The relationship between a brain and the reality in which it operates can take one of several forms, including acceptance, rejection, denial, and dissociation. Of these, acceptance is the only one compatible with sustained effective functioning — you’ve got to accept reality to deal with it. The alternatives are, to varying degrees, pathological. Despite this, and despite being extensively referenced in the Buddhist, philosophical, psychological, and clinical literature, acceptance is rarely examined on its own terms.
Most of the time, acceptance happens automatically — so smoothly and effortlessly that it is easy to miss the fact that it happens at all. But not all the time: When the encounter with reality elicits painful emotions, acceptance can become a struggle, the magnitude of which is proportional to the intensity of those emotions — therein lies the challenge of complete acceptance. Understanding what acceptance entails and what can interfere with it makes meeting this challenge easier — hence, this chapter.
One common misperception worth addressing at the outset: acceptance is not the endgame. It is not the same as making peace with reality, and it is certainly not surrender. Acceptance is the starting point — the prerequisite for everything that follows. (What follows acceptance — whether peace, struggle, surrender, or truce — is addressed later in this chapter.)
Desired or detested, reality must first be accepted before anything deliberate can be done about it. Hence, delay in full acceptance interferes with the subjective sense of the flow of reality. Typically, this leads to feeling “stuck,” which registers as a loss of freedom — an entrapment. Entrapment, in turn, breeds anger and despair, animosity (i.e., a sense of “pissed offness” that can be diffuse or aimed at a specific target, which may or may not be relevant), and ultimately legitimization of the use of force to deal with the trap (as discussed in the Depression and Anger chapters). Invariably, allowing anger to enter the mix amounts to a self-generated hurdle on the road to acceptance.
Let’s begin our study of acceptance by examining what takes place in its absence: denial and rejection. Denial is commonly, but erroneously, considered the opposite of acceptance; it isn’t. Denial, as a psychodynamic concept, is a subconscious defense mechanism. As such, it operates early in the brain’s data processing chain, blocking certain material from reaching consciousness, supposedly to protect the self. Denied data is not permitted access — it never arrives at the point where it can be accepted or rejected; it is intercepted before it gets there.
The actual opposite of acceptance is rejection — the refusal to accept data about reality as it reaches consciousness.
One type of rejection of reality is manifested in psychotic states (e.g., secondary to schizophrenia, severe mood disorders, and several conditions that disrupt brain functioning). In psychoses, incoming data is replaced by internally generated material (hallucinations) or assigned wildly inaccurate meaning (delusions).
Another type is manifested in dissociative states in which the connection between consciousness and the environment collapses entirely; dissociative states are less common than psychotic states and often linked to extreme early trauma. In both cases, the result is a rejection of reality so profound that effective functioning becomes impossible.
These conditions result from an automatic failure of the brain’s data processing apparatus and are the province of clinical psychiatry or neurology. While they underscore the importance of acceptance, they are outside the scope of our discussion.
The focus of this chapter is on states in which acceptance is a struggle. These are states in which one wishes one could reject reality because it is painful. Getting drunk to avoid dealing with bad news is a common example (as is any form of substance abuse deployed to blunt the emotional impact of a difficult reality). At the extreme, a suicide attempt can represent an ultimate refusal to accept reality.
The point is that, unlike psychotic and dissociative states, the struggle around acceptance involves a degree of volition, even if the elements in play evade conscious awareness (as they often do).
The Obstacles to Acceptance
What makes acceptance difficult? In a word (borrowed from the Buddhist lexicon) — attachment.
Attachments are fueled by emotions. The emotions triggered by the discrepancy between actual and desired reality function as a kind of glue, cementing the attachment to the imagined version. The more intense these emotions are, the stronger the glue, and the more resistant the attachment becomes to dissolution. The stronger the attachment, the more painful it is when it is ripped away, and the more intense the struggle to accept the actual reality. A minor disappointment typically generates a mild emotional response and a weak attachment that can be easily loosened. At the other end of the spectrum, the death of a beloved person typically generates an intense emotional response and a strong attachment — to the reality in which they were alive — that can be immensely difficult to let go of.
[Sidebar: The fact that an imagined alternative reality can feel so compelling is not surprising. Reality as we normally experience it is ultimately a product of the brain — consider, as an illustration, the premise of the most excellent The Matrix franchise. The reality we experience is produced by our own brain — an edited version of objective reality. The editing process provides the valency (i.e., a positive or negative charge) and the meaning we associate with our reality. Given that the brain routinely and inevitably plays a major role in shaping (subjective) reality, the notion that it could manufacture a better version — one closer to the way we want things to be — carries seductive plausibility. The implicit sense that a different reality is, or should be, within reach creates the backdrop for attachments to be sustained.]
