 This week on the anxious truth, we're talking about acceptance. Specifically, we're talking about the fact that acceptance is an action, not a feeling. So let's get to it. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the anxious truth. This is episode number 288 of the podcast. We are recording in late March of 2024 in case you were listening from the future. I am Drew Lincellata. I'm creator and host of the anxious truth. This is the podcast and the YouTube channel where we talk about all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. So if you are struggling with things like panic attacks or garfobia or OCD or health anxiety, then this is the place for you. And if you've just stumbled upon the podcast or the channel today, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope you find what we're doing here helpful in some way. And of course, if you are a returning listener or returning viewer, welcome back. I'm always glad that you choose to spend your time with me and I hope that I'm still being useful for you in some way. So today we're going to talk about acceptance because accepting anxiety is a theme that is woven through so many of the conversations that we have in this community here on this podcast, on the disordered podcast that I do with Josh Fletcher. It's everywhere. If you started with Dr. Claire Weeks, if that was your introduction to anxiety and anxiety recovery, you know that she wrote extensively using the words acceptance. We even have something now called acceptance and commitment therapy. So accept, accept, accept, it's all over the place. And it is a word that so many people in our community really struggle with because they struggle to really conceptualize what acceptance actually is in the context of anxiety and anxiety recovery. So we're going to dispel one little myth today and that is that acceptance is an action. It's not a feeling or a state of being. And I will get into that before we do just a quick reminder that the anxious truth is more than just this YouTube video or this podcast episode. There's a ton of other resources on my website at the anxious truth.com. There's a link to the other podcast I do called disordered, which I do with UK psychoanalyst Josh Fletcher, who's also a friend of mine. They're the books that I've written. There are courses and workshops. There's all of my social media. It's all there. So go check out the anxious truth.com. All the goodies are there. Avail yourself of all of them. Most of them are free. Even the ones that carry a cost are at a very low cost. And I'm told that the information is useful. I'd like to believe it is to go take advantage of all of it right there again. That's on my website at the anxious truth.com. And if you're, by the way, watching this as a YouTube video and you're kind of digging it, you keep coming back for these, hit the subscribe button and maybe like the video. Just saying. Thank you very much. So anyway, let's talk about the idea that acceptance is not a feeling. Acceptance is not a thing that you, a state of feeling or an emotional state that you achieve. I've achieved a state of acceptance toward my anxiety. That's not the way this really works. And this often, often people have acceptance backwards, like which comes first, acceptance or not being afraid. And I get asked all the time, do I have to stop being afraid of my anxiety to truly accept it? Because people hear that you have to accept in order to get better. So therefore they start to freak out that, well, how can I accept it because I'm really afraid of it, right? So they'll ask, do I have to stop being afraid of this in order to say that I'm truly accepting because I think I truly need to accept to get better. So there's a whole lot of like sort of stress and anxiety over the anxiety over this concept. So let's clarify this. It's a good question. Do I have to stop being afraid of my anxiety before I will truly accept it? But really that indicates a backwards interpretation of what acceptance is. So let's get to that. Acceptance is not finding a way to turn off your fear or even to turn it down. That's not a thing. You may be working overtime to try and find a way to feel less afraid of your anxious sensations or anxious thoughts or just the state of anxiety or fear itself. Acceptance and you can't do that. So acceptance has nothing to do with finding a way to turn off your fear magically. Acceptance isn't figuring out some sort of special method for hating your anxiety any less. You are totally allowed to hate it as much as you want. I hated my anxiety every minute of my recovery. That never really changed. Hell, I hate anxiety now. I don't want to feel it. I might because I'm a human being, even though I'm fully recovered. But I still don't like it. You're allowed to hate it. So don't worry that you have to somehow find a way to stop hating your anxiety so that you can accept it. That's not the way this works. And acceptance is not about creating sort of a new state of being or feeling from like a mental, an emotional or even a physical standpoint. That's not what acceptance is. Acceptance is in a state you arrive in. Acceptance in our context is an action. Acceptance is an