Your 39-year-old female client seats herself and looks\nat you with frustration. It’s been many months now since she was diagnosed with\nthe neurodegenerative condition, but she just can’t accept it; life is becoming\nimpossible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your 20-something male client suffered a relational\nbreakup seven months ago; this was his “love of my life” and he can’t get over\nit. He feels completely stuck and keeps coming to session with different plans\nfor contacting his former girlfriend, who has persistently declined to meet up.\nHe just doesn’t get that it’s over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your late 50s former colleague recently called you,\ntoo. He was fired from your workplace because of “performance issues”: something\nhe is sure was motivated by a conflict he had with a third colleague. He feels\naggrieved, and wants help hatching a plan to sue your employer, even though the\nemployer gave him many chances to improve before finally letting him go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do all of these cases have in common? They —\nlike all of us at times — are resisting accepting a change that has happened. To\nresist is natural. As change management consultants are fond of saying, we are\nhardwired to resist change; our brain’s amygdala interprets change as a threat\nto the body and releases hormones for fear, fight, or flight (Pennington,\n2019). It’s how our body protects us from change. There’s a problem, though. Sometimes\nthe change forced upon us is permanent, and our continued resistance to it keeps\nus miserable, without having any effect on the situation. Recognising that and\nembarking on the journey to acceptance may be the only way we can reclaim our\ninherent birthright of joy. We look into how we may do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some simple definitions will be helpful as we explore this\ntopic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Resistance <\/em><\/strong>is “the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding”, or in psychiatry: “Opposition to attempt to bring repressed thoughts or feelings into consciousness” (Dictionary. com, 2019a)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Acceptance<\/em><\/strong>, meanwhile, is “the act of taking or receiving something offered” (Dictionary.com, 2019b)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine this scenario for a moment. Let’s say you come to live\nin a community which places top priority on being hospitable, so there is a law\nthat citizens must accept into their homes all guests who present themselves at\nthe door. One day you answer a knock only to find there your new guest. Dirty, ugly,\nunkempt, scowling and mean, yet powerful, the guest comes in, despite your\nmisgivings. Now life gets really interesting. How do you respond? <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the context of mindfulness leading to self-compassion,\nChristopher Germer (2009) outlines five stages of acceptance, although\nacknowledging that the process of moving through them from resistance is an\niterative, back-and-forth affair, rather than proceeding neatly from the first\nto the last. Let’s see how these resonate with you — or your anguished,\nchange-resisting clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the beginning of the journey to acceptance, we are\npresented with the change: the unwelcome guest in our analogy. It is at this\nstage that our resistance is strongest. It’s the, “Oh, no — anything but that!”\nfactor. Some of us go into denial, like the client above who continues to\ncontact the girlfriend as if the relationship were still intact. For others, it\nmay mean a second, or even third expert opinion, or more medical tests, before\nthe terrible diagnosis is acknowledged. Resistance has been likened to “arguing\nwith reality”. As one author noted, however, when she does that, she loses: “but\nonly 100% of the time” (Farmer, 2016). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mental health experts generally agree that resistance\ndoesn’t change things. Carl Jung observed the paradox of it: “We cannot change\nanything until we accept it” (Bode, 2007). Yet at this stage, our stuckness is\nunyielding, our defences against change fully mobilised. Sally Kempton, writing\nin the Yoga Journal, names a few of them (Kempton, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotional armour. Resistance\ndoes have a helpful function (more on that in a moment), but carried too far,\nit stops being a useful filtering device for us and becomes a wall, a kind of\narmour. If we have been resisting for a significant period, we may have\ningrained the habit so deeply that we are unable to tell if our inner “no” is\nvalid and helpful or just obstructive. An example here could be the couple who\nknows on one level that their relationship is in jeopardy; genuine intimacy has\nbeen slipping away for years. Yet night after night, they flop onto the couch\nfor more television watching, rejecting vehemently the suggestions of intuitive\nothers that they need to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Avoidance. What about the\nperson who loses his job, but then finds myriad excuses for not spending time\nin the job search effort to get a new one? Or the person who knows she needs to\nre-organise her finances to accommodate a changed life situation? Perhaps she\nkeeps putting it off because, secretly, she doesn’t understand how money works\nand really hates facing that she is now forced to live in straitened\ncircumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Distraction. Some of us “do”\nresistance in a covert way. On the surface we seem to be going along with the\nchange, but on the inside our minds are worlds away, completely absent from the\nactivity we overtly agreed we needed\/wanted to engage. A case in point here is\nthe person who does actually arrive at the meditation mat for the mindfulness\npractice they acknowledge they need, but once they begin the practice, they are\nthinking about anything but the breath they are supposed to be watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Aversion stage is painful, yet that very pain — when it\nreaches an unbearable intensity — comes to be the ticket out of resistance. At\nsome point, we are just so fed up with all the life energy that is being lost\nin resisting that we begin to look around for another way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Germer’s second stage is marked by a subtle softening toward\nthe unwanted guest. Perhaps we realise that loathing and avoiding him is\ngetting us nowhere, except to bed in a cloud of fatigue and dread. We see that\nhe is not going away, and we can’t avoid him forever; after all, he lives in\nthe same “house” (our life) as we do. So . . . how else could we regard him? Is\nthere any other way we can find to be with him without being so enraged\/disgusted\/despairing?