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Writer's pictureAndrew Pansky

Acceptance and Control

by Andrew Pansky, LCSW, LCADC

 

Intuition is an interesting phenomenon. The ability to “trust your gut” can be invaluable but may not be reliable in every situation. Unpleasant realities threaten our willingness to accept and mess with our intuition. It is easy to believe that by accepting something (that you cannot change) you are also approving of it. We mistakenly believe that if we fight back hard enough things can be different. At surface level this makes perfect sense. It is intuitive to try to solve a problem by getting hands on with it. However, this approach often backfires. What happens if we can’t change the situation or its not appropriate for us to get involved? The more we attempt to negotiate with an unchangeable reality the more out of control and desperate we end up feeling. We’ll either keep hitting the same wall leading to frustration and anger, trample the boundaries of others, or worst of all, make what appears to be headway. In the latter case, we can become so consumed by this “hamster wheel” effort that it requires all of our attention, hijacking our focus and leading to anxiety.


Enter the skill of acceptance. I call it a skill because it takes practice to understand and apply. It requires mindfulness of your circumstances and an honest assessment of what the facts are. Control is the resulting experience of how you apply this assessment. You feel in control when you make an accurate assessment and accept things you cannot change. You feel out of control (and anxious) when you reject realities and attempt to negotiate. As example, lets take of a look at the daily event of sunset. Most of us accept this as an inevitability. We know that there is nothing we can do to change or stop it so we accept it. Imagine the turmoil we would experience if we decided to take issue and negotiate with the conditions of sunset. Each attempt may give us momentary hope (hands on theory), only to result in feelings of failure, anxiety, and desperation when we ultimately did not succeed. An assessment of what was possible in the first place could have saved us a lot of suffering. Choosing to do nothing when changing a situation is not possible or advisable results in the experience of control since we are setting a goal (do nothing/accept) and succeeding.


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