action. I cannot say that enough. I'm going to say it a lot in this episode. Acceptance is a precursor to less fear. Acceptance is not the result of less fear. So remember, we started this with the question, do I have to lose my fear or not be afraid of anxiety so I can accept it? No, backwards. Acceptance is a precursor to less fear. Acceptance is not the result of less fear. That's why I'm saying acceptance is an action and not a result. That's the title of this episode. This is critical because if you try to do it the other way around, first, I have to be less afraid so I can accept. You wind up getting stuck and you wind up like doubting your ability to recover and you start to get really down on yourself and you start to question whether or not you're strong enough or if your anxiety is special or weak. It can really lead you into like that dark corner where you feel like, I don't know, I'm listening to these podcast episodes. I'm reading books. I'm watching YouTube videos. I'm taking courses. I'm working with a therapist, whatever it is, and I can't seem to get the job done. Being stuck because you have acceptance and fear backwards in your mind, which is really common, by the way, if you're doing that, it's okay. That's why I'm making this episode today. Getting stuck like that looks a lot like this. Tell me if these sound familiar to you. I know I have to accept anxiety to recover, but there is no way I can accept something like this. Very common statement. Another one is, how am I supposed to accept a thing that I hate so much? I don't want to accept this. I don't accept this. I hate it, and I want it gone right now. And another way that this might manifest or show itself is accepting something so scary is impossible. I must be missing a step somewhere, or Drew, you must have this wrong, or I must be doing something wrong because accepting something this scary and disturbing is impossible. That's ridiculous. In all of those cases, that is acceptance being viewed as a change in feeling. Someone hating anxiety a little less. Someone fearing it less. Someone finding a way to somehow become like ambivalent toward anxiety and the symptoms that come with it and the scary thoughts come with it through the use of words, a lot of words, self-talk, talking, discussing, and thinking. Like that's not what that is. So people who will say they get stuck and they make those sort of statements like the ones I just put out there are stuck because they are mistaking what acceptance is. Acceptance is not the result of a mindset, acceptance, I'm going to leave that in there and I'm going to edit that. Acceptance is not the result of a mindset shift or some sort of like Eureka moment that you have where you suddenly come into this sort of Zen state and you're feeling relaxed and now you're totally ready to allow like terrifying symptoms, sensations, and thoughts to appear. Like if you're thinking that's what acceptance is supposed to look like, maybe even just a little you're thinking that, then you're going to wind up, there's a high probability you're going to wind up in that stuck situation that I just described. Like, are you thinking that? Are you thinking that acceptance means that somehow you adopt some new sort of mindset and then you suddenly feel different about your anxiety? Doesn't work that way. Acceptance, again, is an action. And it's not only an action, this action, I know we were just talking about like, well, we might conceptualize acceptance as like, oh, I've reached an accepting state of anxiety and like you're all Zen and calm and peaceful or at least calmer, but really acceptance isn't a state. It's an action and it's actually an action that looks a whole lot more like screaming, crying, throwing up, you know, the big mean that was going around not too long ago. Then it does look like some sort of evolved peaceful, mysticism, mystic based like enlightened state where you're suddenly like okay with anxiety and fear. Like that's not what it is. Like acceptance is an action. It's a thing that we do and sometimes it's pretty freaking ugly, right? So it's acting as if you've achieved some kind of peace with your anxiety, even when you 100% clearly have not achieved any peace with it. So acceptance in some ways, you can think of it as faking it, right? There is a little bit of that for sure. Josh and I talked about undisorder, like the idea of fake it till you make it is kind of baked into this process. Hate it, that's not the whole story. It's a gross oversimplification, but it kind of is. So acceptance is ugly looking. Like it's acting, even though you think you shouldn't act. It's acting even acting like you accept even well before you accept. I'm not accepting this at all, but I'm gonna have to pretend that I am and let's see what happens. Let me give you some examples what I think accepting really actually looks like. Accepting anxiety looks like sort of standing firm, right? And in a kind compassionate way, of course. Firm doesn't mean you're beating up on yourself and like, oh, I'm gonna be a warrior and slay this now. It's not that. Acceptance is standing firm in a kind self-compassionate kind of way for just five more minutes before you run from