Radical Acceptance—What It Is, and How It Can Help Our Parenting

19:35Amy Wilson:It's the opposite of that. It's the opposite of that. What does it really mean that I married a criminal who I thought was a good person, but really has been rubbing banks the whole time? Right. Here I am. It's also not about excusing bad behavior. Like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? He robs banks. What am I supposed to do about it? You know, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean I have to ignore all the suffering in the world because there's nothing that anybody can do about anything. It doesn't mean that your narcissist mother won't bother you the next time you see her at Christmas.

20:09It's just that you will be less surprised by it.

20:11Amy Wilson:Yeah, I mean, that I think is a lesson that I've learned again and again in my life that I call it Drunk Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving. That may not be the best example, and I don't mean it to be flipped. But if you invite Drunk Uncle Bob to Thanksgiving, you're going to have drunk uncle Bob at Thanksgiving. You're never going to get the right version of him. The good version. I had somebody once say talking about their relationship with their mom. I called my mom and I just didn't get the mom I needed. And that was just one day. Like I think a decent mom who you were looking for at a boy and they gave you get your act together.

20:48Amy Wilson:That happens in relationships all the time, but just being able to say the scary thing out loud. and then sit with the feelings. It's so hard to do. I guess your whole brain and nervous system is designed to protect you from pain and harm. Yeah. And it starts by telling the truth. So there are two steps to radical acceptance. And we've talked a lot about the first component, which is, these are Tara Brock's definitions. The first step is mindfulness. That she says you can't honestly accept an experience unless you see clearly what you're accepting. So you sit with it. You hold it. It's time for me to stop denying it.

21:27My husband robs banks, right? And this is the reality. He's in jail and I don't have the money to bail him out. This is where I am at. You feel that fear. You feel that shakiness. You don't try to paper it over. You don't try to make sure nobody at school pick up knows you're sad. Like you don't immediately rush to that. You sit with this moment of mindfulness, this sacred pause, she calls it. I like that. And then the second step, she calls these the wings because she is very new age. Like your one wing is mindfulness and your other wing is compassion. So here I am. I'm feeling really frightened that I might basically be a single parent now.

22:06What am I going to do? I feel so scared. And then you meet that moment with compassion. I'm going to quote some Rumi. I know you like Rumi, the poet. Oh, Rumi. Rumi says, keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you. So that's the second step. Like, wow, I am really wounded right here. And then keep your gaze there. Don't look away. Don't deny, minimize, tell yourself you don't have a right to feel that way. You stay with it.

22:30Amy Wilson:I think sometimes, is this right? I'm just literally thinking out loud that sometimes the bigger wounds are easier to do this with. It's the smaller wounds and the more shameful wounds that are harder to do this with. I think sometimes my husband died, for example, is a wound where like your community surrounds you and supports you, you know? Paul Simon, you know, that's what is the song about? Everybody sees the hole in your heart. Everybody sees you're blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow. Graceland. It's in Graceland. Yes. And he says losing love is like a window in your heart. Everyone sees it.

23:06So that's what you're saying. Like everybody can see it. They can see it. It's harder and it's also harder to hide. We have no choice but to radically accept your new reality.

23:15Amy Wilson:That's right. And I think that this can be harder if, A, my husband left me for another woman, right? Everyone just kind of feels like, who are you? And also you're kind of a loser. All alone now, after all your heart. Like, you don't want to let that in. You don't want to let pity in. You want to let love in. You want to let compassion in. But sometimes what's coming into the wound is really gross, you know? And I also sometimes think the wounds that we feel ashamed about. So let me, again, use a completely hypothetical example. My child has started vaping, acting out, rebelling in a way that feels to me like a failure as a parent.

23:59Amy Wilson:that's a wound that doesn't feel very accessible to other people it's harder to accept because the story around it and then you're hiding it from people god forbid anyone knows that my kid didn't get into any of the colleges they applied to or my kid is using drugs my kid is having struggles with mental illness my kid has autism or has a disease that i find or a condition that i find embarrassing or upsetting or like they're not as good as the other kids. But I'm not allowed to feel that feeling because I'm their mom and my only job is to love them. But my kid is doing unlovable things and I'm struggling with that.

24:41Amy Wilson:But I'm never allowed to say that out loud because as a mother, if you ever feel that you're a horrible person. That's exactly right. And you know what this is? This is the second arrow, the Buddhist idea of the second arrow. Okay, hit me with the And Nomburg brought it to my attention. But it's a Buddhist idea. It's not her idea. And so they talk about this with radical acceptance, too. So in Buddhism, there's this idea of when you're hit with an arrow, you're actually hit with two arrows. The first shot, when you're struck by that arrow and the arrow hits your leg and you look down, is pain.

