Radical Acceptance

‘By refusing to accept the misery that is part of climbing out of hell, you fall back into hell.’ Marsha Leneham

Radical acceptance emphasises the importance of facing our present condition in all of its awful implications. Statements such as ‘This isn’t fair,’ ‘I don’t deserve this,’ ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,’ however true, only heighten our suffering. To use a mundane example, consider being stuck in traffic, a situation where you have little control. It’s tempting to berate yourself for not leaving earlier, for living in a congested city, or to hate the person who’s causing the traffic because he didn’t check his petrol gauge before leaving home. In these moments, we can either get worked up into a frenzy over the injustice of it all – or take a deep breath and accept that it is what it is, and that it’s beyond our control.

Depression is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future, and joy is found living in the present.’

Lisa Feldman Barrett, who advises people to get into the ‘granularity’ of their emotions. If there’s something that’s making you sad, try to go even deeper in your exploration and description. Ask yourself whether it’s just sadness, or is it actually despair, grief, misery, agony, rejection, insecurity, sorrow or defeat? Is it just anger? Or is it resentment, rage, irritation, jealousy, annoyance or bitterness?

Yet, the distinction between exposure and meditation might be thin. A meditation called maranasati (death awareness) encourages individuals to frequently think about their own mortality

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