that panic attack that you're having right now. That's acceptance. That's an act of acceptance. That's acceptance in action. Acceptance is resisting the urge to skip like that birthday party because your anxiety is telling you that you won't be able to handle that if you go to it. Acceptance is getting out of bed, putting your feet on the floor, even after a sleepless night to do your day as best you can even though your anxious brain is screaming that you're too sleep deprived. That's dangerous and it means you're gonna be anxious so much, so long all day today that you can't possibly handle it, but you go and do it anyway. That's what acceptance looks like. Acceptance looks like doing that really scary exposure. Even when you're afraid to do it and you would literally rather do anything else in the world than that exposure, but you do it. That's what acceptance looks like. That is an act of acceptance. Acceptance is sometimes like admitting to yourself that you'd rather lie about having a headache than go meet your friend for lunch after an hour, right? So for an hour, because you might be too anxious. That's an act of acceptance also. So can you see where these examples are leading us? See where this is going? I'm not describing a state of being. I'm not describing somehow a shift in the way I feel. I'm describing sort of like, I'm not describing a conclusion that you reach after plumbing the depths of your soul for answers here. I'm talking about things that we do, not things that we think or feel. Like acceptance is an action, it's a verb, it's a thing we do, it's an activity, it's a behavior. So then let's revisit the original question that we kind of started this episode with, which is do I have to lose the fear of anxiety before I'm truly accepting it and therefore can get better? And the answer to that is no, that's not how it works. If you actually want to lose your fear of your anxiety, which is more clearly, if you want to learn through experience that you don't have to fear it or avoid it nearly as much as you have been for so long, then you must engage in acts of acceptance first, even when that looks and feels nothing like you think it's supposed to look and feel. You do not lose the fear so that you gain acceptance, you accept and engage in actions of acceptance in order to lose the fear over time. See how that works? Are you still confused? Because I know this is really kind of, so much of this is very subtle and I talk about how it's not a mindset shift, but there is so much nuance here that sometimes it's a framing thing and you may have to hear these things again and again in so many different ways. So hopefully this one is resonating a little bit, but if you're still confused, let me offer you something simple that I've talked about quite often on the podcast and in other areas on social media, which is how about just reframing acceptance? Think of acceptance as non-resistance, right? I talk about it quite often in other areas and when I do, it seems to ring a bell for a lot of people, so I'll throw it out there. What if you just look at acceptance, forget the word acceptance, what if you say non-resistance? Because all of the things that I just described, this is what acceptance looks like, those are acts of non-resistance, that's the not fighting. Those are acts of acceptance. So when you drop the resistance, you are acting in the spirit of acceptance. So why would you drop your resistance? This gets kind of circular because people will like, I can't possibly accept something that's so scary that I hate so much. Well, people will then say, why would I drop my resistance? Why would I stop fighting? That's not right. I'm an anxiety warrior, right? Like I'm gonna win this war, I'm never given up, don't tell me to give up, that's not what I'm saying. Of course you're gonna win the war. If I did not believe you would win the war and I use the word war in air quotes, I wouldn't be looking at the stupid camera, talking it to the stupid microphone every other week and doing as much of this content production as I do. I believe you will win the war. I know you will win the war, but you won't win it by just frantically swinging your sword at anxiety every time it appears in a furious way, in a frantic way until you're literally exhausted because you're trying to make some sort of valiant effort to smash it or slay it or keep it away from you or banish it. Like I'm guessing that you've been either trying to do that or trying to find some sort of way to do that for quite some time and you have failed. That's not really working. That's not a sustainable way to manage this problem or overcome this problem, at least in my worldview and in most cases if you're listening to this, it's because you've been trying to do that and you haven't been able to do it. You will win this war, again air quotes, if you're watching a video, when you act like a student instead of a soldier, right? So dropping resistance, which we're calling acceptance, we're saying that the one and the same thing is not about deciding to be crippled for anxiety like, okay, guess I'll just, Drew just says I have to accept it. Like, so I'll just be crippled by anxiety for the rest