by barbara | Mar 2, 2016 | mental health, Uncategorized
I often think about the effort it takes to fight against something that already exists. I suppose that is denial. Which is appealing for many different reasons, but takes a lot of effort. When an elephant is sitting in the room, it can take a lot of effort to pretend it doesn’t exist. Holding back reality can be exhausting. That is what has me contemplating the idea of acceptance today. And acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to want IT, or even like IT, it just means that you have to acknowledge that IT, whatever IT is, exists. Examples of IT, that I often see (aside from elephants) are things such as anxiety, depression, brain injury, anger,or perhaps an unhappy relationship. When people are working to deny the existence of these issues, they are often fearful of the work involved in dealing with them. Or they may be afraid of what it says about them and what others will think or how it will affect their sense of identity. What they don’t often realize is how much energy they expel trying to pretend these things don’t exist for them. As I said before, an important piece of this acceptance process is knowing that you do not have to like or want the issue you are facing, but by acknowledging it’s presence, you can get the upper hand. For instance if you are to acknowledge that you have anxiety, you can start to get to know your anxiety. As you get to know your anxiety, you can start to anticipate when it will affect you and to learn ways that...