When You Can’t Change What Happened: How Radical Acceptance Helps Us Move Forward
Have you ever found yourself in a circumstance where you’re grieving, and you’re just consumed by what-ifs?
What if she had gone to the doctor sooner?
What if we hadn’t gotten in that fight?
What if I had just told him how I felt?
What if I had turned left instead of right?
This is a pretty common part of grieving, but sometimes, we can get stuck in this place of “what-if,” which keeps us suspended and unable to move forward toward healing.
The fact is, most of the time we are grieving things that we can not change. If we could change them, we would! So, it sets us up from the start to focus on the painful impossibility that things could be different. And this is where radical acceptance comes in.
Psychologist Tara Brach defines radical acceptance as “the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is.” In grief, this means breaking free from the what-ifs or the hope that things could be any different and accepting our reality for what it is.
The words “accept” and “acceptance” can trip us up here because often those words imply a yes or a desire like when we are accepting a job offer or a marriage proposal. Radical acceptance doesn’t mean that you want what happened or that it’s okay. You’re just acknowledging that it is your reality. See the difference? It’s more of a conscious acknowledgment than a “Yes, please!”
Therapist Cindy Finch describes it like this, “Radical acceptance means that you have stopped fighting with reality and throwing fits about what has happened. You have decided to acknowledge and accept it instead. Once you do this, you may feel intense sadness because you have now given up on all hope of a better past or a better outcome currently. At the same time, you may also feel great relief because, now, you can finally let go of the fight over what should have been and deal more effectively with what's in front of you — as it is.”
So while it’s not necessarily and easy process to get to that point, when we can practice radical acceptance, we see the following benefits:
Radical acceptance reduces emotional intensity. While radical acceptance doesn’t take away our emotions (and we wouldn’t want it to!), it does help to provide a more balanced perspective. When we accept what is, it can take away a lot of the shame, guilt, and anger that can accompany our grief.
Radical acceptance opens the door to healing. When we accept our situation for what it is, even if it’s not what we would have chosen, we free up energy that we would have spent fighting reality. We can then use that energy to heal.
Radical acceptance facilitates self-compassion. When we accept our situation for what it is, then we can acknowledge the truth of how difficult our grief is and then care for ourselves appropriately.
Radical acceptance helps us find meaning. You don’t have to try to find meaning in your losses. Sometimes bad things happen, and that’s all the meaning we can muster. But some people are more inclined to try to find meaning in their hardships, and that can be very healing. The energy and emotion we use trying to fight our reality, can be put toward finding meaning.
Let’s put that into a practical example. Let’s say someone has lost a spouse. They could be consumed with the idea that if they had done x differently, their spouse might still be here. Radical acceptance means that instead of torturing themselves with what they could have done differently that might have given a different outcome, they might think something like: “My spouse is gone, and wishing that was different won’t change anything.” Then, they can put their effort toward feeling and processing their emotions, honoring their spouse’s memory, and finding ways to move forward.
It’s important to note that radical acceptance doesn’t mean that we like what has happened or that we are pretending to like it. It also doesn’t mean we are going to forget someone or use it as an attempt to minimize the pain. It’s just letting go of the idea that things could be different than they are.
Michael J. Fox, who has faced the difficult diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson’s disease, said, “Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is, and there’s got to be a way through it.”
That doesn’t mean we are giving up or not changing things that can be changed. It means we recognize what is in our power to change and what is not, and this can be a powerful step in your healing process.
As a grief specialist, clients who have accepted their current reality are the ones who are able to find help and healing because fighting with our circumstances keeps us stuck.
If coming to radical acceptance is something you struggle with, here is a link to a website with exercises and ideas on how to grow in this skill.
If you are still struggling, finding a therapist who specializes in DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) can be really helpful.
