Acceptance: Definition, Theory, & Tips

There are many aspects of life that we could simply “accept” – financial circumstances, unhealthy relationships, unfulfilling jobs, etc. But, in psychology, this isn’t really what we mean by acceptance.
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Psychological acceptance
Psychological acceptance generally refers more specifically to our present-moment experience of thoughts and feelings. We might accept our anger, guilt, frustration, sadness, anxiety, shame, or other negative emotions. We might also accept the thoughts that contribute to these emotions. For example, if we feel like we performed poorly at a task, those thoughts might contribute to anxiety or self-loathing. But if we accepted the thoughts, those emotions would ease.

Acceptance does not mean that we let people treat us poorly or take advantage of us. It just means that we don’t get stuck in the thoughts and emotions surrounding our experiences. So rather than accepting that we’re being treated poorly, we might accept, and therefore be able to let go of feeling angry or sad about being treated poorly. We allow these emotions to exist and don’t just ourselves for them.

The distinction between accepting circumstances and emotions is an important one that we will discuss further below, as we can be an accepting person while still taking action to change our life circumstances.

One of the key ideas underlying acceptance in psychology is that difficult emotions are an inescapable part of life: at different times we will find ourselves sad, angry, disappointed, bored, frustrated, grieving, heartbroken – the list goes on. No one, even the most even-keeled individual, is free of these emotions. When these emotions inevitably do arise, there are two ways that we can react: resistance or acceptance. For many of us, resistance is our default reaction. After all, these emotions are not necessarily “pleasant” to experience, and thus we consciously or, more often, unconsciously, try to avoid or resist them. For example, we might watch TV, scroll through social media, eat, drink, or sleep to distract ourselves from these unpleasant feelings.

Psychologists have found that trying to resist or avoid certain difficult experiences can cause further psychological harm (Hayes et al., 2006). Sleeplessness is a good example of this phenomenon – have you ever been lying in bed, unable to fall asleep, getting increasingly agitated about your inability to fall asleep? The irony, of course, is that resisting sleeplessness is an active process that further prevents sleep. 

The alternative to resisting our experience is acceptance: to acknowledge the difficult feelings and accompanying thoughts and sit with them instead of trying to run away from them. In the sleeplessness example, to practice acceptance, you might instead acknowledge that you are feeling restless, worried, or anxious – and allow yourself to feel that way. Accept that you are not falling asleep, and simply observe your experience. Letting go mentally can calm the system and, in turn, allow you to fall asleep. This is just one example of how acceptance might shift your daily life.

Tara Brach emphasizes the importance of one’s relationship with oneself, and how fully accepting oneself is required to live life at peace. She writes, “believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering” (2004). Your experience of yourself consists largely of your emotions, thoughts, and actions, and so learning to accept these (even when they seem difficult or undesirable) is a necessary step towards full self-acceptance.

In working towards self-acceptance, it can be helpful to reflect on your habitual attitude towards yourself. Do you ever speak harshly to yourself about a perceived mistake you made or an embarrassing thing you said? Are you ever feeling overwhelmed with emotion, and on top of everything, frustrated with yourself for feeling this way? How might you be able to take a more understanding and gentle attitude towards yourself?

The psychological definition of acceptance presented at the beginning of this article comes from the psychologist who designed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the early 1980s, Steven Hayes. This type of therapy is framed around the idea of acceptance coupled with a commitment to action that improves one’s life (Kashdan & Ciarrochi, 2013). ACT has been successfully used for a broad range of psychological issues, such as stress, anxiety, and depression (Hayes et al., 2004).

At first glance, the two concepts in acceptance and commitment therapy might seem at odds. If you “accept” your current state, why would you work to improve your life? Eminent psychologist and one of the founders of the humanistic psychology movement Carl Rogers encapsulated this tension when he wrote, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” (1995). Here Rogers highlights the power of acceptance as a necessary foundation for personal growth – it is difficult to enact positive growth from a place of self-rejection.

Acceptance is closely linked with the concept of mindfulness. In order to accept one’s circumstances, feelings, and thoughts, one must be fully aware of them. We are often on auto-pilot, living life while not being fully aware of our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Mindfulness allows us to pause, take a step back, and notice our experience. Mindfulness is often described as “non-judgmental awareness,” pointing to the two key ideas inherent in the concept. “Awareness” refers to the act of paying attention to our experience, while “non-judgmental” encapsulates the idea of acceptance that we are discussing. If you accept your thoughts and feelings, you are not judging them or yourself for having them.

Before trying it out, it can be hard to grasp how simply being aware and accepting of negative feelings helps us. Philosopher Alan Watts, most well-known as a proponent of Eastern philosophy in the West, explains this phenomenon in his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951).

1. Cultivate acceptance by noticing your resistance.
How do you tend to resist your experience? Do you snack to stave off boredom, or binge TV when you are sad? Most of the ways we resist our experiences are unconscious – we do not necessarily put together the pieces and understand why we do certain things at certain times. In this way, resistance has become habitual. The first step towards changing any habit is simply becoming aware of its existence.

