Acceptance

"Serenity Prayer"

~Reinhold Niebuhr~

"God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference."

    Most of us are probably familiar with this prayer.  It is used in addiction recovery groups and as a source of hope for those facing difficult times.  The words seem to resonate with most people and certainly have for me in my life.  There is one aspect of this prayer I have been learning more about recently.   ACCEPTANCE.

    I'm not talking about the passive acquiescence that means you've given up or given in.   I am talking about the conscious choice to no longer resist the reality of a situation.  I know this is a difficult concept for some people.  Most of us have been raised in a culture that ingrained in us a sense of justice and when something shakes our core, we want to rise up and resist.  Acceptance (Radical Acceptance, to be specific) is about letting go of our resistance to a reality we wish wasn't so.  By accepting the facts of this reality, though pain may still be present, we reduce our suffering.
    I know that statement seems conflicting.  "... though pain may still be present, we reduce are suffering."  Pain is different from suffering.  Pain is an experience that the body gives us to let us know something is not right. Physical pain keeps us alive by alerting us to injury.  Emotional pain tells us something is not right in our world.  Maybe it is in response to death or the ending of an important relationship, our world is different from what it was before the event.  Our emotional pain (grief) lets us know something is off.  Suffering is what we do to ourselves by not accepting a situation.
    An example of physical suffering is this; you are playing a sport and injure yourself. You refuse to believe you are too hurt to play and continue on until you cannot physically move anymore.  By resisting the reality of being injured and continuing to play, you have now worsened your injury and will miss far more games than you would have if you had accepted your injury and sat out the rest of the game.  Now you are suffering, not only feeling pain.
     The context I first learned about accepting a situation completely is in relation to my mental illness.  I was resistant to getting help/treatment.  I had some bad experiences in the past with mental health providers and I was a bit arrogant.  It took the loss of interpersonal relationships and the inability to make progress in my studies before I was able to accept the reality that I needed help. This acceptance went further, when I realized that I would not be healed from my mental illness by God or through modern medicine.  Having a deep faith, this was a hard reality for me.  While I still believe it is possible for God to choose to heal me, I know the reality of my situation is that He has chosen not to at  this time. (This is my personal belief based on Paul's "thorn in the side that plagued him).
    Now, I want to illustrate an example of what accepting the fact that I am mentally ill is not.  There was a point in my life, not terribly long ago, that I gave in to my illness.  This had happened in smaller ways through self-harm in the past.  This time, I had mental break. I became afraid to do things, incapable.  Eventually I laid on the floor and waited to die. I gave the depression and anxiety all the control.  I embraced insanity.  This quote from the  movie, "Girl Interrupted" drives the example home. Susanna had stopped trying to get better.  She stopped progressing to the point of not even bathing. 

 "Valerie: You know, I can take a lot of crazy shit from a lot of crazy people but you - you  are not crazy. 

 Susanna: Then what's wrong with me, huh? What the fuck is going on inside my head? Tell me, "Dr. Val." What's your diag-nonsense?

Valerie:You are a lazy, self-indulgent little girl, who is driving herself crazy."

The thing I want to emphasize here is the difference.  Had she been accepting of the facts, she would have been actively participating in her recovery process. She would have been closer to living  independently and leaving the mental hospital. But because she gave in to the illness, her power was taken away.  

     Accepting the facts in life can be hard. It takes work, time, and a drastic shift in our way of thinking to accept difficult realities.  But by learning to be accepting of situations in life, we are no longer controlled by the suffering we create (by resisting) or relinquishing our power (by giving in).       I always encourage people to write their own story.   Through acceptance, we take the pen back into our own hands.  So write your story but let it be an autobiography, not a fantasy.