Struggling With Radical Acceptance

[user27357]

@joeylittle

Been there, done that. Hope that knee is becoming an asset again, they are useful aren't they?

Again, I see it when the idea is applied to a past event and I absolutely get it when applied to an action we had no control over. Perhaps you have to deal with the idea that you wouldn't have blown the knee if you weren't underground static jumping or performing triple back flips at the monster truck rally, but even then, it is a past happening and time spent beating yourself up or being mad at someone else or something else is time better spent doing the damn rehab exercises.

No problem with it so far.

I lose the faith when I try to apply it to the actions of a person that I readily and willingly modify my behaviour for.

I suspend my basic lack of trust in humans when I pull in to the drive through and pay at window one for the burger at window two. I give the money I would rather keep, I trust the ordered item will be what I wanted and it will arrive some time within the window allocated to fast food.

Give me change for a ten when I gave up a twenty? not happening. Hand me a coke when I payed for a large fry? Not happening. Ask me to pull over and wait while they get it right, sure, OK, but make me wait twenty minutes? not happening.

But if I am sitting there in hopes for a burger as promised and the grill explodes causing a mass evacuation or skylab lands in the parking lot and wipes out the computer uplink that does all the math on the timed fry baskets? Sure, thats a happening and I will just live with it and drive on, neutral (maybe a bit amused even).

 

[joeylittle]

I lose the faith when I try to apply it to the actions of a person that I readily and willingly modify my behaviour for.

The acceptance piece is that modifying your behavior for people has zero impact on their actions. In other words, you cannot do a single thing to affect the choices of others. And absolutely, that sucks - especially when it comes to a marriage. But if it's the way it is, then it's the way it is.

Hand me a coke when I payed for a large fry?

And 20 minutes after you've argued with the server, lost, had the police called, and been forcibly removed from the establishment - you will still have to go through the radical acceptance piece of it, which is "I was tricked/lied to/wronged"..whatever clicks for you. Or, you can remain angry about it until the anger dies down, which could take a long, long while. It might not ever go away completely.

Or you could go through that step 30 seconds into the exchange when it is clear that the server has the absolute opposite idea about what happened....and save yourself some suffering.

Not saying it's about anything other than alleviating suffering.

 

[user27357]

@enough if your wife has agreed to something and is breaking her commitment to it, I'm not sure about your therapist's take on that particular situation. Are you saying your therapist understands the background and the issue but is telling you to accept it?

Thats the way it is. This situation and a hundred others over a thirty year marriage. I have had enough of broken promises that were agreed upon happily and with no duress, I am tired of being the bad guy because I predictably get angry when the promises get made and broken.

If this marriage needs me to get radical acceptance and take it to heart, it may be doomed. If it relies on her getting the whole integrity and mutual respect thing, I would like to think it has a chance.

 

[Jane.l]

I don't think you have to accept anything you don't want to - and the idea of this seems to be tying you in knots - so you don't have to go with it.

Maybe your wife is feeling that you are being too controlling - i don't react well at being told what to do - if people feel they 'have' to do something often the natural reaction is to rebel. Doesn't mean she doesn't care just she is putting up her defences because she feels attacked ?? Just a thought could be way off, I don't walk in your shoes

 

[user27357]

And 20 minutes after you've argued with the server, lost, had the police called, and been forcibly removed from the establishment - you will still have to go through the radical acceptance piece of it, which is "I was tricked/lied to/wronged"..whatever clicks for you. Or, you can remain angry about it until the anger dies down, which could take a long, long while. It might not ever go away completely.

Or you could go through that step 30 seconds into the exchange when it is clear that the server has the absolute opposite idea about what happened....and save yourself some suffering.

Not saying it's about anything other than alleviating suffering.

Yeah, I get that too. I guess I should have said "not going to happen twice" because I do accept it when these things happen, and they do happen to everyone. I have never been 86'd from the burger basket, the cops were never called. But I never went back either.

I save myself suffering whenever possible. I just would rather do it (in the particular case of expecting communication with my wife) by setting up a mutual agreement and being able to rely on it, not by saying "she doesn't care, you don't like it, get over it". Thats just a road I don't want to go down.

 

[joeylittle]

If this marriage needs me to get radical acceptance and take it to heart, it may be doomed.

And you might find that it's doomed. That can happen. The radical acceptance piece would be intending to make it possible for you to communicate most effectively with your wife about the relationship problems. Radical acceptance allows us to turn down the volume on our own suffering, so we can think and communicate more clearly. But there's almost always some kind of change or problem solving component that follows the issue that has been accepted.

Think of RA as preparation.

 

[sun seeker]

I really just want to know she cares, even if it is just that she cares enough to not want to see me angry.
She doesn't. I am being told to accept it, expect it and be OK with it. I don't think it's gonna work.

enough, to me this is an important point to look at. (Hope I did the quoting thing right, I'm new at this.)

