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acceptance

Spiral
Spiral

since i am likely about to be kicked off the site let me share my thoughts on acceptNce.  please remember these are my views and your views may differ.  this is not right or wrong.


to me acceptance is saying i am ok with my life.  well i am not ok with mine.  i will not accept my life the way it is.  i believe it can get better.


just think that if doctors accepted people would die from cancer there would be no mircles of people beating it.  in order to change there has to be a certain amount of unacceptance of a problem.  only by not accepting where we are can we move forward. yes unacceptance is not a comfortable place to be.  it is unsettled.


instead of acceptance i like to acknowledge were i am today.   to acknowledge is to say i am not where i want to be right now but i will get there someday.  i hate that word acceptance to me it is like giving up and saying this is as good as it will ever get.  it is not.  there xan slways be improvement.


to me acceptance is like heaping the stigma on. only we are doing it to ourselves. it limits us by stting boundaries to grow within.  there should not be boundaries in recovery.  if we acceot we become comfortable and there is not need to try to improve quality of life.  


most people get very angry at my thoughts on acceptance and are offended.  reread this a few times if you are angry and key in this is my personal opinion and yours may be different.  we all recover differently.    this works for me.


additionally i hate the words mental illness.  again it is a stigma.  mental health challenges is so much more positive.  to me challenge implies you can improve no matter how big or small.  it encourages goal setting and gives us something to word towards.  







 

arfie
arfie
I'm mystified as to why you think you would get kicked off the board for this, Spiral. Whatever your current definition of acceptance, it is an important part of healing. I can't hope to heal a broken leg while I am insisting it is fit for running marathons and/or focusing my healing energies on my bruised arm.

My own definition of acceptance has simplified considerable over the years. These days I define acceptance as, "^It^ is what ^it^ is, whether I understand ^it^ or knot."
Community LeaderLeo
Leo
Spiral, your definition of acceptance is my definition of "Surrender", so it's all semantics in the end. I accept I have problems. I fI don't accept that, I don't get to work fixing them --- denial being the opposite of acceptance. But Al-Anon got me young and trained me well, so that shapes how I define certain terms. Your experience shapes how you define them. Is what it is, whatever "it" is, as Arfie wisely pointed out.
Community LeaderSunCloudJD
SunCloudJD
I have to agree with what the others have written 'for myself' Spiral....

If I don't accept it then I don't have a problem that needs some work in my mind in other words why would anyone work on a problem that they don't accept that they have?.....again just my own thoughts

If I accept that I have a problem that I need to work on this will be the time that I hopefully start to find some sort of healing by doing the work

Mental health stigma can be rough for sure..... Again though I think that people are now speaking out about it.... Addressing it so although it still needs a lot of work it's much better then it was years ago
patti22
patti22
The cruelest words either of my kids said to the other was my daughter saying to her brother "no white cars in the whole world".

Looong story. (And yes, I had to pull the car over to deal with it.)

I've kept the story alive for two reasons. 1) It showed just how important the "long story" is. and 2) Just how POWERFUL words are to hurt or to heal.



As such, on your thread, where you are looking for your own healing...I will say that I find your view on the word "acceptance"....beautiful.

You have a beautiful heart. I hope that you stick around.
SimpsonsOK
SimpsonsOK
What a great post and replies. Yep, define the problem then move into solutions is what works for me. Faces and Voices of Recovery and NAMI have done some great work to alter the stigma, but still a way to go. Hugs to all.
BlueSky
BlueSky
Ditto what Leo said. To me acceptance simply means realizing there is a problem. Phase 2 is your reaction to the problem (example. hurt, anger, denial, or happy, etc). And phase 3 is what are you going to do about it. Phase 4 is the struggle when you work through it. Phase 5 is the new found strength & wisdom you have gained once you've risen above / overcame the problem.
Community Leadermujicaptsd
mujicaptsd
With the raising of the topic of acceptance I can't help thinking of the classes I teach at my community college. 3 of the courses per semester are for nursing students. We study Kubler Ross and her five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.) It's helped me in my personal life to teach that so I can learn to be patient with myself about what it is to make the 5 stage journey. Just speaking for me, I find that's it's not just about grief, it's about life. My own individual experience is that we all make that journey over and over again in our personal growth as we "graduate" to higher insights about ourselves.
Thetis
Thetis
The journey to recovery is very individual and all should feel no shame in carving the path that works best for them. There is no one right way to think about this or to do this. Keep up the good work on your terms and I wish you peace and happiness. All I really know is my own recovery experience so that is all I can write about. For me acceptance in the sense you do not appreciate actually helped me make leaps of progress. I agree with the previous reply that called it "surrender" instead of acceptance. I was stuck for a long time and I just surrendered to the idea that a peaceful and happy existence was not possible for me and my delusions that I had any control over my challenges was simply straight up denial on my part. I let go, I stopped fighting for a perfect existence and settled for smaller more incremental goals. Letting go of that stuff allowed me to focus on steady progress and seeing what was real and true. I kept up the work and a few years later my life is better than I thought was possible. It started with that first step of letting go and having nothing left to lose. Of course. I can only see these things in hindsight. At the time it was devastating. It was rock bottom defeat.
But I had no place to go but up from there. I agree the stigma issue is one that needs to go away. It is not helpful for anyone.
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