Attachment plays a role on several levels. First, and most broadly, we easily become attached to an imagined alternative reality — a mental image of how reality should be. (To be precise, we are attached to how we wish an alternative reality would make us feel, rather than how reality actually does; more on this in the following.)
Second, we easily become attached to being right. Who doesn’t like being right, right? However, this attachment can lead to blindness to one’s own ignorance (especially when one is wrong). It manifests as rejecting corrective information, resisting enlightening input, and stubbornly holding onto wrong conclusions. Three recurring wrong conclusions we typically get attached to deserve closer examination, because each one directly, if covertly, makes acceptance harder than it needs to be:
The first wrong conclusion is deceptively simple: that acceptance begins and ends with the facts that make up reality — a diagnosis, a loss, a failure. The assumption, based on this conclusion, is that if one can just bring oneself to acknowledge the facts for what they are, acceptance has been achieved. This is accurate, but incomplete. It describes only the first layer of acceptance — the one that, as we established earlier, happens automatically (in all but severe pathological states). Hence, it is not the source of hardship around acceptance. The real challenge of acceptance is not accepting the facts of reality. It is accepting the way these facts make us feel.
The second wrong conclusion is that force is a viable option for dealing with a reality that’s difficult to accept. The necessity to accept a reality that seems unbearable (as mentioned above, there is no other effective way to relate to reality) yields a sense of entrapment. The automatic response to a pain-filled entrapment is the fight-or-flight reflex. The fight-or-flight reflex is remarkably effective in dealing with survival threats. In general, it is ineffective in dealing with ‘thrival’ threats (i.e., in the pursuit of happiness).
The problem is that the fight-or-flight response relies on the use of force. Reliance on force to resolve the conflict around acceptance can take various forms. For example, it can manifest with non-specific hostility, combativeness, and rage (the fight arm of the reflex), substance abuse (the flight arm of the reflex), or suicidality (potentially, both arms of the reflex).
Behaviors driven by the fight-or-flight reflex often actually do provide relief — getting into a fight, getting drunk, or attempting suicide are essentially guaranteed to change the way one feels; the associated relief, however, lasts briefly, if at all. The facts and the difficult-to-accept feelings they elicit don’t improve in response to these shows of force; usually, they worsen. In other words, the fantasy of force does not liberate one from the trap. It extends the sentence.
The third wrong conclusion we often attach to is perhaps the most seductive: that accepting reality means surrendering to it. This confusion is understandable — acceptance and surrender can look identical — both involve ceasing to fight. But the resemblance is only superficial.
Acceptance applies exclusively to the present — to reality as it exists right now (the duration of the Present/Now is itself a fascinating topic, outside the scope of this discussion). When the acceptance apparatus is aimed at the future, acceptance automatically becomes surrender. That is, accepting a future is resigning to it. This is so because the future is defined by its unknowability; treating it as known forces it into the perceived present.
Accepting a future requires knowing how it will unfold, i.e., it involves the loss of uncertainty, which is synonymous with the loss of hope (as discussed in the Hope chapter, uncertainty is a prerequisite for hope).
The key point here is that accepting a painful present does not mean accepting that the future will be equally painful, or that nothing can or should be done to change it. On the contrary, accepting a painful present is a required first step toward influencing it to change. (Surrender, by contrast, is based on the conclusion that things will not improve and thus, investing effort in promoting change is futile.) Acceptance is the starting point for changing a difficult reality. Surrender forecloses it. Two mantras capture the distinction cleanly. The mantra of acceptance: “It is what it is.” The mantra of surrender: “It is what it is, and there is nothing I can do to change it.” The difference of a few words is the difference between a starting point and a conclusion.
Consider this simple example as an illustration: Let’s say I feel weak and out of shape (and secondarily, disappointed in and ashamed of myself). If, in fact, I am weak and out of shape, I must accept my condition (and the feelings I have about it). This acceptance is the foundation from which I can generate a plan that (if followed) is likely to get me to be stronger and in better shape at some future point. On the other hand, if I feel weak and out of shape, and take it to be the way I will feel for the rest of my life, I have not accepted the present facts; I have surrendered — resigned to be weak and out of shape.
