Pain in life is inevitable, but suffering does not have to be.
And that's really what radical acceptance is about.
Now, we can't control that this pain is here, but the mind is trying to.
So it's trying to get rid of it.
It doesn't want it.
It doesn't like it.
And that reaction to the first pain is actually what creates suffering.
So we go from having pain to having pain and suffering.
It's not about accepting horrific circumstances.
It's not about accepting what's happening outside of us, but actually accepting what's happening inside of us.
I have lived radical acceptance for the last, I would say, five years.
I am so much more compassionate to everyone and I love so much more.
I have so much more love for so many more things.
And it's because of the journey of radical acceptance.
Instead of feeling better, it's finding a better way of feeling.
Quick, is anyone here a doctor?
Yes, her name is Dr. Emily and she's a psychologist.
Please welcome to The Imperfects, our very own... Saka!
Don't worry if you haven't made a booking.
Don't need to make an appointment.
You've just got a session with Dr. M for free.
That's good.
It's really good.
Yeah.
How are you, M?
Excellent.
Good to see you.
I'm so happy to be here.
Are you?
It's great.
I'll tell you who else is happy that you're here.
Yeah.
The Resilience Project.
Oh.
I walked in, I thought, why is there so many people here today?
No.
And then when you walked in, I saw a flurry of looks.
They're giving each other looks and excited looks and-
So strange.
Well, I just saw it happen.
There you go.
That's very nice.
End of last year, we did the live show and we were so lucky you joined us for the Melbourne show.
Yep.
Not the Royal Melbourne show.
That's a different thing.
We didn't go to the Royal Melbourne show together.
No.
No.
But let's like.
That'll be fun.
That's not a bad idea.
We should do that.
We should.
Get some show bags.
Show bags is a big thing.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, definitely.
And they're very expensive.
I'll bet.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's such quality items in there as well.
Yeah.
I actually need a new whoopee cushion.
It got to a point, you know, I just wear it out.
Amazingly, on Friday, that was one of my birthday presents to your son, Charlie.
It was a whoopee cushion.
It hasn't gone down as well as whoopee cushions have always gone down.
They're new and improved.
They're new and improved.
They self-inflate now.
Oh, that's right.
I've seen them.
Like extra padding as well.
It's great.
Brilliant.
Em, you joined us for the live show in Melbourne.
And you did a topic that, as you were talking on the live show, I remember just thinking this has to be an episode.
This has to be an episode.
And in fact I think it's the first thing I said to you as we came on stage was like that was great, but we need another, we need an extra hour on that.
So here we are today.
Here we are.
Yes.
Yeah.
So the concept that I'd really like to explore today is called radical acceptance.
Yes.
And I thought actually it would be really great if we could do a deep dive onto what that is, how we cultivate it and why it's meaningful and important.
Such a good idea.
And it's something that no one ever thinks about until they're in it and have that challenge.
Yeah.
And it goes far as saying it's a life-saving concept to understand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I really think it is.
But it doesn't come easily.
Like all things, there requires some effort and intention around how we can actually move in this direction.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So often.
As people know but new listeners might not know that you often look back onto one of our old episodes and you find a clip or a moment from an episode that you want to expand upon it.
Are you going to play a clip?
You are?
Okay, great.
When I was thinking about all the episodes that you've done and gosh, there are so many that I could have chosen, but the one that stood out to me as an example of how we, an example of acceptance, would have been the work and life of Gina Chick.
Gina Chick, I mean, like any opportunity to replay moments from her episode, we will take.
Gina Chick who, for those who don't know, was on Alone and we did an incredible episode because of her down in Tasmania.
It was just like an amazing experience.
But yeah, Gina's not only a friend of the show, but I'd say a best friend of the show.
In the excerpt that I'm playing she's talking about emotion and it was in the context at that time around talking around grief, but it's applicable to any experience of emotion that we have.
By being able to accept that emotions are weather.
Yeah.
They are not going to destroy us.
They are not going to break us.
We have nervous systems that are designed to be able to process and metabolize our emotions.
But to do that, we have to move.
We have to move.
We have to not think our feelings.
Emotions coming through do this.
They move.
Our heads move.
Our necks move.
We shake.
We roll.
We cry.
You know, it's like this.
It's dynamic.
And when we are in relationship with our bodies, and this was...
What I was asking about with the body thing.
When we're in relationship with our bodies and with the process of emotion moving through a body, we learn the skill of being present for that emotion coming through and letting it have its way.
And when we do that, we're not holding it back.
That wave can move.
And then on the other side it's like oh, what we'll find and what you will find.
What people do find, what I find is when I truly allow an emotional storm to come through and feel it completely on the other side is bliss.
Because there's this cosmic furball that I've just hoiked up.
And there it is.
And then on the other side, it's like, oh, there's space.
Or another way I like to describe it is like if you've ever had a pet and in the morning your dog or your cat goes out and has its morning crap right.
And then it comes in and it does the zoomies.
Yes, yeah, yes.
It's like, you know, it's like I've had the best shit ever.
And my life is amazing.
Testify, you know.
And so that's what it feels like when we process our emotions.
She's so good.
I forgot about that.
She's amazing.
Oh, man.
So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there, but, you know, to me it's a representation really of how we can work with our challenges in a really different way, one that doesn't feel so instinctual, but we actually have instinctual capacity to do it.
So the term radical acceptance is a term that is used in a number of different psychological approaches, and People might be familiar with the skill of radical acceptance in what's called dialectical behaviour therapy or DBT.
What is that?
Dialectical behaviour therapy.
Yeah.
So dialectical behaviour therapy was developed by Marsha Linehan, and it was in response to working with a particular group of people who had a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, which is characterised by big emotional dysregulation and challenges interpersonally.
And really often an immense amount of distress.
Mm-hmm.
And so she developed this particular therapeutic approach to really help people that were suffering a lot.
Mm-hmm.
And that's really what radical acceptance is about is the notion that pain in life is inevitable, but suffering does not have to be.
Mm-hmm.
And so in that therapeutic approach there's a whole like they do modules, for example and there's a big module on radical acceptance and how we can really deeply acknowledge the reality of our experience without fighting it.
I imagine, like for a lot of people who go through something really, really traumatic, It's almost like there's maybe an irony in how, maybe when they hear what you're going to talk about, it's almost like there's a radical acceptance in accepting the radical acceptance theory.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yes.
Because it just seems so impossible, I imagine, for so many people.
It absolutely does.
And I guess the way in which I'd maybe like to describe how this happens is actually by using a Buddhist parable.
And I think I've spoken to you about this before, but for me it really exemplifies exactly what we're working with, because this is not just about trauma.
This is about day-to-day challenges that we're encountering inside of ourselves and in our relationships with others.