25:13There's an arrow in my leg. That suffering is inevitable. That is, ow, there's an arrow. Like, ow, blood, pain, whatever. The second shot is what causes the suffering. And that suffering, according to Buddhist thought, is optional. It's your reaction that is compounding pain on this. So for your example of my kid didn't get into any of the colleges they wanted to. And on top of that disappointment, it's really your kid's arrow, right? But you're feeling it just as keenly because you're the mom. You're feeling that keen disappointment and sadness that they're feeling. And then on top of it, you feel shame.

25:51You feel that you should have done more. Your if onlys and why not and the resentment and this. All of that is causing more suffering. But those are optional reactions.

26:02Amy Wilson:I struggle with the word optional. I do. I don't think they're totally optional. But I do think that sometimes on top of that, you're going around and collecting pain that's not even there. Everybody is so embarrassed for me. All my stories you tell yourself. Right. You're going out of your way to say, let's say, I mean, in my career, I've had pretty much a long string of different failures. The failure is painful for me. I didn't get the job I wanted. I never sold the script I worked for two years on. I wanted to be Tina Fey and I, you know, did never worked out. I never got famous. I never got rich doing it.

26:38Amy Wilson:But then all my friends from high school just look at me and they're like, she wanted it and she didn't get it. What a failure. Like I'm going around collecting pain that nobody's even providing. You know what I mean? That everyone is thinking what a loser I am. Like no one's thinking about me at all. They don't care. Or I'm going to go to this wedding and I'm going to see all these people in my family who used to think I was beautiful. And now they're going to see that I've gained weight and I'm middle aged and I have these wrinkles and everyone is going to look at me and be like, she used to be pretty, but now she's old and fat.

27:13I don't know. Are they? The problem with the second arrow, the stuff you pile on top and the story you tell yourself. I know what you mean. Like the idea that suffering is optional. Sometimes your life is hard, but it just means some of that suffering is optional. Like when I look in the mirror, I feel disappointed. I feel disappointed that I don't look as young as I used to. Okay, sit with that. Acknowledge that. And then meet it with compassion instead of a no. When they go, probably everybody's thinking, right, that that is optional. That part's optional. And that this is what radical acceptance is trying to get around.

27:42There's an arrow in your leg. Right. You're in pain, you know, and the feelings about the arrow in your leg. And what if everybody sees that there's an arrow in your leg are not doing anything to get the arrow out of your leg?

27:53Amy Wilson:Yeah, it's a balance between that thing of skipping the suffering. Oh, the suffering is completely optional. I don't believe it's optional. And I think that believing that it's optional can lead you to be like, I will never suffer again because I feel the pain and then nothing else. If your husband commits unseemly crime, you know, it's humiliating. It's embarrassing. People are talking about you. Like, I don't think that you're just even if you radically accept that your husband did a terrible thing. You're Mrs. Bernie Madoff, right? Your husband has done this terrible thing. It has caused tremendous pain in your family.

28:32Amy Wilson:I think one of his children committed suicide. Yes, he did. answer. I mean, just you can't sit there as Mrs. Madoff and be like, I just radically accept that this wasn't my choice. She had no I mean, let's take the example. I would say she never radically accepted a bit of it. Right. Right. I'm the same. Right. Right. I mean, assuming she knows nothing about it, you can't accept your way out of that being a horrendous experience where the entire town shuns you. And like your name goes down in history as the worst person ever. No. I mean, that's a pretty high bar though. Yeah. But I do think that your kid doing something embarrassing, like your kid ending up on the parents of where you live page, as I saw your kid, your kid.

29:14Amy Wilson:Right, right. Listen, your kid did something really stupid and humiliating. And I don't know, I don't think you're just borrowing the embarrassment. No, no, you're not. But But acknowledging the embarrassment is the first step. That is the acceptance. There's one more huge misconception I had about radical acceptance. I'll tell you what it is after this. Oh, Amy, I hate to say it, but based on the 17 ,000 emails and app notifications I am already getting, it is almost time to go back to school. Dun, dun, dun. Time to go back to the Skylake calendar. The Skylake calendar syncs your family's sports and school and orientation schedules onto one device with a sleek digital display, giving everyone a clear visual guide of where they're supposed to be and when.