Conscious awareness of the difference between acceptance and surrender has direct clinical relevance. I have treated many patients who resisted accepting what they had to accept simply because they confused accepting the present with giving up on the future. The refusal to accept is, in these cases, a misguided act of self-protection — an attempt to keep hope alive, ironically, by rejecting the very step that would make hope actionable. Clarifying the distinction, in my clinical experience, can lead to considerable psychological relief.
The next form of attachment worth noting is attachment to ‘closure.’ Closure is a culturally resonant concept that covers several related territories — finding who or what is responsible for a difficult reality, seeing justice done, getting what one is entitled to, and arriving at a point where the reality makes sense (i.e., discovering its meaning). The attachment to closure manifests as a precondition placed on acceptance: “I cannot accept this until I understand it,” or “I cannot move on until justice is served.” This inverts the actual relationship. Acceptance is not the reward for finding closure — it is the prerequisite for the search.
The apparent cultural trend toward treating closure as a precondition for acceptance is worth noting: Increasingly, the language of closure frames acceptance as a finish line rather than a starting point. This framing is not only conceptually backward — it is clinically costly. The search for closure, when it functions as a substitute for acceptance rather than a consequence of it, is a form of rumination — keeping the emotional intensity of the inner conflict above the threshold at which resolution becomes possible, thus prolonging the adjustment period.
The fourth attachment is perhaps the most poignant: attachment to the perception of one’s own vulnerability. Most of us underestimate our capacity to endure. The conclusion this generates — that the painful reality is beyond what one can bear — is, with rare exceptions, empirically wrong. History, unfortunately, offers ample stark evidence: ordinary people, in their millions, endured the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags, and the Chinese Communist re-education labor camps (to select but a few examples; tragically, it just scratches the surface). The ordinary capacity for human endurance, when tested against the historical record, is almost incomprehensibly greater than what we tend to assume it is.
Many of my patients in the grip of intense suffering made comments such as: “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” and “I can’t take any more of this.” Both express the same conviction: that their limits of endurance have been reached, or are imminent. My responses to these statements were consistent: Nobody ever knows how much more they can take — we find out when we get there. A person who is able to say that they can’t take any more is not only able to take it, but is actually taking it.
The actual upper limit of human endurance is, in fact, identifiable — though it offers cold comfort. We reach our absolute limit when the mind can no longer process the weight of what it is experiencing. The associated mental collapse manifests in states such as psychosis and dissociation. Short of these endpoints, the capacity to endure remains intact, whether or not it feels that way. The attachment to the perception of one’s own fragility — the conviction that one is closer to the breaking point than one actually is — is not a harmless misperception. It makes the challenge of acceptance seem unsurvivable when it is not; consequently, it can make the fantasy of force feel like the only remaining option.
Adjustment
Adjustment is defined as the transformation a (relatively) changeable part of reality undergoes in order to reduce tension or resolve a conflict with a (relatively) unchangeable part of reality (in the context of our discussion, the changeable part is one’s mental state, and the fixed part is one’s perceived reality). In other words, adjustment to reality concludes with the complete acceptance of that reality.
Adjustment, being the road to acceptance, deserves a closer look.
The adjustment process is inherently difficult, since, by definition, until it is completed, one experiences ongoing inner conflict and tension. Under normal conditions, the adjustment process spontaneously runs its course to resolution; in pathological states — the adjustment disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) — it fails to resolve, resulting in ongoing mental (and functional) hardship.
The typical, spontaneous resolution of the adjustment process is driven by the automatic decay of the emotional intensity (triggered by a difficult reality) over time. This decay is not a cognitive achievement (i.e., it is not the result of thinking one’s way through the problem or willing oneself to feel differently). It is a biological process, as involuntary as the emotional response that initiated it.
The emotional intensity is the fuel that keeps the inner conflict going. When the intensity decays sufficiently — when the “volume” of the reactive emotions drops below a threshold point — the inner conflict is de-energized to a level that registers as its resolution. That resolution is what the completed adjustment process, and thus acceptance, feels like.
The adjustment period cannot be accelerated or shortened by will alone. There is no way to truncate or fast-forward through the fundamental adjustment period. Adjustment, simply and non-negotiably, requires time (the specific adjustment duration is likely determined by a combination of innate and acquired traits, as it varies considerably between individuals but follows general cultural norms). However, the adjustment period can readily, and far more easily than is generally appreciated, be prolonged.
