The Importance of (Radical) Acceptance

I’m still working my way through a flare of pain that has run for over three weeks now. And I’m not going to lie, my belief in MindBody work has fluctuated somewhat over that time, as I struggle to reconcile the amount of pain I’m getting with any form of optimism for my future. But overall, I’m still upbeat and I am still pushing on with my quest for recovery and wellness.

I listened to a few podcasts yesterday (The Cure for Chronic Pain with Nicole Sachs LCSW) and a common theme through the episodes I selected was Radical Acceptance. As in, accepting what is without a struggle no matter what we face as an obstacle to our happiness.

Initially, it didn’t sit that easily in my mind as a concept and I struggled to wrap my head around it somewhat. But an epiphany in the bath last night led to the fog lifting and a sudden shining clarity about what it was and how it could impact my own life.

After 9 years of chronic pain and a long overdue diagnosis of ADHD in 2020 as the cherry on top of my mental cake, I am not a person who finds being present and ‘in the moment’ particularly easy. My mind likes to take a stroll in as many different directions as it can, as quickly as it can thanks to the ADHD, and as any long-term pain sufferer will confirm, my ability to catastrophize my own pain when it’s in full-on rage mode, is Olympic gold medal standard.

Radical acceptance means I need to learn to accept how I feel without judgment. So if I feel angry at my husband, I need to be okay with that anger and not be ashamed of it. If I feel stressed at work, I need to acknowledge and accept that stress rather than feel my usual need to turn it on myself as a sign I can’t cope. And if I’m in pain, I need to accept the pain and not fight against it. It all sounds so easy when I type it!

What made the most sense to me when I was reflecting on the subject in the bath (a stress-relieving bath no-less) was how each of the examples above stemmed from my own perception of an event and my role within it. I tend to turn most of the negative stuff I feel against myself. If I feel angry, it’s my fault I’m so intolerant. If I feel scared, it’s my fault because I’m weak. If I feel overwhelmed, I’m in the wrong because I should be more capable. Negative self-talk abounds in my head it seems!

By now, you’re probably wondering what Radical Acceptance has to do with chronic pain. It’s a fair question and the answer is thankfully pretty simple.

When we don’t accept who we are and how we feel, we create stress and anxiety, which are negative emotions. Our nervous system isn’t particularly interested in the nuance of how we are feeling or why, so it just registers the inner tension caused by our non-acceptance as fear. And with fear, the nervous system is justified to do what it does best – come to our rescue. It triggers the ‘fight or flight’ reaction and our body reacts accordingly. The ‘fight or flight’ mode kickstarts a chain reaction of bodily changes, the release of hormones, and sparks swelling or contraction, inflammation, pain, etc.

As a real-life example of what I’m saying, I was in a meeting this morning, and I arrived feeling pretty chilled out with no pain. I paid attention as my mood started to shift and my stress levels started to increase. I felt my pulse speed up, my gut tightened, my head started to feel tight and then the abdominal pain started. As my stress increased, so did my pain.

After the meeting, as I clutched my freshly prepared hot water bottle to my already pretty burned and angry-looking abdomen, I reflected on why I felt stressed and it all came down to a lack of acceptance of what is. A difficult situation at work was made more difficult because I didn’t agree with the way it was being handled. I was angry and frustrated and my nervous system registered that as fear. The next logical step from there is the pain.

One thing I have also noticed though, is that sometimes I can get stressed and the pain doesn’t come on. I have big long stretches of pain-free weeks at a time now and there is no way those are weeks-long stretches of stress freedom. So what gives?

As far as I can tell, there is no scientific explanation for this so in the screaming vacuum between what I know and what I experience, I have decided to create my own theory. And I think it’s belter!

I believe that (for me anyway) it’s all about balance. If I am feeling good about myself and my life, if I am enjoying my job, happy in my marriage, and feeling good about who I am and my interaction with the world around me, a bit of stress doesn’t bother my nervous system at all because the volume of negative self-talk is low.

But as soon as the pendulum swings towards my super-power of self-criticism and perceived personal weakness, I get overwhelmed with negative self-talk, and the cracks start to show in how I relate to everything around me. So then when stress crops up, my nervous system goes crazy and raises the FEAR flag.

What I think I’m trying to say here is, it’s all about balance. If my inner pendulum swings towards joy and self-regard, my nervous system seems to chill out. But if it swings the other way and I get all self-loathy and miserable, my nervous system gets all twitchy and sends off fear flares willy-nilly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting to be invited to do a TED talk or write for The Lancet with my theory, but I am becoming more and more confident that it’s what happens to me. And whilst that might not be worthy of the Nobel prize for scientific discovery, it might just be enough to help nudge me into wellness and a life free of pain.

And I would take that over a TED talk on YouTube, any day of the week.

So from today, I am working on acceptance. Acceptance of how I feel, acceptance of stuff that happens around me that pisses me off, and acceptance of my pain. I’m not sure if I can claim any kind of ‘radical’ acceptance just yet but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?