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33:48So the last thing about radical acceptance that I learned researching this episode that I think is really important to understand is the last piece. It doesn't mean that you don't get to do anything differently going forward. It doesn't mean you don't get to take action. It doesn't mean you don't get to leave. It means that you accept the present moment. My kid is on this list, to use your example from before the break. My kid did something bad and now it's in the newspaper, right? Right. That's where we're at. I'm feeling really embarrassed about that. He's feeling shame. I'm feeling shame. I'm feeling angry.

34:18I'm feeling, you know, you're feeling what you're feeling. Sit with that. Give yourself compassion for that. This is the present reality, even though I wish it wasn't true. You're accepting that it's in the paper. You're accepting that it happened and you can't do anything to change that. And that means you can make a different choice for the future. That gives you the sage brain to take the next step towards wise action instead of just, oh, poor me, I can't leave my house because everybody knows. What are you going to do about it?

34:44Amy Wilson:Yeah. No, I absolutely believe that. Brene Brown is the queen of writing about this. But shame is the enemy of all things. It's the enemy of acceptance. It's the enemy of functioning well. It's just shame. It just leads to terrible decisions. We were talking about kids lying on a recent episode. And like, what happens? You tell a lie and then you've got to cover it. And then the trust breaks down. And then, and then, and then. Rather than just accepting, I told a lie. I did a stupid thing. I did a thing that makes no sense. I was for some weird reason at a store and decided to steal some cheese and I got caught.

35:28Amy Wilson:What? The shame around what the hell told my brain to steal that cheese on a Tuesday when I've never stolen anything in my life. Right. I sometimes look at situations and I think I can often see it in other people more well than and I can see it in myself, but you have just built a crazy tower of toothpicks around the truth. And now you're standing on top of a crazy tower of toothpicks that feels very unsturdy and very unstable. And your only options are to spend a tremendous amount of time deconstructing this tower of toothpicks and getting back to the ground where you can relate to people. More duct tape.

36:06Amy Wilson:Or duct taping it together and just praying. And it takes so much more effort to live on the tower of toothpicks than it does to say my career worked out the way it did rather than tap dancing for people all the time that like actually i have something huge coming up it's gonna be great nobody cares and like this didn't work out like i wanted to you don't need to do a sub stack you don't need to be you know stand on the town square with a megaphone this is for yourself right these are things you do there's a parenting example that tara brock uses in her book radical acceptance that i thought was extremely useful so she said one of her patients was a mom whose teenager had ADHD.

36:40Loving mom. We've all been this parent doing everything, trying everything, supplements, therapists, special this, reading every book, doing it, listening to every podcast, whatever. Although this was 20 years ago, no podcast, but she's doing the rest of it. Let's put it that way. This kid was still frequently lashing out. There was some emotional lability happening. This kid was rageful frequently. And this mother was living in anguish about that and going to therapy about it saying, I feel like I'm feeling my son. I feel like I should have done more when her therapist could see clearly that she was doing everything she could, that she was really trying her best.

37:13And she was being a loving parent to this son, but she was stuck in this shame spiral to use a Brene Brown term. And I think the problem is, therefore, you're not parenting the kid in front of you, right? If you're spending all this time wishing this wasn't the case and feeling bad that it's the case instead of, okay, I've given this kid a lot of help and there's something happening here that needs what's next what's next that needs to be addressed and leave the why did this happen to me why am I such a bad mother out of it because it gets in the way I have a friend who

37:41Amy Wilson:says jokingly mostly on social media well I'm sorry this happened to you in response to basically anything they post I'm sorry this happened to you and his next response is this can't be fixed and it's definitely done tongue-in-cheek but it is kind of the cornerstone of radical acceptance I'm sorry this happened to me to me this can't be fixed and that's it and we've started this whole group of us have started saying it to each other about everything you know and it is a weirdly perfect response to 90 of life situations I'm sorry this happened to you this can't be fixed but it is very true about things because I think that our first reaction to and again the flip side is it's not to say you have a kid with ADHD.

38:26Amy Wilson:Oh, well, just accept it. Sometimes they're violent with you. No, you can't do it. No, you're going to take action because you can get out of that poor me part. Yeah. But it's living in the land of I can make things right through my own efforts. Nothing will ever be wrong if I work hard enough and I do enough. My mother will love me again, not my own example, if I just fit myself into the right mysterious shape that I haven't figured out yet. And then Tara Brock gave another example about radical acceptance that was because sometimes I think like you're going to radically accept and then you're going to take you either take no action, right?