An adjustment period would be prolonged by processes that interfere with the normal decay of the reactive emotional intensity. The interference may be primarily biological — e.g., persistent substance abuse and possibly biological disorders yet to be characterized — or, alternatively, primarily psychological, e.g., rumination on the various facets of the undesired reality, the nursing of grievances, the search for closure, and the investment in the idea of forcing reality to be different, as discussed above. Each of these can contribute to the emotional intensity and keep it above the threshold at which resolution becomes possible. (For a detailed discussion of how to put this into practice, see The First Order of Business in the Practice section.)
The First Order of Business is perhaps the most directly relevant practice to the adjustment process, but it is not the only one. Given the central role of acceptance, it shouldn’t be surprising that many mindfulness practices aim to support it directly or indirectly by enabling the practitioner to avoid (inadvertently) prolonging the adjustment period.
For example, the emphasis on misery as an optional experience (as discussed in detail in the Pain, Suffering, and Misery chapter): indulging in the misery themes — helplessness and victimization — adds energy to the reactive emotional response and thus prolongs the adjustment period. The misery management tools offered by mindfulness practice are particularly useful here.
Similarly, practices that aim to cultivate patience, tolerance, forgiveness, gratitude, and hope offer protection against prolonging the adjustment period. Each of these practices, in its own way, counteracts the tendency to ruminate on grievances, injustice, revenge, and the urge to force a resolution (as discussed in detail in their respective chapters in the Practice section).
Force, Strength, and Tolerance
As established, the adjustment process normally runs its course spontaneously until the intensity of the reactive emotional response decays below the threshold at which the use of force is appealing. The first priority is to avoid prolonging this process. Optimizing the adjustment process — full investment in promoting acceptance — calls for an additional, volitional step: the rejection of force.
In the context of the pursuit of happiness, acceptance, and the option to use force are, at their root, incompatible orientations toward reality. They cannot coexist in a given mind — the option to use force is an expression of relating to the present as unacceptable. Complete acceptance requires the complete rejection of the use of force as an option, both to change the facts and to change how these facts make one feel.
Holding on to the force option — even as a “what if” fantasy — reveals the persistence of the discrepancy between actual and desired reality that acceptance requires dissolving. The fantasy is not a harmless pressure valve; it is a sustained investment in the conflict.
This is where the Buddhist concepts of non-attachment and commitment find their most precise operational meaning: releasing the grip on the imagined alternative reality — relinquishing the demand that reality be different from what it is. The rejection of force is non-attachment enacted.
Rejecting force typically requires effort — particularly when the emotional response is still intense, when the fight-or-flight reflex is still firing, when the imagined alternative still feels within reach. Consequently, tolerance is not merely supportive of acceptance; it is its prerequisite.
Tolerance is defined as the calm willingness to experience an unpleasant or painful sensation without reacting to it. In the context of our discussion, the willingness to observe without reacting applies to all the undesired elements of a given reality — the initial pain encountered, the unavoidable suffering it causes, as well as the sensations that follow (i.e., the discomfort of the inner conflict, the pull of the fight-or-flight reflex, the seductive pull of force). As such, tolerance can be said to shield the adjustment process from interference, thus allowing it to run its natural course — to acceptance.
[Sidebar: It is worth distinguishing tolerance from two related capacities: patience and endurance. Patience is the calm willingness to postpone gratification. Tolerance is, in a sense, patience applied specifically to pain — the gratification being postponed is relief from it. Both patience and tolerance are volitional — they involve a willingness and a choice. Endurance, by contrast, is not a choice. It is an inherent trait — one’s actual capacity to experience pain before a reaction (such as loss of consciousness, a psychotic break, dissociation, or death) becomes unavoidable. We do not choose our endurance; we discover it.]
Deliberately influencing our environment (whether to reduce our pain and suffering or to pursue happiness effectively) requires us to invest energy. There are two ways we can apply our energy: instantaneously, all at once, and gradually, over time. The former amounts to using energy as a show of force; it works best in the survival arena. The latter amounts to using energy as a show of strength, which works best in the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, the ability to make the distinction between force and strength is of the utmost importance. The distinction hinges on tolerance. Intolerance — the lack of willingness to experience pain without reacting to it — is an invitation to use our energy as a show of force. Conversely, applying energy gradually and deliberately — mindfully — requires tolerance. Only with it can we express our energy as a strength.
Hope deserves particular mention for its capacity to support tolerance. As discussed in the Hope chapter, it is considerably easier to tolerate pain in the present when one is open to the possibility that it will lessen in the future. Hopelessness corrodes tolerance — the conviction that the present will not improve makes the appeal of force harder to resist.
