Accepting Reality--Choices We Can Make
Five optional ways of responding when a serious problem comes into your life:
1. Figure out how to solve the problem.
2. Change how you feel about the problem.
3. Accept it.
4. Stay miserable (no skill use).
5. Make things worse (act on your impulsive urges).
When you can’t solve the problem or change your emotions about the problem, try acceptance as a way to reduce your suffering.
Why Bother Accepting Reality?
Rejecting reality does not change reality.
Changing reality requires first accepting reality.
Rejecting reality turns pain into suffering.
Refusing to accept reality can keep you stuck in unhappiness, anger, shame, sadness, bitterness, or other painful emotions.
Radical Acceptance
RADICAL ACCEPTANCE is the skill of accepting the things you can’t change.
RADICAL = complete and total accepting in mind, heart, and body.
ACCEPTANCE = seeing reality for what it is, even if you don’t like it.
ACCEPTANCE can mean to acknowledge, recognize, endure, not give up or give in.
It’s when you stop fighting reality, stop throwing tantrums about reality, and let go of bitterness. It is the opposite of “Why me?” It is “Things are as they are.”
Life can be worth living, even with painful events in it.
Practice Exercise: Accepting Reality--Choices We Can Make
Describe a situation during the week in which you were distressed and there was no way to change the situation right away:
Rate your distress from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the worst):
If you couldn’t solve the problem right away or change how you felt about it, what did you choose to do (circle one of the remaining three possibilities)?:
1. Solve the problem.
2. Change how you feel about the problem.
3. ACCEPT the situation.
4. Stay miserable (refuse to accept situation).
5. Make the situation worse.
If you tried to radically accept the situation, what exactly did you do or say to yourself?
If you chose to stay miserable or make things worse, what did you do?
Rate your distress after you turned your mind toward acceptance (rate 0–10, with 10 being the worst distress):
Adapted from DBT ® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition. Copyright 2015 by Marsha M. Linehan. Adapted by permission. From DBT® Skills Manual for Adolescents, by Jill H. Rathus and Alec L. Miller. Copyright 2015 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this handout is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details). Purchasers can download and print additional copies of this handout from www.guilford.com/rathus-forms. Distress Tolerance Handout 18