Is this the Spears one?
Yes.
Oh, good, because I've tried to retell it a few times and I've butchered it every single time.
It's an arrow, isn't it?
Yeah.
That's an arrow.
Same principle of life.
This isn't the donut thing, is it?
So this is the parable of the two arrows.
So you imagine that a person walks into a forest and they're walking along and all of a sudden they get hit by an arrow.
Damn it. immediate pain.
And then the mind goes, oh my God, what was that?
Oh my gosh, I can't handle this.
This is so excruciating.
What am I going to do?
This is terrible.
This is going to interrupt my plans.
How am I going to get there?
I can't handle this pain.
This is intolerable.
I don't like this.
I don't want this.
How did this happen to me?
Why is this happening to me?
That is the second arrow.
The reaction.
The reaction to the first arrow, which is pain.
We don't get to choose that.
The second arrow is our reaction.
Okay.
So that's a physical pain.
Mm-hmm.
So I mean, I know this is a parable obviously, and it's not to be taken entirely literally, but in that situation are you saying that you sort of have the choice?
Mm-hmm.
You have the choice.
You can decide whether or not you will react in like a really like painful way.
Is that what you mean?
Yes, a little bit like that.
So if we just stay with it.
A little bit like that is close.
Ryan, I'm a doctor.
25% yes.
How about you listen and I talk?
It's like the closest you've ever been to saying no.
I agree.
Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah, you're definitely on the right track.
You're definitely on the right track there.
That's very generous.
So if we just stay with the pain for a second, and then I'll explain why and how it relates to anything else,
So physical pain is the first experience.
That's what we'd almost say is like a primary pain, right?
And then the mind comes on board.
Now, we can't control that this pain is here, but the mind is trying to.
Okay.
So it's trying to get rid of it.
It doesn't want it.
It doesn't like it.
And that reaction to the first pain is actually what creates suffering.
So we go from having pain to having pain and suffering.
And from a Buddhist point of view, there are four noble truths, and I won't go through all of them.
I'm not a Buddhist practitioner myself.
But there is, as part of those noble truths.
There is the acknowledgement that there is pain in life, that we experience suffering and that one of our great tasks is to let go resisting, craving attachment in order to live more freely.
Okay.
So what does that actually mean in terms of our day-to-day experience?
I'll let you take this one.
So it might mean, for example, let's just say, I feel anxious.
Actually, I'm going to give you an example of what happened to me on the plane yesterday.
I was on the plane and we hit quite significant turbulence.
This always seems to happen actually flying to Melbourne.
Significant turbulence.
My first reaction is like, oh my God.
And then it's like clenching in my body.
And then my thought is, I hate this.
Why do I do this?
I hate this.
This is a terrible experience.
I don't want this.
I just want to get away.
And then I start imagining... my children and I'm dying and, you know, we've gone down a whole rabbit hole of internal narration.
Catastrophizing, yeah.
Radical acceptance says, aha, okay, I'm noticing fear is here.
Fear is here.
Let go.
Let it be.
Let it be here.
And then we offer it a kindness and a compassion.
Because there is nothing I could have done in that situation, absolutely nothing.
All I could do was either sit and contract against that painful, fearful feeling and literally grip tightly around it, or I can choose to let go and let it be here.
And so that for me in that moment was a practice of a continual reminder, uh-huh.
Let it be.
Here is fear.
It's okay that it's here.
Can I ask you if my – because I know what I do in that situation and I'm curious to know if what I'm doing is a form of radical acceptance or a denial of what's going on?
In heavy turbulence, I always go to – statistically, planes don't go down in turbulence.
It almost never happens.
So forget about the plane going down in this turbulence and think that –
The sensation of being in this is a bit like being on a roller coaster, and I would pay good money to be on a really good roller coaster and enjoy that fear.
So just sit here and pretend you're on a roller coaster and close your eyes and imagine that you've paid for it and this is a fun ride.
And I find that that works for me, that I can get through pretty intense turbulence.
But I don't know if that's like a form of denial of what's really happening or if it's a form of acceptance.
I don't think it's denial.
I think it's actually really skillful tuning into the fact that these sensations are very similar.
But what's different is the meaning that we ascribe to them.
And that's actually where we're often really getting in trouble is the meaning that we're ascribing to the experience and the stories that come up about it.
Now, when we think about radical acceptance, it involves waking up to what's here.
It involves stepping out of that automatic pilot of internal narratives and seeing exactly life as it is right now, whether pain is here or whether it's not.
That relates to our internal experience of uncomfortable emotions, distressing emotions, and it also involves how we experience other people.
And the example I'd give with the other people is let's just say you encounter a difficult person.
And you struggle against this person, like in your head, you're like, why did they do that?
What's wrong with them?
Or like, it's so unfair that they're doing that.
That is the resistance.
That's the struggle.
That's a big one for lots of people.
It's a huge one.
And it's really hard to do.
Can I just take you back to the plane very quickly?
Here's what I do.
I don't have radical acceptance or just my weird ADHD brain, but it might help people.
When that happens, severe turbulence happens.
I get a bit worried for a bit and then I imagine, and I think how funny it would be if the plane wasn't here.
There was no plane and there was just the vision of 100 people going at 300 kilometres an hour in a sitting position, like jumping up and down.
And I think, God, that would look so funny.
And then that often helps.
Just from a clinical point of view, Em, what do you think?
I mean, it would look so funny.
You can't deny it.
It would look so funny.
A hundred people in perfect rows, just bolt upright, just shaking everywhere.
Love that.
So actually what that is, again, is changing the relationship to the experience.
So we're changing our relationship to the pain.
By dropping the struggle with it.
And so that can look like a number of things.
It could look like reframing it with a funny lens.
It could look like reframing it as going on a roller coaster, for example.
So in essence, we're changing how we're relating to the internal experience.
And there are a number of different ways in which we can do that.
But I'm just wondering first of all if you can see how this relates to like day-to-day struggles like how do you think that might show up for all of you?
I mean on a very small scale thing.
I guess traffic is the obvious one where it's just like you're running late for something and there's really bad traffic, running late for a flight and you're stuck in traffic.
It's so stressful and I get annoyed and I'm worried about missing the flight, and then what that would mean, and then all those sorts of worries.
So it's like ultimately I guess I could just go in that situation.
It's like, well, I might be late.
I might miss the flight.
That's a great example.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So what stands out to me in that is the moment of choice that we have when we have no control.
That's going to sound paradoxical.
But the choice that we have is how we relate to that experience when I don't have control over the external circumstances.
So being in traffic is a really great example.
Or even if you're running late to something, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, provided that we're following the speed limits which we need to, no amount of me rushing inside my body is going to get me there faster.
But yet that's what we do.
So you'll be sitting in the car.