Note that artificially minimizing one’s hardship or suppressing the feelings it elicits (which may still be superior to being mindlessly reactive) does not yield tolerance; one does not tolerate through pretense. Tolerance is generated through an active, conscious choice to observe the painful contents of a present reality without being commandeered by them.
Given its indispensable role in the pursuit of happiness, it should come as no surprise that tolerance is among the highest values in every major human spiritual tradition. Buddhism is especially invested in its cultivation, and many of its practices, directly or indirectly, aspire to support it. Even the basic practice of meditation can be understood as a controlled environment for practicing exactly this — observing discomfort without reacting to it.
(For a detailed discussion, see the Cultivating Patience and Tolerance chapter in the Practice section.)
Beyond Acceptance
Acceptance, as established, is the starting point — not the destination. Once reality has been accepted, a relationship with it must be chosen. The options are peace, struggle, surrender, or truce. Peace is the most desirable outcome; mere acceptance is not a reason for celebration, peace is.
Peace is not just the absence of conflict — it is an energized relationship with the accepted reality, based on finding positive value and potential in it. Finding something valuable in a difficult reality — even just a lesson or a practice opportunity — makes peace possible. Therein lies the close link between gratitude and acceptance, as well as the practical utility of cultivating gratitude. (For a detailed discussion of Gratitude, see the chapter in the Practice section.)
Hope has a similar role: the openness to the possibility that the situation can improve makes it easier to be at peace even with a difficult present reality. Moreover, sustaining peace (even when the associated value is significant and obvious) requires hope. Hope — the conviction that the future has the potential to be better than the present — is necessary to sustain passion. Without hope, passion is replaced by apathy, rendering one’s state of mind incompatible with an effective pursuit of happiness.
Peace with a reality devoid of value or potential for improvement is not an option. (It is, however, possible to maintain equanimity in the face of a valueless, hopeless reality, which I consider a mindful surrender rather than peace.) When peace is not an option, the door of acceptance opens to one of the other three paths: struggle, surrender, and truce; each has its place, and none is inherently superior to the others.
Surrender, (contrary to the shockingly popular, childish misperception), is not the worst possible outcome — far from it. When a rational examination concludes that one cannot influence a situation to bring about a desired change, surrender is the mindful choice. Surrender is invariably bitter (the mantra of surrender is very close, albeit not identical, to the underpinnings of misery), but it is considerably preferable to remaining locked in an open-ended, futile struggle.
The consideration of entering a struggle to change a reality one is not at peace with is not only reasonable, it is necessary. Indeed, the choice to struggle can be made mindfully. Mindful struggle, a priori, rules out the use of force — a mindful struggle is invariably non-violent (in the context of the pursuit of happiness; the rules are different in the survival arena). In addition, struggle can be the right choice only when certain conditions are met: the aspects of reality one aims to change must be clearly identifiable, the means to address it must be available, the endpoint must be defined (i.e., an exit strategy — what does resolution look like?), and the cost of the struggle must be justified by the value of what stands to be gained. When all of these conditions are met, the choice to struggle can be the right choice; otherwise, it risks becoming futile and wasteful.
The last option, truce, is perhaps the most distinctly human option. Entering a truce means choosing, deliberately, to do nothing for a predetermined duration — to remain on the fence, continuing to observe and reflect. When a truce reaches its predetermined endpoint, one is back to square one, needing to choose between peace, struggle, surrender, or an extension of the truce.
The ability to hold a conflict in suspension — to consciously defer resolution to the future — reflects something unique about the human perception of time, a capacity no other species appears to possess (and one whose implications extend well beyond the scope of this chapter).
Acceptance is among the most critical and least understood capacities in the human psychological repertoire. It is critical because there is no alternative — reality, desired or detested, must be accepted before anything can be done about it. It is misunderstood because the challenge it presents is routinely misidentified. The struggle is never really with the facts of reality. It is with the way those facts make us feel. Internalizing this distinction is the first step toward mastering acceptance. The rest, as this chapter has attempted to show, is a matter of tolerance and the willingness to relinquish force as an option. These are not small things, but they can be learned, practiced, and cultivated.
(This chapter is most directly complemented by the “First Order of Business” chapter available in the companion Practice volume.)
REFERENCES
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing.
Bhikkhu Bodhi (Trans.). (2000). The connected discourses of the Buddha: A translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and commitment therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. Guilford Press.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.