Acceptance can mean many things—for some people, it represents a kind of defeat; for others, in contrast, serenity. But for our purposes, “acceptance” is neither a state of mind nor an act of surrender.
Rather, it is simply choosing to allow our feelings to be as they already are.
Acceptance is one of the six core processes in ACT’s model of psychological flexibility, and its prominence as literally the first word within the acronym (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) offers us a strong hint as to its importance.
Note that acceptance, in this usage, is not merely tolerance.
ACT does not ask us to suffer in silence, or to quit, give up, or otherwise yield to pain or despair.
Note also that “acceptance” is not intended to be synonymous with enlightenment. It is not an airy mental state to be achieved nor a distant metaphysical mountaintop to be climbed.
Acceptance, as a pathway to psychological flexibility, is a behavior.
It’s something we do.
The good news is, if you’ve been flirting with Jon Kabat-Zin’s Body Scan, you’ve already been practicing a form of acceptance by learning how to “breath in” to parts of your body.
There are many ways we can accept our feelings, from simple “making room” exercises to more advanced combinations of ACT tools, to even more expansive forms of acceptance which can change our relationship to reality itself.
All of these practices are intended to help us identify what we can and can’t change, and in doing so, free us from unworkable control strategies so we can focus our effort where it counts.
