This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, We Get Better: 48 Treatment Options for Chronic Depression.
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Treatment option 34: Practicing acceptance
Finding new perspectives on your old, unhelpful stories is an important part of managing mood disorders like depression. Sometimes, though, after exploring a difficult thought, you might conclude that no accurate reframe exists. The horrible thing you’re thinking is simply … true. In these moments, you might consider a different strategy: acceptance.
Acceptance isn’t resignation. It’s an active, affirming choice. It involves finding the lessons and growth in difficult circumstances and reminding yourself gently that it won’t last forever.
Meditation teacher Tara Brach describes this process beautifully and in detail in one of the books I recommend most often to clients: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. Whenever an uncomfortable feeling arises, Brach says, take a moment to accept and allow it. Rather than immediately avoiding it or distracting yourself, simply sit and feel the feeling in your body. See it for what it is: a temporary and manageable experience. Remind yourself to breathe. Notice that having this emotional experience doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t define you. The feeling is just a feeling, and you are strong enough to handle it.
Radical, indeed.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön has written about the practice of acceptance at great length. Actually, she’s famous for it. “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved,” she writes in When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. “They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again … The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
Open any page of any of Chödrön’s books for more.
Remember the Serenity Prayer (there’s a reason it’s so popular): change what you can and accept the rest. Behavioral modification is important. Perspective change is vital. But acceptance is a pretty good backup plan.
If desired, add “practicing acceptance” to your depression treatment plan. Then decide on next steps and write them on your to-do lists.
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