Before writing this post, I came across many definitions for radical acceptance. The one that resonated with me is from a Psychology Today article from Dec. 2013.
Radical Acceptance means completely and totally accepting something from the depths of your soul, with your heart and your mind. You stop fighting reality. When you stop fighting your suffer less.
Four weeks ago, after processing the last of some horrific events that happened to me, I looked at my therapist and exclaimed,” you know this is really just a piece of the pie.” He nodded his head in agreement as I went on to say, “even this little piece of the pie, could knock someone down for the rest of their lives, and in my situation, this is just one little piece of the whole pie.” I was really calm about the whole realization. I began to lock-in the pieces of the big picture.
This new realization was the total scope and real acceptance, that I was nothing more than a tool, a non-human object, that had the very fabric of my being torn apart, unglued over and over again for the first twenty years of my life. It wasn’t a dramatic, tear-filled, aha moment. It was a gentle, radical acceptance of the truth of what happened to me. I’ve come in and out of this realization for about a year now, but to really accept it was another feeling altogether.
Then the second phase of acceptance. My PTSD is not going away anytime soon. I have written before about my fight with this diagnosis, and my unrealistic expectation that I would have emerged from eight years of therapy to be “cured.” This is a different acceptance. This is the acceptance, that because of what happened to me, it is a miracle I’m alive and knowing now, that it would have been impossible, not to be affected by my trauma. I developed my own personal definition of radical acceptance:
Acceptance – I know what happened and I have to try and live with the weight of all I saw, all that I was forced to do, all that directly happened to me, the effects of the trauma and resulting PTSD.
It’s been a month since I’ve had these revelations. It has been a slow-burning four weeks. Knowing it in my head doesn’t translate to feeling it my body. Knowing it logically doesn’t instantly translate into my feeling mind or my shattered soul. This has been a slow-burn. It wasn’t an event; sobbing, floor stomping, why, why, why! It’s been a process of making myself, just-sit, just-be, let the tears flow, let my body feel the exhaustion which comes with radical acceptance and listening to my intuitive-self for what I need. Last week, I went to Arizona and visited the Peace Park/Stupa. It filled my cup, helped me calm my soul and I found some peace. A week ago I wasn’t sure I would ever find peace inside. Acceptance is one thing, finding a peaceful feeling in the midst of the carnage is quite another.
I don’t have any grand insights because this is all still quite new and I believe that the work that’s before me now is practicing radical acceptance. I no longer fear that I will go into any kind of denial. I seemed to have forgotten how to forget that the skeleton hands of my past will keep trying to pull me down. I’ve accepted that is the result of the trauma. It will have an effect on parts of my day, but not my entire day.
The trauma and the resulting PTSD has changed my life. It prevents me from working more than two hours a day, hopping in the car to run errands, enjoying restaurants, travel, and I have to consciously work with the triggers that cause flashbacks, and other assorted symptoms. I have been working on those symptoms consistently during the past eight years, but now I have to practice acceptance that I have to continue to work with my symptoms. It probably is the same concept, it just feels different. Before it was something I had to do because I was going through therapy. Now, I do it because I’m figuring out a way to have the best life I can have working withing the confines of my symptoms.
My perpetrators worked hard to unglue the very fabric of my mind, psyche, soul. They succeeded for a very long time. Now with this acceptance, I am mending the fabric of myself. I have done the work, I understand, I have radically accepted my past and the impact it has on my present.
To continue the practice of mending my mind, body, and soul, I’ll have to keep freshening up the glue of self-compassion, worthiness, perspective and acceptance. I can’t say how anything will look for me in a year. I assume things will look and feel very different than it does today. That’s part of the impermanence of life.
My radical acceptance is a quieter, more present, peaceful way of being. Perhaps it’s true, totally accepting something from the depths of your soul, with your heart and your mind, you suffer less.
image source: Pixabay
Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph
http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222
https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856
Untangled 
You are welcome !
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That is wonderful insight! Amazing commitment to self-care and healing. Thank you for sharing that with me, JoAnna.
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Sometimes I need to take baby steps. It helps me to start by remembering that acceptance doesn’t mean I have to like it or agree with the reality I’m trying to accept. When I didn’t feel like I could love myself, I started by identifying what I liked about myself.
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Thank You for your beautiful insight Tamara. Thank You also for reblogging this post. I really it, and You! ❤
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Thank you. Xx
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me too…
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Reblogged this on On Becoming a Lemonade Maker and commented:
Radical acceptance! What a profoundly healing an freeing concept!
It’s tough getting to a point of acceptance sometimes isn’t it? We fight it, as though accepting that the things which happened to will hurt us more. The very act of acceptance, though difficult to achieve, actually liberates us. It gives us back our power and autonomy which was lost.
