Resistance and Acceptance
“The suffering itself is not so bad; it’s the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.”
It’s natural to resist unpleasant emotions. However, the mistake many people make is thinking that resistance will eliminate pain. In fact, while resistance—whether through avoidance or denial—may offer temporary relief, it tends to worsen things in the long run. By trying to escape our pain, we only intensify it. As psychologists and researchers such as Brené Brown note, we cannot selectively numb emotions. In trying to avoid negative feelings, we also numb positive emotions. The equation that most self-compassion researchers use to explain this is: Pain x Resistance = Suffering. Pain is a part of life, but suffering is optional. Most of the “pain” we experience is, in fact, suffering that we’ve created by resisting our emotions. As Christopher Germer, another self-compassion expert, says, “When you resist something, it goes to the basement and lifts weights!” Once we realize that resistance isn’t helping, we can begin cultivating acceptance.
At the heart of self-compassion is acceptance—allowing pain instead of fighting it. Acceptance is about being present with discomfort without trying to reduce or eliminate it immediately. Interestingly, accepting our feelings—without attempting to change them—often leads to the most effective and long-term relief. True acceptance isn’t about trying to reduce anxiety; rather, it’s about embracing anxiety as part of the process.
Listen to Kristin Neff’s brief description of the relationship between self-compassion and acceptance of pain (Kristin Neff, 2021):
According to practitioners, there are several stages that people typically go through as they move toward acceptance, though they do not always happen in a linear order:
1. Resisting/Aversion: The instinctive reaction to avoid or remove the uncomfortable feeling.
2. Exploring/Curiosity: Turning toward discomfort with interest and learning from it.
3. Tolerating: Enduring the pain, though still wishing it would go away.
4. Allowing: Letting the emotions come and go.
5. Befriending: Embracing the value in all experiences and seeing emotions as part of who we are.
In practicing self-compassion, try to notice when you’re resisting emotions and experiment with allowing them to exist without judgment or avoidance (learn more about this in the Mindfulness module.