of my life. That's not at all. Dropping the resistance is about admitting that fighting isn't really working and at least opening yourself up to the possibility that like, well, since it's not working anyway, like maybe I can actually learn something from those experiences if I allow them and open myself up to the possibility that they will teach me something about how capable I am of handling those things. Like maybe if I stop fighting and look at these as learning experiences, and by the way, I am not trying to invalidate how difficult that is. It's very, very difficult to do this because there's a big element of courage there. And that is like pointing yourself in a direction that previously you may have thought, that's insane. Like allow it, accept it, look it as a classroom. Is this guy insane? But if the fighting it and trying to find ways to manage it symptom by symptom and thought by thought and trigger by trigger and trying to manage your body at the micro level to keep it from never happening, if that's not working for you and you're here, then I believe that you might win the war that you've been trying so hard to win when you decide to act like a student instead of a soldier. Like let me at least open myself up to the possibility that if I don't fight it, I haven't been saving myself anyway. That's a lie. All the tapping and the running and the safe people and the ice packs and the avoidance and the staying home and all of those things have never saved me anyway because they didn't actually stop anything bad from happening. So if I let those experiences happen and I start to drop my resistance a little at a time, maybe I'll start to learn that I can actually handle that. And yes, one of the principles that's baked into this approach to anxiety recovery is that we actually can handle that. We don't have to love it. We can still be afraid of it. Remember all the stuff that I talked about at first like acceptance isn't suddenly deciding that you don't hate it anymore. You do hate it and it's okay to hate it. Totally okay to hate it. But it's about point opening yourself up to the possibility that like if I drop my resistance and I allow these things and I treat them as classrooms and copper is clearly agreeing with me that maybe I can learn that like the fight is pointless and maybe anxiety and symptoms and scary thoughts and panic aren't the monsters that I think have been attacking me. Maybe I can actually learn something from them if I allow. So if you are running yourself ragged because you're trying to find a way to change how you feel so that you can therefore accept and then recover you can stop doing that. Flip it. Consider that you have to like engage in acts of acceptance so that you can learn that you don't have to be so afraid. Then when you get there, engage in active acceptance allow them to teach you that you don't have to be so afraid in avoidance then you're looking recovery square in the face. So don't be freaked out because you can't magically find a way to feel some level of acceptance and therefore you think you'll never recover. You might have it backwards. First we act like we accept even when we don't we learn from that and over time that's when we move toward that recovered state that we all want so badly. Learning that it is safe to allow anxiety and then not seeing it as a horrible nightmare that must be avoided at all costs is a result of adopting an attitude of acceptance which is really non-resistance. Accept first, do acceptance feel different later? Do I have to stop fearing anxiety so that I can accept it so that I can recover? No. First you engage in the acts of acceptance and then you can learn that you don't have to fear it so much and then you move toward recovery. That's how this works. There you go. I don't know how long I've been talking now because I'm not watching the clock but I'm gonna wrap up this episode that is episode 288 of the Anxious Truth in the books. If you have questions or comments on this and you're watching on YouTube, of course comment on the video. In fact, maybe like the video and maybe subscribe to the channel. And of course, if you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify and have a second, maybe leave a five star rating for the podcast and then maybe take a second and even write a nice review if you really like podcasts because it helps me out and it also helps other people get the help that they need. I always appreciate that. I'm gonna wrap it up here. I'm just gonna remind you all of the stuff we talked about today always happens in tiny steps incrementally and it's okay to take small steps. It really is okay to do that. You don't have to power through this whole thing all at one time. Even the way I talked about acceptance today is not something that you just change overnight and suddenly start doing scary things willingly every single day to the best, at the highest level, that doesn't work that way. Just try to point yourself in the direction of acceptance, dropping the resistance, little steps at a time they all add up, they all matter. They will get you there in the end. I know you can do it. I hope this has been helpful. I will see you in the next episode.