\nCarl Jung is also reputed to have said that we don’t solve our problems as much\nas outgrow them. Thus at Stage 2, we begin to move toward exploring our\nreluctance to deal with our uninvited guest. What, we ask, is our\ndenial\/avoidance\/stuckness all about? What is the fear that lurks behind our\nstrong emotion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming into this midpoint on the road to acceptance, we\nnotice that — even though we still strongly protest that we don’t like him and\nthat it isn’t really “fair” that we have to shelter him — we are somehow\nfinding a way to tolerate our terrible guest. Perhaps we have learned how to\nmodify our daily life routines to accommodate a reduced capacity due to\nillness. Perhaps we have, albeit reluctantly, begun to engage socially again\nafter the agonising breakup. The important point is that, even if we still fail\nto admit it to ourselves, we have begun to change ourselves<\/em> in order to accommodate the change. Our nightmare guest\nis definitely still with us, but we see that we are surviving despite that. For\nthe record, we may still say we can’t stand him, but we are learning to cope\nwith him. In short, we acknowledge him and his presence, and the psychological\npain of resistance is reduced accordingly. If we likened the changed situation\nto a hostile country on our borders, we would say that a truce is being\nobserved. There is no true peace just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This stage is subtly different from mere tolerance. Here we are conscious of thoughts that still come to us about how great things were before The Unwanted Guest arrived, but now we allow them to come, knowing that the thoughts will leave, too. For example, we may see our late friend’s picture and wistfully recall all the marvellous conversations over endless cups of tea; for a few minutes, we ardently wish he hadn’t died. We may see a jogger in fine form and notice strenuous thoughts of frustration that we had to hang up our jogging shoes when our knees got really bad. But after those resistant thoughts, which we can now afford to openly acknowledge, we go back to living in the present moment, uninvited guest (of change) and all. We may still not like to admit it, but life is more or less ok again. We have given the guest the key to the house, so he can come and go as he pleases. Little by little, probably without noticing how it happened, we came to this place of being “sort of” ok with the change, of moving over psychologically to make room for it, even though we still look back in the rearview mirror on occasion, reflecting that “those were the days”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Germer’s last stage — arrival at acceptance and friendship —\nheralds an exciting development. We said at the outset that resistance has a\nuseful filtering function, because sometimes we are better off when we do\nresist. If our boundaries are violated, we should resist. If we are\ndisrespected or treated in a degrading manner, resistance serves to let the\nother party know that they have crossed a red line — and had better cross back\nover it again to the other side! At this stage of coming to be with an\nunwelcome and possibly permanent change, however, we are in a different\nrelationship with resistance. At Friendship, we finally come to comprehend the\nvalue of the experience we have just been through. Our uninvited guest no\nlonger looks so ugly or so threatening. In fact, to our great surprise, we see\ncause for friendship with him. That is, we are able to disidentify enough from\nour initial resistance that we can see the silver lining in the change. We\nappreciate the insights and lessons gleaned and know that we are somehow\nlarger, more powerful, more deeply connected to ourselves and all of life than\nwe were before the change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We may note, for example, that after a period of\nunemployment, we are able to embrace our new work with more profound gratitude\n— and we learned how to live more simply in the bargain. Dealing with a chronic\nillness may have taught us to joyously welcome the good days, and learn to be\nmore even-minded with the not-so-good ones. And a newfound self-confidence in\nrelating to people after the breakup may make us seriously attractive to the\nkind of partner we always wanted. (Stages adapted from Germer, 2009). <\/p>\n\n\n\n As mental health professionals or coaches, we are in\nthe business of reframing, and the journey from resistance to acceptance\ndemands nothing less. Here are some reframing questions that you can use to help\nclients along the road:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Acceptance is probably in that category of thing that is “simple, but it isn’t easy”. Moving past our resistance may be tough, but accepting reality allows us to make needed changes. It doesn’t mean we failed! It does mean we are freer: to be our more authentic selves, to respond to what our life needs, and to engage with meaning and purpose at ever more profound levels. At the beginning of the journey, it seemed that to accept the change meant the end of things: far from it. Acceptance is not the end. It is the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your 39-year-old female client seats herself and looks at you with frustration. It’s been many months now since she was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative condition, but she just can’t accept it; life is becoming impossible. Your 20-something male client suffered a relational breakup seven months ago; this was his “love of my life” and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,63,66],"tags":[557,157,556],"class_list":["post-4504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-loss-grief","category-relationship-families","category-spirituality-religion","tag-acceptance","tag-change","tag-resistance"],"yoast_head":"\nStages on the road to acceptance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Stage 1: Aversion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Stage 2: Curiosity<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Stage 3: Tolerance — safely enduring<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Stage 4: Allowing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Stage 5: Friendship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Powerful questions to help clients journey to acceptance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n