Serenity Equals Acceptance Multiplied by Patience and Perspective

Today has been one of many in a string of very good yet ordinary days for me. The creative writer part of me wants to document these positive experiences because writing is a meaningful practice for me and I miss it. The therapist part of me wants to analyze these experiences to find the pattern for my recent happiness so I can replicate it when times inevitably get tough again. And the sober spiritual part of me wants to share these experiences with whoever ends up reading this, because that is the paradoxical way I get to keep this wisdom that was so freely given to me. So here it is:

This whole “one day at a time” thing really works. Sometimes it feels like I have to hit the pause button every hour and remind myself that worrying intensely about something will have no immediate effect on the outcome, but it will drain me tremendously and make my problem solving skills useless in that moment. Overriding this default panic mode is not the easiest thing to do. But when I am patient with this and keep bringing it up in my mind when I want to rush forward and do my whole Anxiety song and dance instead, it works better and I find it is easier to do. And I think the key to this success I have found is acceptance.

Acceptance is a slippery term; a lot of things masquerade as acceptance when they are not, so it can be difficult to define. I used to think acceptance meant condoning bad behavior or agreeing with a concept because it was expected, like accepting an insincere apology for the sake of moving on. (I can’t be the only one who has done this.) I’ve had real bonding moments with clients talking about the terribly misguided but well meaning things people say to you when a loved one dies like “They’re in a better place now” and “everything happens for a reason.” The strange thing is, I have not only said these things but have also accepted that they do apply to the situation of my mother’s death--only, in both cases, timing is everything. I don’t know that there is a hard and fast formula, but in my experience I have found that this kind of acceptance is a byproduct of patience; it takes time and perspective that are often not accessible in our moments of fresh and deep pain.

I have written about acceptance a lot in past blog posts and I talk about it with almost every client I meet. I think part of this is that acceptance is an ever evolving concept for me.  Another part of it is the “radical acceptance” skill from DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) I am jamming on lately. The radical part of radical acceptance refers to a total mind, body and spiritual approach, but I like that it also has a second, perhaps unintentional meaning, of revolutionary reform. And radical self-acceptance can feel new and scary and exciting, like going against every known instinct to uncover something better and freer. You cannot half-ass acceptance and expect results. It requires us to go all in to feel it and at the same time, has a tendency to sneak up on us.

At any given moment in these string of very good yet ordinary days, I find I am “radically accepting” something (be it traffic, the systemic challenges of working in community mental health, family relationships that are not going as I expected them to or even my own limitations in my abilities).

In each moment, I am determining if I need to accept an unchangeable situation, adjust my thinking patterns and attitudes around it or do nothing. This sounds an awful lot like the Serenity prayer to me; God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

An old timer from an Al-Anon group I used to attend years ago told me that she has played with the terms of the serenity prayer in every different configuration, and they still work. Being the struggling sober special snowflake I was, I became enamored with this idea. (And though I no longer attend Twelve Step meetings, I think it still holds weight.)

It can take courage to accept the things we cannot change. It can take us tapping into our wise minds to create momentum for changing old behaviors. And accepting our human limitations while also being patient with ourselves in working towards goals feels an awful lot like serenity to me.