I wonder if it would help to question this assumption. You are the only one who can really know how that worry feels. What one person calls worry might be a slight concern and for another a feeling like the world will end if the problem isn't resolved in the next ten seconds. If your reaction is somewhere near the top end of the scale and it looks like your wife doesn't care, it's understandable that you would feel some resentment about that. But suppose she doesn't know? If she hasn't experienced the trauma that you have, her experience of life is probably much more along the lines of the world being a benevolent place where things mostly work out for the best and if they don't, you handle that when it comes up. She could have all sorts of reasons for not answering her phone that have nothing to do with not caring how you feel. I wonder if it would help, either by yourself or with her help if you can talk to her about it, to make a list of possible reasons for her not answering the phone, and remind yourself of them next time this happens?

Your struggle is making me think about an ongoing conversation I have with my mother, who throughout my life has often seemed like she just doesn't care about me. Her reactions are so weird I still don't know whether that's true or whether she just expresses caring in some very strange ways. I don't want to hijack your thread, just to say it's making me think.

 

[joeylittle]

Since we are talking about it so much...
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/radical_acceptance_part_1.html
Straight from the horses' mouth, as it were; Marsha Linnehan is the person who codified DBT

 

[user27357]

I don't think you have to accept anything you don't want to - and the idea of this seems to be tying you in knots - so you don't have to go with it.

Maybe your wife is feeling that you are being too controlling - i don't react well at being told what to do - if people feel they 'have' to do something often the natural reaction is to rebel. Doesn't mean she doesn't care just she is putting up her defences because she feels attacked ?? Just a thought could be way off, I don't walk in your shoes

No, I never come close to saying I don't approve of something she wants to go and do. She has free use of the truck I bought her, insure and put gas and oil in. She just gets distracted and "loses track of time". I buy her watches, i buy the next great super phone and set up and pay for the service plan, even show her how to set up alarms and reminders on it. She never says I am too controlling, I am not. I am enabling and she would say so. And again, I am 100% sure she isn't being unfaithful.

With PTSD I see over reacting to a danger as an unreachable level of reaction to danger. There just isn't any such thing. If it was up to me she would be wearing a 5 point harness with a helmet in the back seat of a chauffeured tank. She gets that. It isn't really a possibility, I get that.

We compromise with a promise that I will at least know she is OK when I call her, and she will keep my time spent wondering to a minimum. It is a wasted effort, it has become all about the broken promises.

Not about rebelling against restraint, not at all. And, I admit, not about worrying about her safety 100% any more either.

 

[Jane.l]

It's not about you approving or not of whatever she wants to do - I am not saying you are not a kind generous husband at all - but you have safety issues that you say she gets but she won't give you the reassurance you are looking for, there must be a reason and maybe that reason is that she finds that your requests controlling or unreasonable - in that to you the safety issues are a huge deal but she can see that actually every things ok - not trying to piss you off - just looking at it from a slightly different angle

 

[user27357]

It's not about you approving or not of whatever she wants to do - I am not saying you are not a kind generous husband at all - but you have safety issues that you say she gets but she won't give you the reassurance you are looking for, there must be a reason and maybe that reason is that she finds that your requests controlling or unreasonable - in that to you the safety issues are a huge deal but she can see that actually every things ok - not trying to piss you off - just looking at it from a slightly different angle

That really is it, it is true that she is one of the people that just react to the negatives when they happen, never worrying about them before or even taking them as lessons for the future to help avoid another instance. I was attracted to it and I love her for it. She helps me get through some rough times by showing me her way through them.

Unfortuneatly, as it applies to safety on the road and my concern for hers, (this could be a trigger for some) I will never be able to say "why did this happen to me? I never thought this would happen to me...How could I end up in this situation?" I have seen the look in the eyes of hundreds (actually hundreds) of people as they said those exact words from the crumpled cars I was there to get them out of and on the way to an ER. I KNOW that every trip could end with a crossed centerline and a death, a blown tire and a high speed impact, a damn duck could decide to cross the road and put a windsheild in my lap before I even get a chance to say "OH sh]t". I KNOW these things. They happen. I would really appreciate knowing that they haven't happened so I can get on with other things sometimes.

but it is more about broken promises at this point, and my ability to accept that as a fact and find a way to live with it.

 

[user27357]

@joeylittle

thanks, a great read and I see the points as they are laid out. The metaphore of the prisoner being forced to accept the fact that the only choices are misery and anger over being wrongfully encarcerated or to find a way to make a life worth living in prison is maybe the best yet. My life is no where near as bad as the metaphor, but my ability to change the situation is just as severely limited isn't it? In fact, all of us are locked in to the reality we find ourselves in aren't we? We can make a life worth living or cry every day about living the life we have found ourselves in.

It falls off the tracks when I think I can make that life worth living by getting my wife to see the simple, easily reached goal of mutual respect and concern and integrity. I can't let go of that goal, I can't trade it in for radical acceptance of the idea that I need to give up on making it happen and just willingly face the reality that it will not.