Originally published on January 19, 2016 via WordPress
In honor of the New Year, I’ve been reflecting on the passage of time and the ways that time becomes distorted by our perceptions. In my last post, I talked about some of the ways we (humans) unintentionally (yet oftentimes, very determinedly) keep ourselves feeling stuck. The key to freeing ourselves from our “control agendas” is acceptance. So Part One was about how we are all, to some degree, plagued by avoidance, and Part Two is about swallowing its antidote, acceptance.
“Acceptance” means making space for all of the feelings and experiences that are natural parts of life, without trying to change them or make them go away. It means opening up to the feelings of fear that naturally arise. It means acknowledging that we can’t predict the future or change the past. It means owning that we are imperfect and messy. It means that we will sometimes feel rejected, inadequate, or unlovable, and it means that we are REAL and ALIVE. It takes courage to practice acceptance, because you have to be willing to sometimes feel like crap. Perhaps you already try to do this, or perhaps you think it’s a load of BS. After all, why would you choose to “just feel crappy?” Keep in mind that you don’t have to want, enjoy, or welcome an emotion in order to be willing to have it.
The idea is that our efforts to change or fix the “problem” of unpleasant emotions only serve to amplify and intensify those emotions. If I hate broccoli, I can choose not to buy it at the grocery store and refrain from ordering it on a menu. That’s a great way to deal with the problem of “I hate broccoli,” because broccoli is an external stimulus. If I hate feeling guilt, I might try applying the same strategies that solved my “I hate broccoli” problem to the “I hate guilt” problem, by trying to make the guilt go away.
Clearly, this does not work, because guilt is a transient and subjective internal experience, rather than a concrete, external object. We naturally try to solve our internal problems in the same ways we solve our external problems, but the strategies that are successful in the external world are pretty ineffective when applied to the internal world. Our efforts can get discouraging and just plain exhausting. Acceptance is about letting go of the struggle to “fix” everything, and learning to see what’s inside of ourselves not as “things that need fixing,” but just as “things that are there.”
What gets in the way, usually, is fear. Fear that if I let myself feel the joy of a new relationship, I’ll be vulnerable to more sadness and disappointment if it doesn’t work out. Fear that if I let myself feel worried or scared or cry, I won’t be able to handle it. I will sink into crappy feelings that will last forever, and it will be awful. The man who felt anxious at work had a bunch of different choices in how he related to his anxiety. One choice, besides drinking, would have been to feel his anxiety, say to himself “I’m feeling anxious,” and still go to work and survive his day. He just didn’t realize that letting himself be uncomfortable without trying to make the discomfort go away was even an option, because he was caught in what Tara Brach calls “the trance of fear.” The trance of fear is what sends us into problem-solving mode, and it can happen so quickly that we don’t even know we’re doing it.
As a therapist, I’ve seen this time and time again, and in my own life, I’ve experienced it time and time again. It’s in our nature as humans to want to change, fix, or solve things we don’t like. We like to control, but it is our very efforts to control that draw us into struggle and suffering.
What’s so fulfilling about accepting all of the yucky stuff going on within ourselves instead of trying to make it go away (and yes, “yucky stuff” is the clinical term) is that it makes more space for the full spectrum of emotions to exist. Life includes pain, insecurity, and self-doubt, but inevitably, it also includes the pleasant and pleasurable, the warm and joyful, the loving and compassionate.
It is NOT easy to practice leaning in to the full spectrum of emotional experiences. When we get stuck, we can take comfort in the fact that we are working through what is a natural human process, because it means that we never have to walk the journey alone.
If you find yourself needing support in your efforts to open up to in fear in 2016, I can help. Call or email me and we can work together toward a greater sense of support and balance.
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