Radical acceptance is the first step on your mental health journey
Radical acceptance was the very first skill they taught me on day 1 of my in-patient program and I thought it was complete and utter bullshit. The first go around they might as well have been teaching in Russian — it made no sense. Ten months into my recovery and I am only just starting to understand how hard Radical Acceptance is and how necessary it is to my recovery.
A year ago I had a complete physical followed by mental breakdown that eventually led to suicidal ideations. Before that I was a highly successful manager in tech and video games. When I became so physically sick, I could no longer work or participate much in life, all the distractions and coping mechanisms that I had put in place over 44 years imploded and I was just left with me and my thoughts and years of unprocessed trauma. Two months in a psych facility was followed by eight months of covid lockdown and isolation and spiraling mental health.
It is only recently that I have started to understand that Radical Acceptance is both my biggest strength and my Achilles Heel. I have spent a lifetime and career forcefully creating my reality. If I didn’t like something I changed it, I created an initiative or program to make my workplace better, I moved, I found a new job, I pushed my way through, I fixed the situation… This worked for me up until it didn’t….
I spent the last year fighting my therapist and doctors to tell them they were wrong and that I didn’t have mental illness. It must be cancer, multiple sclerosis, a thyroid disorder, lupus…. I’d take anything because in my mind those things are real and something to fight. In my mind, a mental illness was the doctor patting me on the head saying “there, there, you aren’t really sick, its all in your head, you are making it all up.” A mental illness was my fault, I was causing this thing and doing it to myself. But I was wrong, a mental illness is as real as any illness — it just starts in the brain. Its symptoms affect every part of your body, they can cause physical pain, you can feel as though you are having a stroke or heart attack, lose weight, shake with tremors.. the list is endless.
It’s society that makes us feel that mental illness isn’t real, that we are weak minded and not strong enough, that we are broken. No one with cancer thinks they must have caused this somehow. No one with cancer is embarrassed to tell their friends and family. And because society has created this illusion, we often either fight against the diagnosis or sink further into a depression because what’s the point.
Radical acceptance means you stop fighting against your reality, your situation and embrace it. Imagine you are sentenced to life in prison, you have exhausted all your appeals, and you are innocent — what would you do? For months, I have answered the same way-FIGHT!!. Fight with every breathe in my body. Keep fighting and die trying. This is how I was raised. I didn’t know any other way. In my mind, the opposite of fighting is giving up or approving of the situation. But radical acceptance isn’t giving up, its accepting the situation you are in with every ounce of your being — accepting the pain, accepting the situation you are in. Because without acceptance, the fight keeps you stuck in unhappiness, bitterness, anger, sadness, shame and creates suffering. Constantly looking for a solution, thinking another person is going to change, wallowing in the “ifs” and “shoulds” creates suffering. When reality doesn’t change, you blame yourself for not doing enough to change it.
Radical acceptance isn’t black and white, all or nothing. Its stopping, acknowledging that your current situation sucks, its feeling all the feelings that are associated, processing all the emotions and then making a plan to learn from it and do the best with the situation you have. You can say…. I have a mental illness AND I still hope to cope better in the future. I have a mental illness AND I’m in recovery AND I continue to relapse. I have a mental illness AND its just as real as cancer. I have a mental illness AND I have horrendous physical symptoms. I have a mental illness AND I’m still a kick ass human being- a great friend, a good employee, a good wife and mother.
Today as I write this I have embraced my situation. Tomorrow I may fight it again. Radical acceptance isn’t permanent or linear — its a daily battle. And each day there will be new things to accept. I may be on the road to acceptance with mental health but don’t get me started on Covid.