Resistance and Acceptance

It makes sense that we resist difficult emotions and experiences. There are certain things we don’t want to feel! However, the mistake that almost everyone makes is thinking that resisting is the best way to get rid of the pain. Part of the reason for this is that resistance (including in the forms of avoidance and denial) often feels successful in the short term. The truth is that resisting pain and negative emotion typically makes things worse in the long run, not better. In trying to rid ourselves of it, we create more. What we resist, persists. Psychologists and researchers who study emotion (like well-known author Brené Brown) explain that we cannot selectively numb emotions. We cannot choose which ones we want to feel and which ones we’d rather dismiss. In trying to numb negative emotions, we numb positive ones, too, and end up feeling them less. The most common way that self-compassion researchers conceptualize the role of resistance is that Pain x Resistance = Suffering. The idea is that pain is unavoidable; it is part of the nature of life. However, suffering is optional. This is great news, because most of the ‘pain’ in our lives is actually suffering, which we’ve invited in by not coping with our pain in the most effective ways. Christopher Germer (another leading researcher in self-compassion) says that “when you resist something, it goes to the basement and lifts weights!” Once we realize that resistance isn’t helping, but really hurting us, we can begin to cultivate acceptance.

 At the heart of self-compassion is acceptance. Acceptance is the opposite of resistance. It is allowing pain instead of hating it or pushing it away. Our favorite quip that goes along with acceptance says what we feel, we can heal. Acceptance (like mindfulness) has everything to do with the present moment, and change naturally follows acceptance. When we have fear/anxiety/pain and we don’t have the ultimate goal of reducing it (in other words, when we are willing to accept it), this leads to the most effective and long-term reduction of the pain! Saying, “I am practicing acceptance in order to reduce anxiety” is not true acceptance!

Many practitioners outline stages of acceptance that many people pass through. Although these stages are gradual, they do not need to be experienced in this order. It is also important to note that every person will come to acceptance in their own individual way and timing.:

1. Resisting/aversion: instinctive resistance, trying to figure out how to remove the feeling, rumination

2. Exploring/curiosity: turning toward discomfort with interest and getting to know it

3. Tolerating: enduring, but still wishing it would go away

4. Allowing: letting tough feelings come and go

5. Befriending: seeing the value in all experience, letting the emotion be at home in you; if there is trauma involved, you may never get to this stage, and that requires acceptance, too

In your efforts to practice self-compassion, see if you can notice when you are resisting certain emotions, and experiment with ways to make room for them and even befriend them if possible (learn more about this in the Mindfulness module, Mindfulness of Emotions section).