DBT Skills Radical Acceptance

So one of the next

skills

that we're going to talk about that can be really important within ourselves and our families, especially right now, is

radical

acceptance

and before we get into

radical

acceptance

, I'm going to talk a little bit. about what exactly it is. This means in the distress tolerance module, so in the distress tolerance module we have two parts, the first part is crisis survival. These are some of the videos that you have already seen with

skills

like Tip Cell Soothe and pros and cons and so when we are in crisis Survival this is where we want to use these skills in the short term to overcome the crisis now the second part of tolerance Anxiety is what we call acceptance of reality and these are the skills that will help us truly accept our reality.

Sometimes we may be in a survival crisis and think that we need the skills to overcome that crisis, when what we should do is accept the moment fully and sincerely, other times we might think that we have to accept our misery and our pain. and there are skills that can help us get through that moment and change that moment, so both crisis survival and acceptance of reality are, although different, very, very important, so the first skill in accepting The reality we're talking about is radical acceptance and this is one of my favorite skills and I think they're very, very important, so before we get into what exactly radical acceptance is, we want to talk about what pain looks like and non-acceptance when we are experiencing difficult events and one thing I love to spend some time on. looking and talking it's just this equation here: pain plus non-acceptance equals suffering and pain plus acceptance equals pain and this often makes people perplexed and wonder what that means, and that's why in DBT we don't.

What we are talking about is that. dialectic of we can experience painful events while working or living a life worth living and with that being said, life is painful, we experience painful events, we lose relationships we love, people we love, we go through really difficult times and that is painful in all the time. the pain of life will be inevitable you will experience things in your life that are painful, for example, for many of us, we cannot see some of our family members right now, that is painful for some of us, we have lost family members, that It is painful and when we choose to accept that pain that is inevitable, we can sit with that pain and at the same time learn to accumulate positive emotions or work to make our life worth living, it is when we do not accept that pain, so that pain more lack of acceptance we begin to suffer and In reality, there is a significant difference between pain and suffering.

Like I said, pain is those moments that we experience daily and throughout our lives and we can overcome those moments where we are skilled when we choose not to accept the painful parts of life which is when we get stuck in misery and it is then when we can really experience intense emotions and feel that our life is not worth living and that is why it is really important to distinguish the difference between the two pains that we will have. Yes, it's uncomfortable, it's not. ideal and sometimes we really don't want to be in that space and when we learn to accept that pain we can move towards a life worth living and that is why radical acceptance is so important so what is radical acceptance?

What is this idea of ​​acceptance? being radical, right, it seems to me that it's probably a pretty big thing and it's so radical that acceptance is accepting completely in our mind, our heart and our body, we accept things with every part of our being, that's when we stop fighting. our reality because it is not how we want it to be and we let go of the bitterness so many of us, myself included, have been in times in our lives where we have tried to fight reality, this is not happening to me, I can't. I don't think this is happening to me, this is not real and I think about the times when you were in that space and how painful and possibly miserable that radical acceptance was when we made the decision to stop fighting that reality, even if it's not the way. that we want it and another important thing to remember is that acceptance is not approval just when we have these difficult moments in our lives and we accept them we are not saying great this is wonderful I am so glad this is happening right, we are simply accepting That this is my reality at this moment, it does not mean that we are saying that it is okay, it is something favorable or good, so what should be accepted?

What are the things in life that we have to accept? Because we know that radical acceptance is a thing. It is important to use it daily and often becomes a core skill that we need, especially in difficult times like now, when we are stuck in our homes, so we want to accept reality as it is, the facts about the past and the present are facts even if you don't like them remember that we cannot control the past because those things already happened well and we cannot control the future because it has not happened yet but we can choose to accept our past and make changes in our reality so that the future can To be different, we also want to accept that there are limitations in the future for everyone and those realistic limitations must be accepted, for example, if I just wake up and decide to finish my therapist degree and go to medical school, you know I could have done it. accept that that might not work out the way I want, given my age and the amount of education I've already received in school and the fact that I've already built a very solid career, so we might want to enthuse the desire .