You're running late to an important event.
You'll be sitting in the car and your hands are gripped around the steering wheel.
There's tightness in the body.
The body's contracting because it doesn't like this experience of being late.
And it's going to get caught up in lots of stories about what it means that I'm late.
I'm always late the narrative around that.
And so here we've got in this moment, a contraction in the body, a stress response that's showing up to try and help me get there faster, but to what end?
I think that really rings true for me, and not necessarily with the traffic one, but like if Jam and I, my partner Jam, if we're going to a dinner or something together and I'm ready on time and ready to go and Jam is running late.
I used to get really and not just with Jan, but with anyone I used to get really frustrated because when I actually thought about it at some point in my life I was like well, I'm actually not, I'm only annoyed because of how I'm worried it will reflect on me when I get there.
That I'm going to be, it's going to come across as disrespectful or whatever.
People will judge me.
And now I'm, I think I've radically accepted the fact that People are late.
Yeah.
And it just happens.
And it's like the worst thing that could happen in that situation is that, like we're late and the other people will be annoyed.
But if the other people are annoyed, it's like, well, I can't control that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The other thing that I want to mention in there is that acceptance doesn't mean resignation, completely accepting poor behavior or denying our experience.
So you know, it's so important to say that.
Just sorry to jump in, but just with all the stuff that's happening around the world yes, a lot of people are going.
Well, i can't accept that.
Yes, so i think it's important, i think this is absolutely crucial is it's not about accepting, accepting horrific circumstances or accepting um crises or um horror and grief?
It's not about accepting what's happening outside of us, but actually accepting what's happening inside of us.
And so that looks like, let's just say, you feel frustrated because your partner's running late run.
Tara brack, who is a buddhist teacher and psychologist, says something like this like a wave in the ocean, it belongs.
This feeling is here and it's okay that it is.
So we can name that.
We can go, uh-huh, here is frustration.
Nothing wrong that that's arising.
Absolutely nothing wrong.
We don't even need to move into reframing.
Can we come into this feeling?
Acknowledging the reality of the situation is here is frustration because there's a violation of some kind of value.
For me most likely.
Yeah.
Okay.
It belongs here.
This feeling is already here.
Let me be with it.
We don't even have to move into narration about it.
We can just notice that it's here.
And then it's like we loosen the grip on that experience and we get a bit more spaciousness.
And then we choose how we can respond.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
But how does that relate to the big things in the world?
Yeah so, for example, it might be something like I think everybody is so deeply aware of how much trauma is existing in the world, how much suffering, horror exists, immense pain on a global scale, and we're seeing it which is different to centuries before us.
Acceptance means coming in and recognising, for example, where I feel this horror in the body and holding this with compassion and gentleness.
So can I give you an example of what that might look like?
So to me, and this is me, and I want to recognise that People may not resonate with this way of working, with painful feelings.
And so please do you in that context.
And even when I say this, the words that I'm saying are resonant for me.
But find your own words that make sense, because otherwise it will just feel like it will feel clunky or weird or not believable in some ways.
So it might look like...
Like this morning I saw something on Instagram that brought me to tears with how horrific it was.
And in that moment I stopped and I put my hand on my heart and I slowed it down and I said Emily, here is horror.
Horror is here.
I don't have to like it and I don't have to want it, but it's here in my body.
How can I be with this?
And so it might just be like a gentle touch on the body as an act of nurturing, of showing up and holding this gently.
I've stepped down from the thinking part and I've come into the feeling part.
And this is what Gina's really talking about is that we become enslaved by our internal narration skills.
And that storytelling mind.
And we forget that there's a body here that actually can process emotion really well if we let it.
So after that, that experience there.
So here is horror.
Here is pain, sadness.
These feelings here tell me that I care deeply.
I care really deeply about these particular things.
And this feels really hard.
So I haven't stepped into, and I haven't stepped into the, again, the thinking part.
But what we can do then is a couple of things.
We can go, okay, so this feeling tells me something important.
What do I need next?
So what's the next thing I might need in this moment that will help me hold this in a really caring way?
And then the broader question is, Okay.
If this, this is really important and I will ask this a lot in therapy.
If this feeling had words, as opposed to the thinking.
If this feeling had words, what is it saying and what is it that it needs?
So we're not saying, I'm not saying, what do you think about this?
What does this feeling have to say?
And so it might mean then that it's something like okay.
So I know that there's values in here around compassion and community and care.
So how do I now show up to those values?
How do I reconnect with what's deeply important to me and take action there?
Hmm.
So we now go from having this painful experience, being open to it, giving it space to be here, giving it nurturing, and then we move into what can I do?
How can I take action with my arms and my legs to help me stay on track with what I deeply value, what has been really highlighted in this experience?
Now, I don't have control over what's happening out in the world, but what I do have control over is how I show up in my community, how I show up as a parent, as a daughter, as a friend.
How is that making sense so far?
It's very much.
It's great.
Would it help to have sort of a toolkit of things to know that you can do?
Because when you're overwhelmed with the horror or the fear or whatever it might be to know that like okay, here are a few things that I know are always helpful that you can turn to to have those things in your mind sort of ready to go.
Yeah.
And I want to acknowledge that when there's crisis, acceptance is actually probably not your first port of call.
So in like acute crises, we actually probably need to do more distress tolerance skills.
So There will be an episode coming up where I will talk about what's called distress tolerance skills, and they're the things that we do in a crisis so that we don't make our suffering worse.
So I want to acknowledge that there are times when practicing radical acceptance is not going to be your first port of call, because we're too dysregulated and too overwhelmed or there's some sort of immediate threat to the nervous system or to the body.
But if we're kind of one level down from that, like my example this morning, then yes, here are these.
I guess we could call it like a toolkit of acceptance practices.
I'm just wanting to separate what I will talk about in a subsequent episode around things like grounding.
So grounding is really important.
But acceptance is quite different.
And so you'll notice in Gina's example is that we're actually wanting to go towards the feeling rather than away from it.
And in order to do that, we do have to have some sort of sense of being stabilised.
I know I've spoken about this before, probably a long time ago, but I remember once Maria Roberto, who was my psychologist, when I was talking to her about Jam's anxiety just anxiety in general, but it was particularly Jam's anxiety she sort of talked to me about potentially giving it a name, like giving the anxiety a name.
And that really helped.
But what we would often do, Jam and I, is like when the anxiety arrived and she was feeling overwhelmed with this anxiety feeling.
Her anxiety's name is Annie.
We often thought about it and we talked about it when she was in it.
We talk about it in terms of like okay, Annie has dropped over.
She's dropped in to the house unexpectedly.
We didn't know she was coming, but she's dropped in.
It's like, oh, God, Annie's here.
Mm-hmm.
But let's be hospitable.
