Radical acceptance
Stop fighting a fact you can't change right now. Accepting it isn't approving of it, and it's often what frees you to act.
Key takeaways
- "Radical" means all the way down: accepting a painful fact with your mind, heart and body, even though you wish it were different.
- Acceptance isn't approval, and it isn't giving up. It never means accepting ongoing harm.
- Rejecting reality turns pain into suffering. When you catch yourself fighting it again, turn your mind back to acceptance, as many times as it takes.
Linehan's problem
In the 1980s, Marsha Linehan hit a problem in her own therapy. When she pushed her clients to change, many felt she didn't understand how much they were suffering. When she simply accepted them, they stayed stuck.
Looking for a way to hold both, she turned to Zen, practicing at Shasta Abbey, a monastery in California, and with the Zen teacher Willigis Jäger in Germany. She brought back acceptance: seeing reality as it is, fully, as the starting point for change.
What it is, and what it is not
"Radical" means all the way, down to the root. Radical acceptance means acknowledging, with your mind, heart and body, that something has happened or is the case, even though you wish it weren't.
It is not approval. You can accept that you were laid off and still think it was unfair. It is not giving up. You can accept that you didn't get into the program and still apply again next year. And it never means accepting ongoing harm: if someone is hurting you, changing that comes first.
As DBT puts it, rejecting reality turns pain into suffering. The fact still hurts. Fighting it adds a second layer: "this can't be happening", "it isn't fair", hours spent replaying how it should have gone.
Question 1 of 2
Your flight is canceled and there are no others today. Which is radical acceptance?
Turning the mind
When you catch yourself fighting a fact
- Notice the fight
"This shouldn't be happening." "It's not fair." "If only." Bitterness, or going over it again and again.
- Name the fact
Say plainly what is true: "I didn't get the job." "She has moved out."
- Remember it has causes
It happened because of a long chain of things, many of them out of your hands. That is why it is the way it is.
- Accept with your body too
Unclench your hands, drop your shoulders, let your face soften. It is harder to keep fighting in a relaxed body.
- Turn your mind, again
You'll slip back into fighting it. That's normal. Each time, choose acceptance again. Linehan compared it to turning onto a road, over and over.
Echoes in other traditions
- Buddhism
The second arrow: the pain itself, and the extra suffering of fighting it.
- Stoicism
Epictetus: some things are up to us and some are not. Wanting the second kind to be otherwise is where distress begins.
Tom's wrist
Two days before a ski trip he'd been saving for all year, Tom fell off his bike and broke his wrist. The doctor says six weeks in a cast. Since then he has been rereading the X-ray report, searching online for ways casts can come off early, and saying to anyone who'll listen, "This can't be happening, this was supposed to be my week." His friends leave for the mountains on Saturday.
Question 2 of 2
Sources and further reading
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
- Linehan, M. M. (2020). Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir. New York: Random House.
Finish the lesson
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