Radical acceptance will then free the heart and spirit on a deeper level.
I’m so happy to hear about this Radical level of acceptance this person has achieved!
Peace,
Tamara
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Radical acceptance! What a profoundly healing an freeing concept!
It’s tough getting to a point of acceptance sometimes isn’t it? We fight it, as though accepting what the things which happened to will hurt us more. The very act of acceptance, though difficult to achieve, actually liberates us. It gives us back our power and autonomy which was lost.
Radical acceptance will then free the heart and spirit on a deeper level.
I’m so happy to hear about this Radical level of acceptance you’ve achieved!!
Peace,
Tamara
Re blogging!!
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You are working very hard! We will both continue to make great progress. 💕
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Acceptance is so hard. I think it’s really amazing how you are able to begin this process of acceptance and actually feel it. It gives me hope. I’m working towards acceptance in my own journey, so thank you for sharing this. Xx
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Thank You, Mark.
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Radical acceptance. It’s what it takes. And whatever it takes is worth it. Thank you for this.
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Thank You, Shelley. Yes, I totally agree that this can apply to just everyday life challenges that someone goes through. It doesn’t have to just apply to physical or emotional challenges. Its a hard place to rest in, and Im at the very beginning of it. Im thinking radical acceptance is not a linear road. The human condition. ❤❤
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Your words inspire so many of us! This radical acceptance can be applied in places that arent necessarily related to PTSD too. Such meaningful writing and message in this post for me dear Alexis. Thank You!
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Thank You!! Finding peace is sometimes a huge struggle for me. ❤
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Im sure you will get there. I hope I can stay in this place. Im sure there are varying degrees of radical acceptance. Im at the very beginning. Thank You for reblogging this post! 🤗💕
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Brilliant writing! This struck me but so did much more: “finding a peaceful feeling in the midst of the carnage is quite another.”
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Reblogged this on The Patchwork Diaries and commented:
I’m slowly coming around to this radical acceptance myself. I’ll get there, however long it takes. Great read!
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It sure is…💕
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Awesome. I’ll buy it tomorrow! 😍
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Thank you for sharing! It is an odd existence in the mind after great traumas. 🙂
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Thank you, Alexis. My memoir Secrets in Big Sky Country can be found on Amazon (here’s a link on my page-click on the image: https://caughtupinmemories.wordpress.com/my-memoir/ ). I’m so glad we connected!
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Thank You Mandy, both for your feedback on my post and for ordering Untangled. What is your book? I will order it tonight. I love to support other survivors books and write a great review on Amazon for them. I feel like we are all here to support each others bravery and healing journey.
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Thank you so much for writing this Alexis. I want to read it again and again. I thought my PTSD would be all cured after I wrote my memoir, but I was sorely disappointed. Now I think I’ve more work to do- maybe radical acceptance? I just went to Amazon to look at your book. I’m going to order it as I feel whether we have story’s of our own or not, we can always gain more courage when we read the stories of other brave survivors.
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Yeah, totally get that. Glimpse of what will be for both of us.
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It’s almost like inner peace but not quite. 🙂
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Its an odd, kind of shaky ground feeling, but its good to be in this unknown. Glad you can relate to the experience. Always helps to hold a hand along the way. 💕
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It’s good to hear from you. 🙂 I’m glad things are working out. I think I sort of had that moment too where I accepted myself for my dark past and the effects it’s had on me.
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🙏🏻💐
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💕
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That which we fight or deny, we give power-Thankfully I just have to get through the day, any more and I would surely give up-Thank you for this Alexis, it really helps
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Thank You, Rayne. 💕
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Yes, I dont know if that day will ever come. Im sure both of us will continue work within our forever changed lives, which honestly, can be exhausting sometimes.
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Thats a great question. I think for me in these still early stages, I realize I was just walking around in my head, intellectualizing, when I find Im feeling it. It can catch me off-guard wondering, what in the world is wrong with me, and THAN, I know Im back in my letting myself feel. When that happens, I think by acknowledging it and naming it, I can stay with the feelings longer. I hope that makes sense!
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Such a lovely post, Alexis. ❤
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I hear you! everyone has different levels of PTSD depending on the number of traumatic events happened to a person. I was constantly in battle, fighting for my life day in and out with bullets and bombs going off around me. I’ve seen many lives lost. For people like you and me it is hard to say “I’m cured!”
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thank you…wishing you a good day
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Do you have times when you KNOW intellectually about acceptance and self-love, but you cannot FEEL it? If so, how do you cope with that? How do you bring yourself back to feeling it?
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