Accepting that going to medical school may not be a reality will allow you to know the outcome you might want. We also want to accept that everything has a cause, including the events and situations that cause pain and suffering in life. We also want to Accept that life is worth living even with painful events. This is one of my favorite parts about radical acceptance because again we talk about that synthesis of painful events and a life worth living and those things can exist simultaneously and so we want to remember that if life had to be pain-free to worth living, no one would have a life worth living, so why do we accept reality because like Brook said, sometimes it's a very difficult thing to do, especially something like this right now. fact that we have to be in our houses and it's a beautiful spring day and we can't play on it, among other things, so why do we need to accept our reality?

One point is that if we continue to reject our reality, we don't change it by rejecting it and not interacting with it, it continues to be our reality, we are simply no longer interacting with our reality and that can keep us in a state of misery because rejecting something does not change nothing and it also changes our reality. first it requires a certain acceptance because if you do not commit to your reality you cannot change it and that is why it requires that you accept at least some elements of it to be able to make some changes and to make big changes radical acceptance It has to be part of this in addition, since we said that pain cannot be avoided, just like when we reject our realities, when we reject our pain, it becomes suffering and then we get stuck in this cycle of rejecting our pain, rejecting a reality. and increasing our suffering and our misery and when we refuse to accept that we become trapped in this pattern of unhappiness and many times acceptance can lead us to sadness, it can be very difficult, it can be very painful and ultimately it can lead us to that life. that what we talk about so often is worth living and something that is an image that I have and that I don't know if I enjoy it but you carry it with you if I carry it with me safely um Marsha Linehan says that the way out of hell is through misery and then by refusing to accept the misery that was part of getting out of hell, we fall back into hell and they described it to me, you know, this misery, this pain, this suffering where when we reject our reality we got stuck. that is like a personal hell that we have almost created if we choose to reject our reality and that is why it was described to me as leaving hell, climbing the stairs of hell towards a life worth living and towards a reality. where we can have pain and happiness we have to climb these stairs we have to climb these stairs to get out of hell and those stairs are made of metal it can be painful you can take a look it can take some time it can be sad and difficult and if we endure that pain to times and that hard work at times to get out of hell, there may be light at the end of the tunnel and we can reach that path while we live, whereas if we choose not to follow those steps and climb those steps we just stay in that misery and suffering personal, but ones that we choose to engage with because we reject our reality and so when we talk about radical acceptance, you know this skill, as Bree and I have been saying, it is a very, very important skill to practice within ourselves and it's also a very important skill to practice within our relationships and specifically in our families, so some of the things that we might have to practice acceptance in this space is that our loved ones are struggling with their mental health or have been diagnosed with a mental illness, you know, we may also have to accept that our loved ones are experiencing suicidal ideation and may not want to be here or have thoughts of not being here, we may have to accept that our loved ones are engaging in maladaptive activities. behaviors like self-harm or significant substance use, we may have to accept that our family members or our loved ones, you know, have done things to us in the past that have created really difficult times and emotions in the present, you know.

There are a lot of different things that we need to practice acceptance within our families and radical acceptance can be a really helpful skill to get there, so you know, start thinking about what it would be like if I started to really accept them. difficult things that are happening within me and with my family and I also encourage you to think about what it would be like if you didn't accept it. They know that many of us have been in a space where we don't want to accept things. reality I do not want to accept that my loved one is thinking about suicide I will not accept that that may be an option for them I will not accept that my loved one has been diagnosed with a mental illness and think about what that relationship is like If we move forward without acceptance, the barriers will remain growing and growing and will not give in to having healthy relationships with ourselves or others, so I encourage you to start thinking about what it would be like if you practiced acceptance with In these difficult times, radical acceptance steps are like many skills in DBT.

This is a step-by-step process because it is difficult, so the first step towards radical acceptance is: we want to observe that we are fighting reality, we want to recognize that I could be saying that it shouldn't be like this Why is this happening to me? ? We want to look at that and we want to acknowledge that because the first step in acceptance is accepting that we might be struggling with what's going on in our lives right now. The next step is to remind ourselves that the unpleasant reality is just what it is and it cannot be changed, that unpleasant reality has already happened and as I said, the things that have already happened cannot be changed because they already happened, we also want to remind ourselves that There are causes of reality, recognizing that some type of story led to this moment, now in this space we could choose to investigate and say, do you know where this came from?, why did this happen?, what happened in the beginning? and we could also choose.