2. Cultivate acceptance by questioning your patterns.
Once you have started to notice when and how you tend to resist your experience, you might be able to dig a little deeper to consider why these patterns might exist. When you were sad or angry as a child, how did the adults in your life react? Did they allow you to work through these emotions, or did they (perhaps with the best intentions) tell you to put on a brave face or stop throwing a tantrum? Do you think these experiences might have influenced the way you process emotions today? It might be helpful to write out some of these reflections to remind yourself of your habitual patterns. It can also be a good opportunity for self-acceptance in that you can see that formative experiences, outside of your control, may have shaped your current patterns. The good news is that any pattern is open to change, as long as you are aware of it. 

3. Cultivate acceptance by being mindful.
So how can we even become aware of our habitual patterns? As we saw above, mindfulness involves both awareness and acceptance of our experience. A traditional method of practicing mindfulness is through meditation, which involves dedicating a period of time to simply observing experience nonjudgmentally. However, you can bring mindful moments into your everyday life even without meditating.

To give an example of some of these techniques in practice, I’ll share an example of how I try to work mindfulness and acceptance into my own life. Sometimes I find myself, entirely on auto-pilot, opening up different apps on my phone – scrolling through one social media site, then another, then maybe opening up the first one again, in a loop until I realize it’s been 30 minutes (or more). When I find myself in this cycle, I can pause, take a step back, and reflect – what am I feeling right now? Am I trying to distract myself from or avoid something? Perhaps I am procrastinating from a task that I expect is going to be difficult, or I feel bored. What would happen if, instead of avoiding these current or expected experiences, I fully recognized and embraced them as part of life?

4. Cultivate acceptance by thinking of your inner child.
We are our own harshest critics. Accepting ourselves can be difficult because we are most likely so used to judging ourselves for thinking, feeling, and acting certain ways. It is rare that you would judge a loved one as harshly as you judge yourself – you are likely used to being more accepting of others than of yourself. While mindfulness allows us to step back and take a more objective view of ourselves, it may take a lot of practice to reach this stage. One helpful technique in the meantime is to think about yourself as a child. This can help remind us of our most innocent and vulnerable selves, which may make it easier to be gentle and understanding when our experience is difficult. 

5. Cultivate acceptance through practice.
Acceptance is just like any other skill: it takes practice. People who are accepting of themselves and others have made acceptance a default mental habit by continuously choosing a more accepting mindset over and over again. After a while, these repeated mental choices become habitual and natural and do not require as much effort. Next time you find yourself struggling with difficult emotions, try to use this as an opportunity to practice acceptance. “Okay, I’m feeling frustrated right now. Frustration is a perfectly common and normal emotion, and it’s okay for me to feel this way.” See how this thought pattern might shift the way you are feeling.

Oftentimes, especially in romantic relationships, we try to change people into someone else. But we can actually improve our relationships by accepting people as they are. Again, that doesn’t mean that we should tolerate mistreatment—we might separate ourselves from these people if they are doing us harm. It just means that there is a lot less internal resistance (inside us) and external resistance (from the other person) when we accept who they are at the core.

Accepting people for who they are can also help them feel more supported by us and connected to us. Acceptance and judgment are two sides of one spectrum, and it’s better for everyone if we’re not judging people.

Accepting people for who they are is often more difficult when they are different from us. Maybe they believe in a different god, are part of a different political party, or follow a different diet. If we’re finding people’s differences hard to accept, we might ask ourselves why. Why would someone else’s beliefs affect you? Often if we dig deep and look at ourselves honestly, we’ll find that our lack of acceptance of people who are different than us has more to do with us than them. Maybe we feel scared, angry, or uncertain about those beliefs. But, accepting others’ differences can help us work through and get past all those negative emotions.

Have you ever felt like someone didn’t accept you? It feels terrible, right? Whether they look at you with cocked eyes, tell you that something about you is “wrong”, or exclude you, the result is the same—you don’t feel accepted. ​

Not feeling accepted can lead to a range of issues such as poor self-esteem, shame, and self-doubt.  That’s because social cues are so important to us humans. Belonging is essential for our well-being and so we are constantly searching for information that can help us connect with others more easily. So being accepted helps us feel safe and like we belong.

Here are a few more articles that may help you change your thought patterns and increase acceptance.

Want to keep learning more? Check out these books:

• ​accept. 2021. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accept​
• Brach, T. (2004). Radical acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha. Bantam.
• Dimeff, L., & Linehan, M. M. (2001). Dialectical behavior therapy in a nutshell. The California Psychologist, 34(3), 10-13.
• Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25.
• Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., Bunting, K., Twohig, M., & Wilson, K. G. (2004). What is acceptance and commitment therapy?. In A practical guide to acceptance and commitment therapy (pp. 3-29). Springer, Boston, MA.
• Kashdan, T. B., & Ciarrochi, J. V. (Eds.). (2013). Mindfulness, acceptance, and positive psychology: The seven foundations of well-being. New Harbinger Publications.
• Rogers, C. R. (1995). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Watts, A. (1951). The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. Vintage.