Let's be polite.
And let's offer her a drink.
And she'll be... We don't know how long she'll stay.
We can't ask her to just leave.
But we know that she will leave eventually.
She doesn't live here.
This is not her house.
But she will leave eventually.
And that visualization, I think...
Not to speak for Jan, but I think at least really helped me in terms of like, not being too overwhelmed and knowing that this is just sort of an unwanted guest that we still have to be polite to.
You're absolutely spot on.
In fact, there's a roomy poem called The Guest House, which is exactly this sentiment and that is this idea that we are going to have unwanted guests.
Mm-hmm.
And it's almost like this analogy that if you imagine that there's an unwanted guest knocking on your door,
I may have given this example before, but I think it's kind of worth reiterating.
But this unwanted guest is like your anxiety, your depression, your grief, your sorrow.
Some unpleasant feeling.
It's knocking on the door and you do not want to let it in.
You hate that it's here.
I'm hiding away from it.
I'm going to go into the other room so I can't hear this person knocking on the door.
But the knocking is relentless and now it means that I can't leave the house.
So I can't leave the house and go out and live my life, because if I open the door it's going to be there and I'm going to be too overwhelmed by it.
The knocking is getting louder now.
So I can't hear anything.
I can't have a conversation with people.
And it's starting to feel that this fight against this feeling, this unwanted guest is getting actually life draining and depleting.
Okay.
The idea, with radical acceptance and with exactly what you're talking about with Jam, is that we invite the unwanted guest in.
We don't have to like it.
This is really important when it comes to acceptance.
We don't have to like it and we don't have to want it or approve of it, but we allow it in because it's already here.
And think about, for example, how much energy goes into not wanting our experience because Mm-hmm.
And what could you do with that energy instead?
Mm-hmm.
How is that?
Yeah, really good.
Yeah.
Okay.
One of the things that I think is interesting in a lot of the examples that we've gone through thus far are that they're sort of things out of your immediate control.
Mm-hmm.
So the turbulence, seeing horrors from across the other side of the world.
Mm-hmm.
They're not things that you can change, at least immediately in that in that moment.
But you mentioned before that many people find themselves in situations with, with people who are in some cases just unpleasant and in other cases are quite dangerous.
I'm thinking of range from like having a really shitty boss and having to go to work every day and work for this person.
That sucks to being in a relationship that is genuinely dangerous because of the violent tendencies or controlling tendencies of the partner.
I'm wondering how The idea of acceptance and radical acceptance interacts in those situations where you do have varying degrees of control to change the situation that you're in.
Varying degrees.
Sometimes it's extremely hard.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's really complicated.
And I do want to acknowledge upfront that if you're in any way unsafe, like in the context of domestic violence, for example, then
That's a whole different ballgame.
And we're talking about what is within your capacity to change and what choices you have to do that really safely.
That's for a start.
But there's two kind of parts to this.
It's accepting and being open to what happens to me when you do this.
So when you're treated poorly by a boss, right?
And you notice you feel anger.
You notice you feel resentment, rage even.
It's what we do with that feeling that we do have a choice around.
So how can I be open to this feeling?
What's it telling me?
Also then what action do I take now that I've tuned into the feeling?
So if we know that all emotion is information.
The more awake we are to the emotion, the more information we have, the more choice we can take.
In fact there's an author, Russ Harris, and he is very well known in the ACT acceptance and commitment therapy community.
He's written The Happiness Trap.
And he has a really great three scenarios that can help you with kind of decision making in difficult situations, particularly around things like staying in a relationship, leaving a job, ending a friendship, for example.
And he offers three options.
Option number one is that we stay in the relationship, in the workplace, in the friendship, and nothing changes.
That's our choice.
We can keep on doing exactly what we're doing.
And that might look like continuing to struggle with resentment, internal things, like it's so unfair how they treat me.
I can't believe they keep doing this.
I want them to change.
They're not changing.
That's option number one.
Keep doing that.
Option number two is we go.
We enact our power to choose and we leave.
That's the second choice.
The third choice is we stay.
We stay but we relate to our experience in a different way.
We change and relate to our experience totally differently to the first option.
Okay.
So if I ask clients usually, what option do you want to choose?
100% of the time people say, definitely not option one.
I can't stay doing this same thing over and over again for an infinite period of time.
Okay.
So then we've got our two options.
Okay.
So we've got, we can leave or we can stay, but we do something differently.
Because this place here is intolerable, life draining and taking me away from a sense of vitality and purpose.
Okay.
So, when it comes to the boss example is that what we can do with radical acceptance is obviously, accept that I'm feeling frustrated, accept that it's here.
And if I have made efforts to express my concerns to the boss, I've taken all the action that I can physically take and they're still not changing.
Now I have to accept that this boss is exactly who they are right now.
So it's accepting that this person is not changing and this is how they are.
How does that fit?
It fits really well also laid over what you just said before about energy.
Because I feel like navigating a situation like that, or any interpersonal situation, is extremely complicated and hard and requires a lot of brain energy.
And if I'm spending all my time fighting the second arrow, I don't have the brain power, energy to actually navigate this really difficult situation.
Exactly.
And then you think about what's the cost of that.
So in a boss example if, like I walk into work and already I can feel my brow getting furrowed and I'm like just annoyed at their very presence.
I'm annoyed that they're there.
I'm waiting for an email to come in from them.
So even in that, I'm already like contracted in the body.
I'm already tightened.
I'm kind of wound up already.
Yeah.
And so how much energy is going into that, fighting against their presence or what they may or may not do?
So acceptance would look like I was going to say acknowledging they're a shitty person, but that's not really very helpful.
That's great.
Acknowledging, yeah, like this is who they are.
Here's the Mr. Shitty Person boss, okay?
How do I show up to this?
How do I choose?
Now, I can choose to leave, of course, but...
The amount of energy that's going into not liking them is actually taking me away from my job, maybe from something that I love.
It's probably having an impact at home when I come home.
So we get to choose how we relate to this unpleasant experience.
We can tighten and contract, not want it and resist it, or we can let it be.
Yeah, because often I think the way that people and I speak for myself, often the way that I would deal with that, I'd like accept it but then like complain about it.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's like, but then I'm carrying around this sort of negative energy.
Yeah.
And I know I've spoken about this so many times to the extent where I feel like we should make them and sell them.
But there's the three-sided column.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, I love it.
I think about it all the time.
Do you guys remember that, the three-sided column?
Yeah.
It's like three-sided column, just quickly for those who don't know it.
I think it's like Alfred Adler maybe created it.
And it's like one side of the column says, poor me.
Yep.
Another one says, that bad person.
And there's a third one, but we spend most of our time looking at the intersection of poor me and that bad person.