To accept that something happened in the past that led us to this moment, we want to practice acceptance with our whole being and that's why there is something called half acceptance and what it might look like is yeah, okay, I get it right, you told me that. that I accepted is over, we are saying that, but do we really fully accept it in our mind, our heart, in our body, that is very, very important because just saying that we accept it does not necessarily mean that we do, we also want practice? opposite action, which is another really useful skill and this step 5 I think is very, very useful, lists all the behaviors that you would do if you accepted this reality and accepted the facts and then acted as if you had already accepted the facts. can be a really helpful step when we practice acceptance.

What would it be like if I accepted all these things? I can do that? We want to confront events that seem unacceptable. Imagine and rehearse in your mind what you would do if you accepted what seems unacceptable. I will say that this is a very, very difficult and scary skill when we think about some of the maladaptive behaviors thatcould be happening and we simply want to practice acceptance. If those things happen, what will we do? How will we move forward? with that when we also want to make sure that we're not too future-oriented because again we want to practice mindfulness of the present moment and recognize that we want to accept what's happening currently and at the same time recognize things that might happen in the future.

In the future we must pay attention to bodily sensations when we begin to think about what we need to accept. When we start thinking about acceptance, our hands may get hot. We may feel a tingling sensation throughout the body. Our face can get hot. You know, things like. that and that's why we really want to attend to those physiological sensations as we begin to practice acceptance. This might mean using some crisis survival skills, like self-soothing, because it's so important to take care of ourselves as we walk down this path of acceptance that we want. allow disappointment, sadness and pain to arise within us and remember that those are emotions that are a wave that you can ride well, we talk about riding the Wave of emotions, those emotions come and go and then we want to recognize that life is worth living. life even when there is pain, so I have some radical ones to remember that I'm going to share with you that I think are really real. important when we talk about acceptance and that is why the first radical to remember is that acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as they are.

I remember someone asked me once what acceptance is and I gave them a definition that included acceptance and they said no, what acceptance really is, I don't know what it is and I thought that was a very, very good question, and acceptance is this is my favorite definition, the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as they are, acceptance is, sorry. It is a movement away from self-deception and a movement towards reality by not practicing acceptance we stay away from the intelligence of our feelings. I really love this too when we practice acceptance we deliberately choose to slow down with all the experiences that are coming up.

On the radar we actually welcome the most difficult emotions and explore them with curiosity, so as emotional beings we want to give ourselves some validation because we are actually made to experience even the difficult emotions, so when we don't practice acceptance, we are not giving. give ourselves the credit we deserve that we can actually survive and accept sadness, pain, anger, without guilt, shame, we can actually do that and therefore by practicing acceptance we realize that intelligence Emotional is a real thing and I believe that experiencing and accepting negative emotions is the catalyst. for coveted positive states, such as growing inner confidence.

I love this too and I think about it when we allow ourselves to move past these difficult emotions, accept these difficult realities and continue to move forward, we are building and increasing the inner confidence that shows us: what can I do! This is how I can get through these difficult times and continue working to have a life worth living. When we stop fighting certain emotions or events, we also stop being defined by them. If uncomfortable emotions or experiences are welcome, such as pain or sadness, then the identification stops, think about a time when maybe you were the sad friend or the depressed friend, you live with those emotions as labels, but when we accept that we experience sadness and we experience depression and we continue to choose to move on from who we are.

It is not defined by our emotions and lastly, acceptance is what makes change possible, we grow up believing that judging and evaluating ourselves negatively is how we improve. Many of us were taught that and, in fact, the best fuel for transformation is to allow yourself to feel what you need to feel so that you can decide what you want to do about it. This is how we develop intrapersonal intelligence, so we again radically accept, act fully on our realities, and choose to move forward.