39:05You just become a passive acceptor of terrible behavior, right? You're in

39:09Amy Wilson:the fire or you walk out and you never walk back. Right. And then you're, you know, a country song and you're scorched earth behind you. But sometimes it's neither. You're Angela Bassett throwing the match. Yeah, exactly. So she gave an example of another person she knew who, after practicing radical acceptance, was able to go to family events and spend time with her mother because that was the choice she made for the greater good of the family. I'm going to show up for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm going to take that action. I can separate it from my emotions. This is what I want to do. And I'm able to do that and coexist peacefully.

39:46That sometimes radical acceptance can lead to acceptance instead of, I'm not going to take this for one more minute. So radical acceptance, I'm thinking of like, my kid is not cut out for college and is not going to college, right? And you can spend a lot of time wishing that's not the case and thinking there must be one more thing you can try and whatever. And then you parent the kid in front of you and you accept the reality, which is not so terrible. It's all this second arrow stuff that can get in the way. That's not always true. But I think sometimes the second arrow stuff is worse than the arrow was in the first place.

40:16Amy Wilson:Absolutely. And I will say I'm a therapy proponent, but I do think some of this stuff, it would help to do with a therapist. Sure. Like saying for the first time, my mother never really loved me for who I am. Saying for the first time, my husband has a drug problem or whatever. Any example you can think of. My child is frightening me. Whatever these really hard truths or just I feel really insecure in my body at middle age or whatever the thing is. Some of these truths are very hard to say for a reason. But on the flip side, the older I get, the more I realize you're not fooling anyone. Everyone else has accepted what's going on with you.

41:00Amy Wilson:Whether or not they care, you're not fooling them that you're the happiest person on the block. You're not fooling them that everything's amazing and you're Ah, Reg. You're not fooling them that your kid, you did everything right and now he's going to Harvard. You're working so hard to present something that if you just accepted it, it's the wolf at the door. Just open the door and stare at it. It's not as scary as you think when you're imagining it under the covers in your bed. Can we use one more low stakes example? Yes. Because I think it's important. It isn't always like. I've been using a lot of high stakes.

41:40My kid is a kleptomaniac. And look, everybody's got their something. I'm sure everybody listening has some big situation. But you can apply this in smaller ways. So this is, again, Tara Brock talked about this in her book. That say you're a parent who loses their temper regularly with their kids. And there's nobody in the newspaper saying this. You just know this to be true. That you start by examining your thoughts and feelings. How am I feeling right now? How am I feeling before I yell at the kids? How am I feeling after I yell at the kids? Examine that. Where is that coming from? And then she suggested that it might be you're too stressed, that you're too stressed to handle their needs.

42:11You're taking it out on them. Maybe you're subconsciously pushing your kids away because you can't handle how much they need you, whatever. Like explore what those feelings are and then sit with them and then think about the second arrow of the shame that you're feeling when you see that you made them feel bad, whatever. Explore all of those feelings. And then you have compassion that you have those feelings. It is stressful to parent little kids. It is all the time on. Have compassion for your kids, feeling upset that you yelled at them, right? Your compassion for everybody. And then she wants you to go out kind of 30 ,000 feet to, you don't want to suffer.

42:46You don't want to cause suffering. Nobody does.

42:48Amy Wilson:I wouldn't say nobody, but okay. Nobody listening. Yeah, exactly. Nobody listening to this. You don't want to suffer. No, of course you don't. Literally nobody wants to suffer. Right. And nobody wants to cause suffering. OK, maybe a few people do, but most of us don't. Not to our kids. And so just returning to that, like, I'm feeling really stressed that I can't handle this. OK, that's a better. Now you can take sage action. I might need to get a mother's helper from the local college to come from four to six on weekdays. I might need to tell my spouse that you would step it up around here. I might need to.

43:18I might need to. Right. There are things you can do about that. Besides, I'm the worst mother in the world that I yell at my kids.

43:23Amy Wilson:Amy, you solved it. I really feel like this was so useful for me. Yeah. I feel like there's another episode here about just figuring out like what is a variable? What is a constant? Like having a lot of thoughts around this because it was super, super useful. It lives in the wisdom to know the difference part. And I think that's really hard. Doing another episode around how we're figuring those things out would be really useful. I like that idea. Yeah. I have a friend in the 12-step world who really highlighted that phrase to me, the wisdom to know the difference, that that was the last and hardest part.

43:57of the community prayer. Absolutely.

43:59Amy Wilson:So listen, do you have someone in your life who needs a little radical acceptance or who you've talked to about radical acceptance and you realize, oops, I might've had this wrong. You can share this episode right in the app. Hit the share button. You can just text about it, post about it on social media. Let people know if this episode helped you out. And with that, thanks so much for listening. And we'll talk to you next time. So long, everybody.

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