And Alfred Adler says we need to spin the column around until we can just see the third side which says what can I do from this point on?
Bang on.
Yep.
And I think about that so much because I mean, it's just you just fall into that bad person for me all the time.
Well, I do all the time.
Yes, yeah.
But it's like, but you do have a choice in a lot of situations.
Absolutely.
I love that.
And it's so, I mean, so consistent with what we're talking about.
The other thing that you mentioned in passing was the complaining piece.
Yeah.
And it's so interesting.
It's really interesting research around the function of complaining and that in some circumstances it can be helpful to vent.
However often it keeps us in the feeling state of resentment bitterness unfairness inequity, all that stuff.
So it's like it keeps the feeling alive and I'm actually still sitting in this struggle within.
So with clients, for example, I might talk about.
You know, if they're having struggles at work and they find that they're getting support from their co-workers and that on their lunch breaks they're all just bitching about the boss, for example.
But like bring a curiosity, like how –
And it feels good.
Like there's a dopamine experience of feeling good when we're venting.
Collecting allies, basically.
But how helpful is this?
And what happens to me when I return to my desk?
Where's the feeling going?
What's it doing?
Yeah.
It can also blow everything out of you.
It can really add fuel to the fire of poor me and injustice.
Yeah.
And so what I sometimes suggest with clients particularly this is particularly in the work context, but it might be something like you know get your colleagues on board with this and just say can we either do something like we're only going to talk about the unpleasant part for five minutes and then let's talk about something else?
So you have a bit of a rule around it.
Or we actually name the story and it might be something like um Sarah, I've just got so hooked into that story today.
I've got so hooked into that story about the boss.
Like it's really pushing me around.
So you notice how we've related there to the experience differently.
I haven't moved into venting or bitching.
I've actually just named my struggle with the experience is here.
So instead I'm getting support about the fact that the struggle is here, rather than moving into the complaining about the person.
Yeah, it's a good distinction, because I guess the answer isn't to not talk about it, because you need to be able to talk things through.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So I guess we've spoken a lot about this kind of internal sense of radical acceptance, but what I also want to offer too, is how we can apply this to relationships that we've really struggled with.
And kind of giving an example before of working with the boss, but I also really want to mention around like romantic relationships, or it might be even relationships with parents, where we may have had a history of really asking for our needs to be met and a pattern of behavior that continues.
And maybe, for example, your partner or your parent continues to let you down And you continue to be disappointed and saddened and that you wish that they would be different.
And you spend a lot of energy wishing that this was different to what it is, and that it feels really, really painful in this place here of wanting desperately for the situation to be better than it is.
If we have asked what we need, if we have made our best efforts to communicate to that person about the impact of their behavior, and can we do things differently if those efforts have been made, we then have a choice about am i willing to accept them as they are not to approve or to like their behavior, but can i accept basically the truth of the matter And that is that this person is this person and they're not going to change?
How do I then choose to show up to this?
And I must say that I work quite a bit with estranged relationships and this choice that people make at some point that I don't want to be in this dance anymore and so I'm going to choose to leave, and that that for them is an acceptance that this person is not going to change and that this relationship in this way is not serving me anymore.
So when we're faced with the reality that this relationship is hurting me, We do get this choice.
Like I can really truly recognize this is who they are.
Now the choice lies with me.
I can move away and I can end this relationship.
Or if I'm going to stay, I need to have really, with myself, really clear expectations of them.
So now I grieve the loss.
And this is the tricky part.
I grieve the loss of what I'd wanted.
So I've grieved the loss of the kind of relationship that I've wanted and know that they can't give it to me in that way.
And this is an immense challenge.
But when we accept the reality of what it is, of what this relationship is usually, it will open us up to grief, because I actually now truly understand that this person cannot give me this particular thing or this whole thing.
I mean, I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but it reminds me of so many stories I've heard over the last, however many years, of friendships breaking down or becoming estranged, or within families, because of political differences or different alignment on world issues, whatever they might be at the moment.
And that would be a really, really hard thing.
It's like very passionate feelings or beliefs about certain things and the person who you thought you knew them then voices or has a belief which is basically the opposite.
Like that's a really hard thing to radically accept.
It is really hard.
In that instance...
I think for me in therapy it's always this challenge of how much does this relationship mean to you?
How important is it?
And again, in some circumstances it might be this challenge of really again kind of this notion of psychological flexibility that I can see that this is one part that really hurts me.
And I'm really sad that they feel that way about that.
But that's also only one part of them.
Yeah.
That's a real, real challenge.
How do I see the whole person that's here, not just these beliefs?
And that, I mean, that's a lot of therapy work right there in kind of working with that.
But if there are relationships that actually are important to you, then there's the challenge, because there's this part here that I don't like about you or that you keep disappointing me with.
And I keep hoping, like I keep hoping.
But the hopefulness that they will change actually causes us more struggle and suffering.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have lived radical acceptance for the last, I would say, five years.
And if I was to draw like a timeline of my life and look at the highs and lows of my life?
One of the biggest highs of my life is achieving that radical acceptance.
Mm-hmm.
One of the lows was the start of the journey, but just the person that I am now, or the way that I experience the world is so much richer than it ever was before.
And just a quick story to sort of exemplify that, and I know we haven't talked about yet what happens when you get to radical acceptance.
But
For me, it was around the time one of our kids is diagnosed on the spectrum.
It wasn't the diagnosis that I was having to accept.
That was fine.
There was no problems.
It was the level of distress that they were in and the impact, just how hard the world was on them and seeing their level of distress and unhappiness.
And it was pretty extreme at times.
And so happening to accept that was very, very difficult.
I didn't know that's sort of what I had to do.
I didn't quite understand acceptance.
And it has taken, like, probably five years.
I remember a conversation very soon after we understood what was going on, and it was with your best friend, Hamish.
And I was telling him over the phone about the diagnosis and And he called a couple days later and it was right in the middle of our child's highest level of distress they've ever been in.
In fact, it was the morning after.
He'd just won a Gold Logie and it was like 730 the morning after and he called just to see how it was going.
And he said, what's your biggest fear with it all?
And I started talking about our child.
He said, no, no, like for you, like what are you worried about for you?
What's the biggest thing?
And I said, oh, I just –
I don't think I'm going to be myself anymore.
I'm not myself.
I'm not fun anymore.
I'm not funny anymore.
I'm not fun to be around.
I don't feel happy anymore.
And he spoke for a bit, but one of the things that he said that to me summarizes the whole journey of radical acceptance was, he said this is not going to put your flame out.
This won't distinguish your flame.
He said, it'll be a lot of hard work, but I have no doubt this will make your flame burn brighter.
Mm-hmm. when you're through this.
And I thought that's a beautiful thing to say, but I can't see, I couldn't see that.
And that is exactly what has happened.
