Acceptance: The healing power of acceptance

Acceptance is sometimes very difficult. Your life may suddenly turn out differently than you expected or wanted, and accepting that can be pretty hard. At the same time, acceptance is an important step in moving forward in life. Because if you accept the situation as it is now, you can think further about changing your circumstances instead of getting stuck in a kind of dissatisfaction feeling.

Acceptance Meaning

Acceptance means accepting something. There are many contexts involving acceptance. For example, when you buy something you accept the price. For example, you might accept an offer on your house.

At the same time, you can also have social acceptance, in which case people accept you as you are and want to make a commitment to you[1].

Social Acceptance

Social acceptance is important for developing friendships and good working relationships. Of course, you can’t get along with everyone, but some level of acceptance certainly helps.

What's good to know, though, is that being yourself ensures that you'll also find people to match. For example, if you are quite unique and this makes you stand out when you are yourself, it need not be a problem for a long time.

This is even better for your personal well-being[2].

Self-Acceptance

An important step for acceptance is to first accept yourself. Accepting yourself often makes you have better psychological well-being, and it can help you solve psychological problems[3].

Self-acceptance also means accepting that you are human and that this includes the possibility of making mistakes. In this way, accepting yourself helps reduce the impact of depressive symptoms and anxiety ( source 3, p. 484).

In addition, self-acceptance helps you feel more confident.

Work Acceptance

How you think about your work affects the quality of the work you produce[4]. Do you accept that your work is the way it is? Or are you dissatisfied with the work you do?

Accepting your work and especially the circle of influence you have at work can do a lot for you. Are you currently unhappy with your work? Then first accept that it is what it is.

Next, explore what you can do at work to make your work more acceptable. Check the factors you can influence and see if you can do something about them.

Relationship Acceptance

If your partner accepts you, it is very pleasant for your relationship. After all, you don't have to pretend to be different than you are.

In addition, it is also good for your partner if you accept your partner as he/she is.

One way to make this easier is through mindfulness. Research shows that the more mindful a person is, the more easily they accept their partner and the better their relationship is[5].

Just like accepting that you yourself are a human being with flaws, you can also accept that your partner is a human being who is not quite perfect. In doing so, you then also remember that you don't have to change that.

Health acceptance

In addition to accepting your own character or traits, you may be dealing with imperfect health. This can also be difficult to accept.

MS, Multiple Sclerosis, for example, is a disease that can have a lot of impact on your life. But research shows that psychological factors affect quality of life more than how far along the disease itself is.

This research shows, among other things, that people who accept their disease have more strategies to solve problems and that people with MS are more likely to avoid situations in which they are bothered by their condition[6].

Acceptance of the disease is also important in other conditions, such as cardiac arrhythmias, to maintain a high sense of quality of life[7].

Acceptance Techniques

There are multiple techniques you can use to accept something, including hypnotherapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and mindfulness acceptance. This can include work, your relationship, illnesses and other things that are helpful to accept.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

Research on therapists shows that acceptance and commitment therapy helps improve your sense of quality of life and makes you happier[8].

This is also a form of therapy used to improve relationships, reduce depression and anxiety[9], and overcome addictions and somatic problems[10]. In addition, it can help with chronic pain. With ACT, this is even more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy[11].

If you are the parent of a child with mental or physical challenges, this therapy can also help make parenting easier and help you feel more optimistic about your child’s future[12].

Do you have physical problems of your own? If so, this form of therapy can also help you deal with them[13].

Acceptance and commitment therapy is based on mindfulness. The idea is that, unfortunately, a normal brain in principle is often negative and encourages psychological suffering. This is because we think in language, and with language we can suddenly think of all kinds of problems and think about solutions to those problems. This can cause you to become completely immersed in your thoughts and not be in the here and now with your attention. If those thoughts are negative, that creates suffering.

There are 6 main principles of this technique namely:

1. Defusion (taking apart)
2. Acceptance
3. Getting in touch with the here and now
4. Observing Yourself
5. Values
6. Committed action (action to achieve goals)

The goal of this therapy is to help you create a rich and meaningful life while also learning to accept the pain that is part of life. It is therefore a form of therapy that does not focus on reducing certain symptoms, but rather on accepting them.

A nice touch, though, is that sometimes those symptoms do suddenly disappear.

For example, defusion helps you detach negative thoughts from yourself. It's just a thought and nothing else. In particular, what this does is turn off your own judgments about your thoughts. This makes you suffer less, because you don't double your suffering by 2x or more by getting all kinds of judgment thoughts about your first thought. Whether that thought was about a fear, yourself, addiction or whatever the problem is that you are dealing with.

You accept that thought, as it were, and then refocus on the here and now.

The therapy form also helps you see how you've been dealing with thoughts or problems you don't want to have up to that point. This is the part where you observe yourself.

In addition, with ACT, you will start thinking for yourself what is important to you in your life. In fact, this can help you determine what you do and do not want to be upset by and when you should or should not take action to do something.

You can then set goals to make your life a happy one[14].

Hypnosis and acceptance

You can also combine this acceptance and commitment therapy very well with hypnosis. In the assignments you can get to observe thoughts and fears, for example, you can also get help to visualize and then change those fears, for example.

This is also something you often do as a hypnotherapist to help people. By first putting people into a state of hypnosis, they can more easily follow your suggestions —such as visualizations—to reduce anxiety or other mental issues.

In addition, self-hypnosis can also be used very well to promote mindfulness and acceptance to reduce stress in daily life. In a study involving people around 20 years old, it was found that if the subjects listened to an audio recording daily for 8 weeks for self-hypnosis and mindfulness it helped to reduce stress and promote mindfulness[15].

Hypnotherapy combined with acceptance therapies are also used to help people with PTSD [16]. Mindfulness and ACT are then combined with hypnosis to make it easier for the person suffering from PTSD to carry out the tasks. The hypnotic state ensures that his/her unconscious does not start blocking when things become more difficult.

Hypnosis in general is a state that promotes acceptance. For example, you are more open to suggestions from your therapist. This is why, for example, it can be helpful for people with a lot of stress and beliefs that nothing can help them to see a hypnotherapist. This is because it puts you in a state that makes you more likely to accept that you too can get help.

Want to learn more about hypnosis? Sign up for the free online masterclass.

Or join our seminars or training programs. It’s a great way to immediately learn techniques you can use to help yourself and others. Ideal if you work with people or want to become a coach.

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