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Hadley’s Intro: See how Radical Acceptance of traumatic events
can help build emotional resiliency with post traumatic growth advice
you gain in this WashPost guest column by Joshua Coleman .
My husband of many years recently walked out on
me. I was completely caught off guard and don’t
know how to make sense of it. I thought we had
built a life together and now see that it was all
a sham. I keep turning over in my mind where I
went wrong. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.
Like my patient, most of us can be blindsided by
traumatic events. An accident can leave someone so
grievously injured that they are unable to
continue the activities that gave their life joy
and purpose. A romantic partner can suddenly
decide they want to date other people. We can get
diagnosed with an incurable illness. Someone we
love can die or take their own life.
Even if we are lucky enough to escape life’s
harshest outcomes, nothing insulates us from the
humiliations and losses that are an everyday risk
of being human.
What’s a soul to do?
Start by doing nothing.
A growing body of research suggests that the more
you fight against your pain, the stronger and
louder it’s going to get. Marsha Linehan, a
retired University of Washington psychology
professor and creator of Dialectical Behavior
Therapy (DBT), calls the process of allowing the
feelings to come without judgment or action
“radical acceptance.”
She advises that “the pathway out of hell is
through misery. The more you fight your misery,
the more you stay in hell.” The goal of radical
acceptance is not to condone or approve of a
situation but to recognize its existence and let
go of the emotional suffering caused by fighting
reality.
We are often our worst enemies when managing our
reactions to painful events, especially those over
which we have little control. Evolutionary
psychologists suggest that our minds didn’t
evolve to make us happy — they evolved to keep
us alive. From that perspective, our brains are
wired to focus on detecting risks, reviewing past
mistakes and anticipating dangers.
Unfortunately, this evolutionary legacy has left
us with an incessant mental soundtrack — a
relentless voice that fixates on our shortcomings,
drills into past mistakes and anxiously forecasts
future conflicts. Regret and anticipation become
unruly tenants in our minds, undermining our
peace and well-being.
Radical acceptance gives us the fortitude to bear
negative events and tough emotions. It builds
emotional resiliency, a key component of mental
health.
Because not every problem is actionable physically
or mentally, what else is advised by radical
acceptance?
Give yourself room to experience the feelings
fully
Don’t try to push them down or away. And don’t
judge yourself for feeling whatever it is that
you’re feeling. For example, in the face of your
breakup, radical acceptance means a full-fledged
acknowledgment that the relationship is over and
he’s not coming back.
“Your pain needs space,” Megan Devine writes
in “It’s OK That You’re Not OK.” “Room
to unfold. Maybe your pain could wrap around the
axle of the universe several times. Only the stars
are large enough to take it on.”
Criticizing or shaming yourself binds you
to your suffering. Self-condemning thoughts such
as: “I’m too sensitive. How come I’m not
over this yet? Why did this happen to me?” make
the pain of your situation more intolerable.
“We cannot change a thought that is already
here,” Mark Levine, a psychiatrist and founder
of the nonprofit Mind to Mindful, told me. “The
more we struggle to fix or change our negative
thoughts, the more we agitate the nervous system
and inadvertently strengthen the very thoughts and
emotions that we wish to avoid.”
Note and detach from negative thoughts
Making room for your thoughts and feelings also
allows your “observing self” to avoid latching
onto the negative dictates of the “thinking
self,” according to Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy (ACT). Australian psychotherapist
and physician Russ Harris advises the following
based on the ACT model: “If your mind says that
your life is going to be terrible, you can
acknowledge that you’re having the thought your
life is going to be terrible. Or if it says that
an event proves that you’re unlovable, you might
say, ‘I’m having the thought that this proves
I’m unlovable.’”
While that might sound simplistic, the act of
prefacing statements with “I’m having the
thought that” means you have already begun to
note and detach from it. You’re also
telling yourself that it’s just a thought that
doesn’t require your action. In doing so, you
become free to think or act more in line with your
values and needs.
Pain is unavoidable. It’s what we do with the
pain that matters. As Devine writes, “When you
are broken, the correct response is to be
broken.” Accepting that reality doesn’t make
life more painful — it makes it more bearable
— especially when it feels impossible to bear.
Joshua Coleman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in
the Bay Area and senior fellow with the Council on
Contemporary Families. His newest book is “Rules
of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and
How to Heal the Conflict.”
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Post traumatic growth develops resilient optimism
and nurtures happy, sexy love,
Hadley Finch
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