I'm not saying I'm amazing now, that's not what I'm saying but I feel so much richer and so much more like.
I'm so grateful.
I've experienced this thing, that like.
It's been so hard, but I've come through it.
And our child's incredible for me personally with the acceptance like I've totally accepted that's the way their their brain is and the way their world works for them and i feel it like i feel inside the brain flame burns brighter i am so much more compassionate to everyone i'm so much more i feel so much more in a good way i relate to so many more people and i love so much more i have so much more love for so many more things and it's because of the journey of radical acceptance oh that feels um it makes me feel tearful i must say um It's this idea in here that when you open up to feeling, like when you open up to the grief, it also means that you learn to feel more. which means that you learn to feel the richness and the joyfulness and the vitality alongside the pain.
But when we resist, like when we get stuck in that, like I don't want this for my life, I don't like this feeling.
It's unfair.
When we get stuck in that and we're trying to push it away, we're actually abandoning our ability to feel the richness and beauty of life, whether there's pain here or whether there isn't.
And so the fact Hugh, that you can acknowledge.
You know, I'm sure there's immense grief at times, but that this can exist alongside of this awe and beauty and joyfulness.
That's here.
Yeah.
It's like the idea there's a saying that instead of feeling better, it's finding a better way of feeling.
And I think that kind of really exemplifies all this work here is finding a better way of feeling.
Yeah.
I feel like, on that, I feel like I can.
We had a new staff member start recently and I met her for the first time.
This is the Resilience Project.
And within 20 seconds, I was just looking in her eyes like, oh, there's a story here.
And I don't think I would have – I just could say, something's happened here.
And sure enough, there was, which I found out a few days later.
But I just feel like I can see into – it sounds very woo-woo, and I don't mean it quite literally –
But if I can see into people's souls a bit more easily like I can just see pain and heartache and a bit also triumph.
And if I can see people's feelings much easier now and I don't know why that is, but I certainly feel so much more in tune with life.
Not that I think I was ever bad at this, but I really can just look at someone and see that there's a story here, no matter how good or not good of a person I am.
I feel like I can see the story because of the journey I've been through and acceptance.
It's actually about waking up.
Yes.
It's literally about waking up to life, which means that you tune in to people more.
And gosh, don't get me wrong, this is a really hard thing to do.
And it's not something like I'm going to tell you four steps and you're going to be sailing.
It's tremendously hard.
And it's a question that we have to come back to again and again.
Once we've got the skill, we have to keep coming back to practice it again and again.
There's no silver bullet to that.
But when pain is here, it brings with it this question of like, how do I want to live?
And almost like, what do I want this pain to stand for?
And so, yes, here is pain and there is probably deep suffering in that.
But I actually can live alongside this.
And this is you know, when Gina, in her episode, talks about grieving the loss of her child, is that you know that by allowing herself to fully feel the loss, she also then fully feels the love, and that this grief is in service now of creating a better world really.
Yeah.
And so if we're not willing to feel, if we're not willing to have the feelings or the experience here, we actually deny and completely abandon our capacity to feel the full spectrum of emotion.
And I think this is the key point in here is that when we don't accept our experience, we stay in a more narrowed, life-depleting place and at some point in time, that knocking on the door will get so loud that you, you have to do something differently.
Yeah, it's so cool, i think it's.
It would be so hard in the, when you're in the thick of it, to imagine.
But even just like from what you said you, and from everything you're saying emmett's, it's almost like, i don't know, like it's sort of hard to imagine in the moment.
But Realising the potential, not good, but something will come from this that you couldn't possibly imagine right now.
Yeah.
And if we're willing to, we can turn towards it and allow ourselves to tune into the wisdom of it.
There's a couple of practices I think that can be really helpful that I might go through, but I do want to mention something about the actual physiological experience of emotion.
There's an amazing neuroscientist, Jill Bolte-Taylor, It's a good name.
It is a great name.
And she has what's termed the 90-second rule.
And this is that physiologically and chemically, emotion has a shelf life of 90 seconds.
90 seconds.
Sorry, can you say that again?
So physiologically, if we're mapping what's happening in the brain and the body, and chemically so neurotransmitters hormones, stress response, etc.
Emotion has a shelf life of 90 seconds, which means that it reaches a peak and subsides.
However, what happens is that when we don't know how to practice acceptance or how to tune in, how to wake up to this emotion being here, we move into story.
We move into not liking it and to not wanting it, and we move into the narrative around this emotion being present.
So that 90 seconds could stretch to 10 years.
100%.
It means struggling all day with this feeling of loneliness that's here.
Because you're refueling the emotion.
Yeah, you're keeping it alive.
And this is why the metaphor of a wave in the ocean is so useful when it comes to emotion.
So we can see that emotion is going to rise and it's going to feel uncomfortable and it's going to reach a peak, and then we're going to move through it.
And we go from being and Tara Brach again gives this great example we go from being the wave to being the ocean.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay.
Can I give an example from this morning that might work?
Mm-hmm.
And I think it probably links also to what I just said about like what acceptance has given me.
But this morning when I parked my car, someone had done a really bad park.
So I had to park in a bad place because to fit in I had to park encroaching on the person in front of me, but there was no one there.
And when I came back to get in my car the car behind me had gone but someone had done a really tight park in front of me and they got out of the car and And a guy said to me thanks for leaving me so much room.
It was like he was angry.
Yeah.
And I reckon five years ago.
I would have wanted to win that argument and explain why, but then also make him feel shit for speaking up.
And honestly, within one second I just went yeah, I've made life hard for you there and just sort of smiled and said sorry.
And then I forgot about it until that moment then.
But I feel like five years ago that would have crushed me and I would have pissed me off.
And you would have been carrying it up here.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I just was like, yeah, I'm sorry.
I made life hard for you.
That's not a good part.
Yeah.
And then it smiled and he was fine.
Like he was just walked off.
Yeah, great example.
Great example.
Yeah, it's such a huge shift that because it's like you desperately want to punish them and like tell them that they're wrong and they did the wrong thing.
Yeah.
What's the point?
Energy.
It's like energy.
This man, I don't know what's happened to him this morning.
He's grumpy.
He didn't know that someone made me park in a bad spot.
It's like, who cares?
Just whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's actually kind of analogous to the let them theory is in some ways, you know, really kind of just actually letting them hold that feeling, you know in that way,
And I can notice what I feel about it.
I can let this feeling be here.
I can be okay with it being here.
And now I've got my energy to move on with my day.
What you were saying more before about the feelings and having a broader spectrum of emotions and the idea of acceptance, opening up this world of more emotion.
I think I've been on a journey of this for a very long time and I don't know if this is just getting older or maybe it's the work as well.
And I'd love to hear your take on this.
