Episode 40: The Art of Radical Acceptance

In this episode,

Lizzie considers the practice of radical acceptance and how it can help you move through pain, trauma, and life's uncertainties.

Listen now

Listen on Spotify

Post-pod questions to consider

What is one area of your life where you find yourself ruminating on how things could have been different? What radical acceptance mantra can you repeat to help you move forward?

Episode Transcript

Hey, you're listening to Midnight Philosopher with Lizzie. Thanks for tuning in. 

Today, I'm going to talk about the DBT skill, radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is the idea that it is what it is and it isn't what it isn't. It's a skill used in DBT, which stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which was created by Marsha Linehan. Dialectical means to hold two truths at once. 

For example, someone can be both sad and happy about something that occurred. You're holding two truths at once, and radical acceptance is usually holding the two truths that what happened really happened, but you also don't have to be okay with it. You can have two different feelings about what happened. You can accept that that is the truth of your reality, while also holding time and space for the feelings that you have. 

And it's a really useful skill. If you've been through trauma, you can both accept that the awful thing happened, but you don't have to agree with it or endorse it or be okay with it. I've used radical acceptance many times in my life. 

In the case of the death of my mom, when my mom died, I kept not really wanting to believe that is what actually happened, that it couldn't have really happened, and it couldn't have happened the way that it did. And I kept resisting the truth, and I was flooded with the woulda, coulda, shoulda, I would've done this differently. I could have done this differently. I should have done this differently. If I had just done these things, the outcome would've been different. 

But these hypothetical questions weren't helping me, and they were actually getting me farther from the accepting the truth of what happened, because I had to practice radical acceptance and accept the reality of what truly happened. Even if I wished it didn't happen, or I wish it had happened differently, it was this wishing wasn't actually gonna change anything. And this wishing just put me in more pain. And so I had to radically accept that it was, that the pain would get stuck. And if I kept saying, woulda, coulda, shoulda, that pain would just keep getting stuck and stuck. And then it would be the cyclical kind of cycle of me wishing something was different and I can't change the past, so then I would even wish something more was different, and I still can't change the past. So it would just get me stuck in this feedback loop of not accepting what happened. 

Another time I used radical acceptance was when I finally came to the conclusion that clinical social work wasn't the right career for me, at least not at this time. I tried many different social work jobs, and I thought that with every new job, I thought, this time it'll be different. This time will be good for my mental health. This time I can handle it. And the truth was I could handle it, but it was extremely bad for my mental health each and every time. 

Being constantly surrounded by trauma and people going through a hard time did start to weigh on me emotionally. And I really cared about people. And sometimes I had trouble setting those mental boundaries. And sometimes I would worry about a client when I went home at night. And sometimes I would feel triggered during one of my sessions with a client and that feeling of being triggered and scared would follow me through the rest of the day of the day. So while I loved being a therapist, being a therapist wasn't good for me, and I had to radically accept that it didn't matter how hard I worked or how hard I tried, that even though I was trying my best, my mental health in being a therapist was suffering. 

And so I had to figure out other ways to be a therapist, like maybe doing this podcast, but I had to radically accept that I could not be a therapist in a mental health clinic at this time because that was draining for me and it wasn't helping me live the life I wanted to live. So whether or not I wanted to, I had to radically accept that I had picked the wrong career for myself and that it was time to try something new. 

And a third time I used radical acceptance was when I thought about my gender and sexuality. In terms of my gender, I always didn't really feel too much like I fit in with women, but I also didn't really feel like I fit in with men. I was in a sorority for a couple years, which was a mistake. And though there were plenty of nice people in it, it just wasn't for me. And part of the reason I feel like it wasn't for me is I never really felt like I fit in with the women who were in the sorority or people who identified as women. I always kind of felt out of place when I was there. And it's not that anyone treated me differently or treated me like I was out of place. It was just this internal feeling that I didn't belong with a group of women. 

And I also don't really feel like I belong with a lot of cis hetero men either. I feel that I am figuring out where my gender identity falls, and it's not really super feminine and it's not super masculine, but I don't really feel non-binary either. And so this was all kind of a way of me radically accepting my identity. Radical acceptance doesn't just have to be with something that happened. It can be with a part of who you are. 

So gender identity is a part of who I am, and I've had to radically accept that I'm not quite sure where I land yet, but nothing has felt quite right to me. And that's hard. Sometimes you wanna know the answers, sometimes you want a definite box you can put yourself in because it's easier. But I can't find that box, not yet at least. And maybe there is no box for me. And so I have to radically accept that I'm where I'm supposed to be at this moment, and I'm on the journey to figuring out who I am. 

Radical acceptance is a practice of saying it is what it is and it isn't what it isn't. But how do you know when you should practice radical acceptance? Maybe something really horrible happened to you and you start asking yourself, how could I have done that? Or I should have done something differently, or if this had happened, if that had happened. 

If you start asking yourself hypothetical questions about a past situation, it's time to practice radical acceptance. It's time to say, yeah, this is what happened. I might not like it. I might not agree with it, but there is nothing I can do about it. This is what happened. You can also acknowledge how you feel though. You can say, I'm not okay with what happened. I don't like that this happened. But you do have to accept that this happened. 

Some things you can say to yourself in order to start to accept something to be the truth is you can say, maybe I wish things were different, but they're not different. This is what actually happened. I could wish so many things were different, but the truth of the matter is they weren't different. This is what happened. And sometimes you can go over the facts of a situation with yourself, and if you find yourself starting to stray to the what ifs, coulda woulda or shoulda, then you have to bring yourself back to the present moment and say, you did the best that you could at the time. You did the best that you could at the time. And nothing you can do now can change the past. 

And it's really hard. It's really hard to practice radical acceptance because it hurts, because it's acknowledging the true pain that happened. But you cannot move through that pain until you acknowledge that it's there. And you might practice radical acceptance if you've been catastrophizing about something in the past, or you might wanna practice radical acceptance to practice accepting parts of yourself to practice who accepting who you are, even if you're not exactly sure it's a little bit unsettling to you, or you are just a kind of, yeah, you're just unsure. 

So you can practice radical acceptance, and you can hold that dialectic. You can say in a case of something bad that happened in the past, like a trauma, you can say, this happened, but I'm not okay with it. Or in the case of identity, you could say, I am feeling this way about myself, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. 

Radical acceptance is often holding the facts along with the feelings. And when you can hold both the facts and the feelings in both hands, then you can start to figure out how to work through something horrible that happened, or how to think about your identity in a new way. 

Tonight, I talked about how radical acceptance can be something that is really helpful for you if you're trying to figure out a career and if it's right for you, or if you're trying to figure out any decision and you're trying to figure out, is this right for me or is this hurting me? As in the example of being a social worker, it was hurting me. 

You can also start to work through feelings about your identity. You can say, hmm, I feel this way about myself, and this is also how I see it. So as in, in terms of my gender identity. And in the terms of a trauma like my mom's death, you can notice yourself saying, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, and stop yourself right there because there's nothing you coulda shoulda woulda done differently that did actually happen. So you have to accept what actually happened, even though it's hard. 

Well, thanks so much for listening tonight. I'm gonna go radically accept that my back is in a lot of pain right now. Have a good night.