept Hurt - Insights from DBT | Moxie Mental Health

 

[Daniel E.]

You can’t solve a problem if you can’t accept that you’ve got the problem. If you deny, escape, avoid, run away from, dissociate, try to kill yourself, attack and do everything in the world, you can’t really get anywhere until you can say, “Yes, this is my life. I hate it. I’ll do something about it.”

Mindfulness is a practice to help you radically accept yourself without censure, judgment, hate, and attack.

~ Walking Like Buffalo: Reflections on Mindfulness and DBT​

 

[Daniel E.]

Video clip of Marsha Linehan on radical acceptance:

From Suffering to Freedom: Practicing Reality Acceptance

Transcript of the entire video:

Radical Acceptance Text

An excerpt:

There are three parts to radical acceptance. The first part is accepting that reality is what it is. The second part is accepting that the event or situation causing you pain has a cause. The third part is accepting life can be worth living even with painful events in it...

Accepting that every event has a cause is the opposite of saying 'why me'...Radical acceptance is not necessarily knowing what the causes are...But I accept that there was a cause, even if I don't know it...

Why is it harder to accept really painful things? Generally, it's because secretly, somewhere inside us, we actually believe that if we refuse to accept something that we don't like, all we have to do is throw a tantrum or refuse to accept it.

---------- Post added February 26th, 2012 at 06:31 AM ---------- Previous post was February 25th, 2012 at 11:39 PM ----------

Radical Acceptance: An Interview with Tara Brach

Pain X Resistance = Suffering. Typically when anxiety or anger or sadness arises, it is met with a form of resistance like judgment (such as the thought “This is bad, this shouldn’t be happening”), self-distraction or physical contraction. If instead you mindfully accept the difficult feeling and the dislike of how unpleasant it is, there is a shift in your relationship to the experience. That which is aware and accepting of the feelings is larger than the feelings. Your sense of Being is enlarged: While the unpleasantness might remain, it no longer is hitched to your sense of who you are. There is freedom, there is room for what is going on.​

 

[Daniel E.]

Addictive thinking: understanding self-deception - Abraham J. Twerski - Google Books

Much of the denial in addictive, distorted thinking is due to intense resistance to change. As long as someone denies reality, he or she can continue behaving the same as before. Acceptance of reality might commit him or her to the very difficult proces of change.

 

[Daniel E.]

On Radical Acceptance (Part 2) -- Behavioral Tech
by Randy Wolbert
February 5, 2020

...What do our clients need to accept? Clients have to accept one set of problems in order to work on another.

They have to accept the mistakes of the past, the reality of the present, and limitations on the future. Accepting the past is the way out of suffering; refusing to accept maintains the status quo of a miserable existence.

They also need acceptance of the reality of the present as the only moment that matters, the only moment that we control. The pain of the present exists as it is. Suffering occurs when dwelling in the past. Thinking “things have always been this way” intensifies and perpetuates the misery. Speculating on the future prompts further suffering, and thoughts that the future will not differ from the present can lead to anxiety.

Residing in this one moment allows problem solving to occur, and residing in a different moment inevitably results in suffering.

What do we as therapists need to accept?

The therapist must also practice radical acceptance. This includes staying in touch with the unity of all things and being secure in the experience of therapy as a real relationship between equals.

The process of treatment is transactional in nature and approached with humility. DBT therapists must radically accept that individuals with BPD tend to make slow episodic progress and that working with suicidal individuals portends the possibility of suicide by these clients.

To effectively teach radical acceptance the therapist should have their own life examples of the need to radically accept. It should be a story about a time when failure to accept something -– maintaining the status quo -– kept us suffering. As soon as acceptance occurred, we were able to problem solve and move on...

Remember the pathway to joy arises out of radical acceptance...

 

[Daniel E.]

On Radical Acceptance (Part 1) -- Behavioral Tech
by Randy Wolbert
February 5, 2020

What is radical acceptance?

When looking up definitions of "acceptance," you find the typical "acceptance is the act of accepting" which is not all that helpful. The two main meanings appear to be receipt of something or recognition of something.

A couple of the problematic synonyms are "agreement" and "approval." This what our clients typically think of when they hear the word "acceptance;" somehow this means that I agree with the outcome and I approve of it. A couple of the other synonyms are actually more useful for our purposes – "tolerance" and "acknowledgment."

When we look up the word "radical," we find the following definition: "concerning the most basic and important parts of something; thorough and complete; and new, different and likely to have a great effect."

So taken together, "radical acceptance" is acknowledgement that is thorough and complete which is likely to have a great effect. Or as Dr. Marsha Linehan put it: "The fully open experience of what is, just as it is, by unrivaled entering into reality, just as it is, at this moment. Radical Acceptance is the only way out of hell."

So, where does the notion of Radical Acceptance come from?

Marsha will tell you that it comes straight from Zen and the practice of letting go of attachments. The desperate clinging desire for something different than what actually is turns pain into suffering. Letting go of this attachment to what is not will loosen the grip of suffering.

Finding acceptance in this moment is a true moment of freedom. Freedom means letting go of any expectations of life experiences, radical acceptance of the way things are, and a continual turning of the mind towards acceptance; ultimately, this freedom leads to joy. I think we can all agree that a little joy definitely beats out suffering.