I think maybe it's just me, but I think there's an idea that you can only... one emotion at a time.
And I feel like accepting more has allowed me to be able to carry more emotions simultaneously about people and situations and things.
And that's a really nice realisation, to know that I have multiple emotional responses to a situation and can therefore kind of choose to lean into more certain ones more than others, and that feels like a.
It doesn't feel like denial, it feels like acceptance of it all.
But I'm making the choice to lean more heavily into the laughter of this, the humour of this situation, or the joy, even though, like if there's a person in my life that frustrates me, And that's true but they also bring a lot of joy in other areas and I don't have to write them off because of that.
Yes.
Yeah.
I love that.
I think that that feels to me so highlighting of the work that you've been doing, really.
In therapy, we often talk about the notion of what's called both and rather than either or.
Yeah.
Our instinct is I'm either mad or I'm happy.
I'm either right and they're wrong.
But actually what we're wanting to work towards is really kind of what's called psychological flexibility and that's the capacity to hold multiple experiences and that things can be.
We've said this many times before, but two things can be true at once.
I can feel gratitude and I can feel loss.
Okay.
Um, so it's this both and I am both joyful for them and sad for me.
They don't have to, they're not mutually exclusive.
And the more that we recognize that we can have both of these here, the more space we get.
Um, and the more capacity we have to notice the good as well as the difficult.
Um, so it's this, um, both and it's really, really beautiful kind of way of living.
It is so great.
It sort of like goes against this sort of instinct that so many of us have where there has to be like a winner and a loser.
Yes.
Yeah.
And you do anything you need to do to be the winner.
Yeah.
Like, for example, in depression or when people are suffering with depressive symptoms.
It might sound something like
I should be so grateful.
I've got all of these things.
I've got a great life, but I feel so awful.
What is wrong with me?
In that instance, we go, both are true.
I am grateful for all of these things and I feel a lot of sadness.
Both are true, because what happens in the first scenario is that we now move into basically, judgment about feeling sadness.
So I'm depressed about being depressed or I'm anxious about being anxious.
Yeah.
And this is this example coming back to the beginning of the two arrows.
Mm.
Sadness is here.
What we do have a choice about is how we speak to ourselves about having the sadness.
Mm.
I had this exact experience on Monday this week and I came in and I felt – it was really weird.
I felt great.
I arrived at work and then suddenly something just changed in my brain and everything just felt – it's like I couldn't think properly.
I couldn't engage with the discussions.
And then Bridge sort of said away from people, she's like, are you okay?
And I said, I'm fine.
But then texted her a minute later saying, actually, I don't think I am.
We had a really quick chat and I feel like I in the past I would have started to worry what's going on.
How bad is this going to get?
How, what does this mean?
Am I getting, going down a path?
But then we had a brief chat and partly it was the conversation with Bridge but partly it was stuff inside me sort of going.
It's okay to feel a bit crap one day and not be able to engage.
I think I'm a bit tired.
Just lower my expectations of myself for the day and get a good night's sleep.
And then on Tuesday I woke up feeling great again.
Yeah. because I think I just accepted that I just don't feel great today and that's okay.
Yes.
Yeah, I think that's so incredible and really well caught there, because what we actually know from the research is that one of the biggest predictors of depressive episodes are previous depressive episodes, and the function or the reason why is because we are so fearful of becoming depressed again.
Mm-hmm.
And in fact there's an incredible program called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, which is for prevention of depression relapse.
And it's specifically about this, the fact that whenever an unpleasant emotion arises, we get upset judgmental mad, fearful that it's here.
And this kind of acceptance piece is really around like it's okay that it's here. it's here already.
Let me be with this.
It can come and go.
And at the same time, I can still go out and do the things that I want to do, like connection with Bridge.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think it was that conversation that.
Thank you Bridge, who's sitting in the room behind, getting over there.
But I think that conversation the chance to have a really quick conversation but not catastrophize at all, just acknowledge that this is here yeah, helped me do it internally as well and then just think, all right well, i'm gonna, i don't.
It doesn't mean i have to stop.
I've got work to do, i've got to go pick up the kids, life has to go on, but i can go about it in a way of holding that i'm not at my best today.
Yeah yeah yeah, that's so so well done.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, it was a pretty i'm not sure i've actually done that ever before.
Yeah yeah, well done.
I think.
On the topic of like things that you can do to help acceptance, I didn't at any point myself think here are the things I have to do.
Time helps.
Time definitely helps.
It's a huge part of it.
But I felt like I was continually collecting evidence of the fact that I could still feel happy and things are going to be okay.
And you might go a week with no evidence, or you might go a month with no evidence, and then you might have a couple of things happen and you go.
Oh, that's a nice feeling.
And I wasn't at the time going, oh, more evidence, more evidence, but that's kind of what happens.
The more you try and live your life, you get evidence that things will be okay, and that gives you a belief.
Yeah.
But the other thing that happened and lots of people might not want to hear this, but for me the thing that helped the most was exercise, by far.
Yeah.
Because every single time I exercised and it won't work for everyone, but for me, the way my brain is it just gives me so many positive thoughts.
I had so much evidence that things are going to be okay while I was exercising.
And specifically running or gym.
I just felt, really.
I felt such bursts of joy that just reminded me that it's still.
The flame is not out.
Like there is still a flame there.
And so movement.
I mean everyone talks about this a lot, but the movement exercise, whatever it is training, just that is a huge part.
I would say the most important part of my acceptance journey.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
And there will be many reasons as to why exercise was so fundamental for you.
In a lot of instances, the exercise is not just about what's happening chemically physiologically, but also about what it means in terms of agency, that I have capacity, I have choice over how I move my arms and legs and that, even with this pain here, I know that my body can get me to run.
And like, wow.
Here it is.
Here is me being alive.
Here is almost like even opening to gratitude of what my body can do, for example.
And that, even if I just focus on just this one thing in this moment, we can open to the fact that wow, I do have autonomy and capacity for agency.
And I think that can feel very buffering when we have no choice and control in other circumstances.
And you mentioned the weather at the start.
Mm-hmm, the something about when you're training in the sun.
You feel this so much positive emotion.
But nothing was more symbolic for me than when I was training in the rain and cold and wet weather and blustery wind.
And it was awful.
It was like, this is what my life feels like, but I'm doing, I'm pushing through this.
And the feeling afterwards was getting the car afterwards.
Unbelievable.
It was like, it was so symbolic.
What do you think the belief was that was showing up there?
I was just like the rain and the wind sort of represented the storm that my life felt like it was at that point and me running through it.
It was just a very.
It was so symbolic of me going well yeah, it's like I'm still going, I'm still moving and I'm growing and I'm getting better.
Yeah.
That's incredible.
