Demystifying DBT's Radical Acceptance Skill
Imagine…
The day of your birthday party has finally arrived…
You’ve been looking forward to it all week…
The weather forecast didn’t say rain…
You wake up and look outside of your window…
It is raining. You notice you feel sad.
How will you choose to move forward?
Radical acceptance is a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skill designed to keep pain from turning into suffering. Radical Acceptance is tricky because it involves truly accepting reality for what it is. This doesn’t mean liking or approving of reality in certain moments. It does mean doing the opposite of denying reality, such as hyper-focusing on the way things “should” be and always wishing reality was different. By embracing reality rather than rejecting it, you can minimize unnecessary suffering. While pain is a natural and unavoidable occurrence for humans, radical acceptance allows us to keep that pain from becoming suffering.
Suffering is pain without acceptance (thanks, Marsha). In other words, suffering prolongs and increases pain transforming it into misery. If you are a parent reading this, you might be thinking… “that’s really confusing, and my kids will never understand that.” You are right, it is complicated. Yet, you’d be surprised how often young folks (and young adults) tell us that Radical Acceptance is the most useful thing they learned in DBT. So, let’s keep going…
Radical Acceptance is a bit like those old-timey bamboo finger trap toys. The harder you try to pull your fingers out, the more you get stuck (and the more frustrating it becomes). When you relax your hands and notice what’s happening with the toy, you are free to remove your fingers. When we fight against reality (i.e., pretend like it doesn’t exist, try to change it when we can’t, etc.), the more we get “stuck” and increase our suffering. If we pause, take a breath, and notice how things actually are in that moment, we are freer to make choices.
You may not be able to change a stressful situation, but you can change how you feel and respond to it. Now back to our birthday scenario…
The reality of the situation is that it is raining. It is also still your birthday, and there will still be a party.
Imagine there is a fork in the road…
To one side is a path of rejecting the reality that it is raining. On this path, you are upset about the rain and are consumed with bitter and angry emotions. You keep asking yourself “why did it have to rain on my birthday? This is so unfair.” Your body feels tense. You get ready for your party in a bad mood, repeating the thought that “it shouldn’t be raining today.” You spend your party in a grumpy state, and your friends and family spend much of the party trying to cheer you up. By the end of the night, you begin to experience feelings of guilt for being in such a bad mood.
**Hint: Emotions like anger, bitterness, or thinking “why me??” may be indicators of non-acceptance**
To the other side of the fork in the road is radical acceptance. You sit in your room and allow yourself to feel sad that it is raining for a little bit. You decide to self-soothe by turning on your favorite playlist while you get ready. You intentionally focus your attention on how fun it is to get ready. The music cheers you up just a little and you begin to feel the emotion of excitement as you put on your party outfit. Within an hour of the party starting, as you are surrounded by people you love, the rain is less important and less bothersome.
Which side will you choose?
While you had every right to be upset that it rained on the day of your party, I hope you are able to see how radically accepting the facts of the situation changed how the rest of the night went.
Now that you understand Radical Acceptance, you’ve opened the door to more choices when life is being “unfair.” Now you can choose from the following:
You can try to solve the problem.
You can try to change how you feel about the problem.
You can accept the reality of the situation.
You can do nothing and remain miserable.
You can fight against reality and make the situation worse.
Radical acceptance is one of the most supportive yet difficult Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills. A situation may be totally unfair, unjust, and unreasonable and it continues to exist in the world. It’s up to you to respond in a way that is most effective for you.
For extra guidance on radical acceptance and using other DBT skills with the help of a therapist, reach out to us at hello@mindchicago.com.
Authored by Mind Chicago therapist Fatima Sakrani, LSW
