Radical Acceptance Is a Practice, Not a One-Time Decision

A lot of people think radical acceptance should work like a light switch. You decide to accept something, you feel relief, and then you are finished. But when the pain comes back a few days later, you think you must have done it wrong, or it didn’t work.

You’re not doing anything wrong, but your expectations may have been a little too high. Radical acceptance isn’t a decision you make once and check off a list. It is something you have to practice, and then practice again, sometimes many times in one day.

The good news is that you do not have to power through on willpower alone. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, the same framework radical acceptance comes from, has several useful concrete skills you can use in the moment. You can keep coming back to them for the rest of your life.

Skill 1: Turning Your Mind

The first skill is called turning the mind. Marsha Linehan, who developed these skills, described acceptance as a fork in the road. One path is to keep rejecting your reality, which keeps the suffering going. The other path is acceptance. Turning your mind means noticing that you have reached that fork and choosing to turn yourself toward the path of acceptance.

You know by now that choosing to accept is not the same thing as feeling accepting. The choice alone does not bring peace. It just puts you on the road to acceptance. And because you will likely find yourself rejecting reality again and again, you will have to make that same choice more than once.

This is what it looks like in practice:

First, notice when you are not accepting something. You may notice anger, bitterness, resentment, or that familiar loop of "why me?" "Why is this happening?" "This should not be this way." Those thoughts are your cue that you have reached the fork.

Second, go quiet on the inside and commit to accepting reality as it is in this moment.

Third, do it again the next time you drift, and the time after that.

Fourth, make yourself a plan for how you will catch yourself in the future.

Acceptance Statements

Acceptance statements are short phrases you repeat to turn your mind back toward what is real. They are not magic, and you do not have to believe them for them to work fully. You just have to say them, and keep saying them. When you are standing at that fork in the road, it helps to have a few words or phrases ready to help you. A few that members have found useful:

• It is what it is.
• I cannot change what has already happened.
• This moment came from a long line of causes, and right now it could not be otherwise.
• I can accept this even though I do not like it.
• My life can still be worth living, even with this pain in it.

I encourage you to write your own phrases, too. Keep two or three of them somewhere you can find them quickly, like the notes app on your phone, so they are there the moment you need them.

Skill 2: Willing Hands and Half-Smiling

Some days your mind just will not cooperate. You can say every acceptance statement you know and still feel yourself rejecting reality. On those days, you can start with this exercise for your body.

Your body and your mind are in constant conversation. When you clench your fists and tighten your face, you tell your brain that you are under threat and need to fight. When you soften those same places, you send the opposite message. Linehan borrowed two small practices for exactly this, willing hands and half-smiling, from the teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

This is what it looks like in practice:

For Willing Hands, unclench your hands and turn your palms open and facing up, with your fingers loose. If you are standing, let your arms hang easily at your sides. If you are sitting, rest your hands on your thighs with the palms up. If you are lying down, let your arms rest beside you, palms facing the ceiling.

For Half-Smiling, let your face go soft, starting at your forehead and moving down through your eyes, cheeks, and jaw until your teeth are slightly apart. Then let the corners of your mouth lift just barely, into something calm and gentle rather than a big forced grin.

You can pair the two or do each of them separately. And you can do these exercises almost anywhere. It takes only a few seconds, and it gives your body a way to practice acceptance while your mind catches up.

The Full Radical Acceptance Process

When you have more time and energy, you can move through acceptance step by step. I have adapted Linehan’s version into a shorter version that you can do in your head.

Start by noticing that you are fighting reality. Then remind yourself, plainly, that this is what happened, and that it came from causes, most of which were never in your control. Let the feelings come and go while you do this.

Next, picture what your life would look like if you had already accepted this. What would you do differently today? Where would your energy go? Then begin doing one of those things now, as though the acceptance were already in place. The feeling of acceptance often follows the action rather than leading it.

Check the Facts First

There is one important guardrail to protect you during this process. Radical acceptance is meant for the things you genuinely cannot change. It is not a reason to give up on something you could actually influence, and it is not something you apply to a story without checking. So before you work to accept something, it is worth slowing down to check the facts.

Most of the time, our distress does not come only from what happened. It comes from our interpretation of what happened. The facts and the story you built around it are two different things, and the facts are the only part you want to accept.

To check the facts, slow down and ask yourself a few questions.

• What emotion am I working with?
• What actually happened? Describe it in plain terms, the way a camera would have recorded it.
• What am I making it mean, and is there another reasonable way to interpret it?
• Am I assuming the worst, and if the worst did come true, could I handle it?
• Does the emotion I am feeling, and how strong it is, actually match the facts in front of me?

Sometimes you will find that your emotions are perfectly suited for this situation, and the work in front of you is to accept a genuinely painful reality. Other times you will find that the story grew much bigger than the facts, and the feeling begins to settle on its own once you can see clearly.

Returning to Acceptance

Practicing acceptance will not make a painful feeling completely disappear. Instead, it loosens your grip on the fight you have been having with that feeling. Once you stop wrestling it, the feeling is finally free to move through you. After that, it can change and become easier to carry.

You will use these skills on a hard morning and feel steadier, and then find you need them again later that day. Needing to use these tools again does not mean the relief you felt earlier wasn’t real or that you failed. Every time you use these tools, you are strengthening the practice.