Therapy Guide: Radical Acceptance

Many of you are going to therapy thinking, “I know I need to accept this, I just don't know how to ask for help with it.” This guide is for you.

Radical acceptance is an easy goal to misname or misinterpret. If you say "I want to work on accepting my mother," some therapists will hear "I want to repair this relationship," and you'll spend three sessions on reconciliation that you didn’t ask for. This is why it’s important to be clear with your therapist about what you want to work on, what you need to accept, and what you hope to do or achieve with that acceptance.

Bringing it Up

"There's a reality in my family I keep fighting in my head, and it's exhausting me. I don't think I can change it. I want help stopping the fight."

"I've been reading about radical acceptance. I think that's what I need to work on.”

"I'm not trying to get to forgiveness, and I'm not trying to reconcile. I want to accept what keeps happening in this relationship."

"We've talked a lot about what happened. I think I'm ready to move on to how do I live with the fact that it did."

What to Work On

1. Get clear on what you're accepting. Before anything else, name the specific fact, like: "My father goes silent when I bring up the past." Ask your therapist to help you separate the story you’re telling yourself from the facts. In DBT this is called checking the facts.

2. Find out what's underneath the refusal. You're not resisting because you're stubborn.

3. Grieve the version that isn't coming. Ask to spend sessions on the parent you needed and didn't get, the childhood you can’t do over, the apology that never came.

4. Learn what to do in the moment. Ask your therapist to help you practice the skills to radically accept.

5. Build the boundary that acceptance makes possible. Once you've stopped waiting for the person to be different, you can create real boundaries. Use session time to figure out what you'd do differently if you had already accepted this, then plan for it.