And I'm not accepting like the lying in bed not that I ever get to do that at home, but staying at home and not doing anything.
Mm-hmm. sort of symbolise me lying down and letting it roll over me like a freight train.
Yes, yeah.
But instead I was making a choice to –
To move against it.
Yeah.
In that example, we actually have two, possibly two ways, three ways in which it could go.
It could be, for example, the rain is here and the mind goes, this is so bad.
Like, this is such an example of how shit my life is.
Like, I can't handle this rain.
This is awful.
My feet are going.
That'd be right.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, here we go again.
Like, don't even get this.
No, I was thinking, God, this would be an amazing montage.
Imagine someone's filming this.
Classic main character ending.
But I think that exemplifies this choice that we have about here is the rain.
I don't have a choice about it being here.
It's already here.
Let me be open to it and let me move with it.
In fact, I actually remember.
I feel like the moment I felt like I'd accepted the way my life had changed and the way our family's life had changed and the way the world was for us was actually whilst running in the rain.
And I remember I was crying a lot and I because I'm so used to crying with this stuff from sadness I just for a second I thought that's what.
For a while I thought it's what it was and actually realized I was feeling.
I was like no, I'm actually feeling so happy right now.
This is actually joy.
Yeah.
And that was the first moment of like.
Oh, I think ironically, my flame is burning brighter amongst all this rain.
I remember I actually tried to take a photo with like a self timer thing, but I don't know how to use it.
So it was this weird blurry shot of me walking off in the distance, but you can tell it's raining.
And I do look at it from time to time just as this like, that felt like the moment.
You literally were filming your montage.
Yeah, doing the montage.
You created the montage.
I tried to.
It was a still shot of me walking off in the distance.
It's quite poetic.
Yeah, that is really great.
But yeah.
Wow.
Just on that kind of narrative that I feel like I've met a lot of people who carry that around with them all the time.
I really feel for them because it really is living their life on the poor me or that bad person's sides.
Anything bad happens, the smallest thing is like, oh, that'll be right.
And I don't know what they've gone through.
They might have gone through something really, really horrible.
But it's such a, for one, it's like such a heavy energy to be carrying around all the time.
But then unfortunately and this is not intended by them at all, but unfortunately it just poisons the interactions they have with other people.
Yeah.
That's actually probably a whole – there's a whole episode in that, to be honest, really kind of around the stories we tell ourselves and the identities that we cling to.
And an identity or sense of self that I'm a victim is actually not uncommon, and it will have both – to holding this belief about myself and huge costs.
So maybe we can talk about that another time.
That'd be great.
I think it's really... So what would that topic be?
Just like identity?
Yeah, sense of self.
Sense of self.
And the stories we tell ourselves.
And we actually become imprisoned often by those stories.
Jeez, that would be amazing.
Because for every piece of evidence that there is about poor me, there will also be an untold story of not poor me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we don't tune into that part.
That's probably a bit of an aside.
But I wonder.
There's actually an acronym which was like a beautiful follow on from the RAIN example.
And that is actually.
It's called RAIN and it's by, once again, Tara Brach, and this is her kind of framework for cultivating radical acceptance.
She does say at the top that there are two elements to radical acceptance at its heart, and that is the first is waking up being aware of what is happening here in this moment.
And the second one is is can I be with it?
Can I hold this gently?
So waking up, letting me be with this.
Okay.
So her acronym RAINN, The R, and she's got some beautiful meditations that you can do for this.
So you can just Google Tara Brach rain meditations and it will walk you through it.
It's great.
The first is R, which is recognize.
So this is where we name.
We step off of that treadmill automatic pilot of getting caught in our heads and we pause.
We slow down and we name.
Aha, here is anxiety.
Okay.
She actually gives this beautiful example and this is not going to resonate with everybody, but it really deeply resonated with me.
And it was something like.
This is probably coming from a Buddhist perspective, but we might say something like fear palms together bow.
And it's like an honoring that this is here.
Fear, bow.
I'm honoring that it's here because it already is.
Okay, so that's the first part.
We name it.
We recognize.
R is recognize.
Okay.
The A is allow.
And so this is a phrase that you can use and I would often use like a physical touch with the body.
So we're coming into the body and it might be like, let me be with this.
Let it be here.
There's an invitation here also to let go of holding in the body.
So often with unpleasant emotions.
We will have usually a clenching sometimes or a different kind of feeling.
So we can let go of the bracing in the body.
That might be dropping the shoulders, unhinging the jaw, relaxing the tongue, unclenching the stomach.
That might be something that we can do there.
So that's allow.
The I is investigate. the investigate can be first of all, what's the story I'm telling myself here?
What is this about?
What is this actually about?
Like what's behind the feeling?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's happening here?
Maybe you could even ask like, how familiar is this story to me?
So could that be like I got real?
You know, you recognize that you're like angry about the person to cut you off in traffic.
You allow it to be, and then the investigator.
Is that like is it about the person who cut me off or is it about something else?
Is that what you mean?
Yeah, well, it could be about something else.
An example that will come to mind might be, let's just say you're passed over for a promotion.
And the first, the emotion that's here I'm going to recognize is disappointment.
Disappointment.
And then it might be, can I allow this to be here?
And then the I might be, okay, what's behind this feeling here?
What's the story here?
And it might be, this is my story of not enoughness.
Mm-hmm.
So we've named it.
This is familiar to me.
And then, and this is more crucial than the naming of the story, we come into the body.
So we step down once again from the head and we come into the body.
Where am I feeling this in the body?
And so this is really helping us with this 90-second rule.
Where do I feel this emotion in the body?
And for me it would always be placing a hand on that part, and we offer it like a gentleness or a nurturing.
So just placing a hand here, where do I feel this in the body?
Let it be here.
Then the N is nurture.
And obviously this is around nurturing the fact that this is hard, that here is suffering and this is really hard.
What can I do next? what is my next one thing that would help me here?
Okay.
So that's RAIN.
It's a very useful little acronym.
And there is an invitation obviously to practice in.
Yeah.
Great.
Just, yeah, brilliant.
I thank you for the the time and thought you put into that.
I don't think I've said this before at the end of the episode, but please share this with someone.
Please share this episode with someone who you think might appreciate it or not know they need it, but potentially might be helpful, because I just feel like that.
I would have loved to have heard this five years ago, and I think so many people I think most people are trying to struggle to accept something in their life.
Just don't share it passive aggressively.
Yeah, do it a lovely way a bit.
But yeah, please share and like and subscribe while we're on the topic of Yeah, why not?
Something else I've never said before.
Check out the merch at theimperfects.com.
So much preparation and thoughts going into that, but you articulated it so incredibly well.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Anne.
Thanks thanks, and we pay our respects to elders, past and present.
The Imperfix is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11, 14.
