The Art of Acceptance

‘Acceptance’

will always be a hard pill to swallow

You are angry, you accept nothing, will take nothing, your arms are crossed over your chest. Your hands are balled up in fists, but they’re still shaking. They are trembling, not with anger. because you aren’t really angry. You are terrified.

The sharpest tongue, your cold demeanour - it all doesn’t detract from the fact that inside you are a deflated balloon.

You feel like a motherless child. You are wailing, screaming under the guise of neutrality and detachment: What am I doing here? Who is going to save me?

A lot of us dealing with trauma do not know how to process it. Sometimes we don’t even know we’ve experienced it; sometimes we are blind to or have blocked out the realities what we have left in our past. Most importantly, we never know how to vocalise pain – we can’t put our emotions into words. Even if we were able to, often we bury our issues in the hope that they disappear and will magically stop affecting us. We fear talking about them. Our experiences are too loud and too painful, too deep into the dark and unknown. So, we attempt to throw them into the sea under the assumption that they won’t follow us. The last thing we want to do is open up and attempt to process the very thing we want to die.

At first, it works. It’s nice to feel numb in the beginning. To create a bubble that no one can enter, where unwanted thoughts can’t pass through. You are so distracted by everyday life - the things, people and events you immerse yourself in that you almost forget. You almost get a glimpse of what it’s like to not be sinking. But eventually, the bubble bursts. It may not be a dramatic explosion or mental breakdown, but rather cracks that form in concrete. The cracks spread, either quickly or slowly and they destroy your balance. You are constantly running and looking for freedom that only you are able to grant yourself.

Here is the key to acceptance: it isn’t about letting go of pain, it’s about being at ease with it. This is ~ not ~ easy at all.
Being ‘at ease’ with your thoughts is not about blocking them from your mind, it isn’t about running. We assume that unpacking our emotions is synonymous with wallowing in our sadness. We think this is bad so we distract ourselves and ‘think happy thoughts’. We hide and lie that we feel nothing, that we’re good. Like I explained, this doesn’t work for long. The first move is to talk about your past experiences and talk about how you feel now, out loud, to someone else, with full honesty. Even if you say it out loud to yourself, it is fascinating how different things sound when they are out of your head. The things you think of casually in the safety of your mind are more striking, honest and impactful when you say them out loud or even when you write them down.

The concept is that you are looking at your pain, your guilt, your depression, your mistakes, your jealousy, your trauma, your regret, or all of the above and you are processing it. You are being forced to simply face it, instead of pretending that you’re okay. Even if you may feel as though you don’t understand these feelings or that you have no control over them - you are staring at it eye-to-eye. To illustrate, you have at least become its equal instead of its prey. After all, what better way to defeat your enemy than to become its friend? I think of this as a form of systematic desensitisation. I also want to make it a point that acceptance in this context is not synonymous with complacency. We are not telling ourselves to just remain or ‘deal with’ being broken and depressed; what we are doing is acknowledging that self-improvement has steps and that gaining acceptance or comfortability with ourselves is the first of those steps.

When you’re at ease with your problems, they cannot control or scare you as they did before because you have given yourself the upper hand in coming to terms with them. This still doesn’t make them magically disappear. However, what you are practicing is exactly that, practice. Practicing to understand the origins and characteristics of our issues – it is trying but rewarding work.

Having a better understanding and tolerance of the things that, often unconsciously, influence our wellbeing is something important I’ve learnt since this year has begun. It is empowering to feel that although you may not have control over every little thing in your life you can control your mindset and approach towards them.

“Vocalising pain

Brings it from the warm, dark, sheltered caves of your mind

and thrusts it out into the air, the space around you. It is tangible and uncomfortable

but necessary

You have to look it in the eye and understand that you will soon be at ease with it

It is catharsis

A release of pain sorrow anger guilt regret

It feels better to look at it, come to terms with it and let it
explain itself to you from the outside

than to let it torment you from within.

Otherwise, it gets comfortable and never wants to leave.”

-what I first wrote when I learned the art of acceptance, that later inspired this think-piece