2 Skills That Have Changed My Life

Musings on Acceptance and Change (in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy)

One of the most helpful skills I’ve gained in dealing with ongoing suffering is to hold acceptance in one hand while working towards change with the other.

“Acceptance can transform but if you accept in order to transform, it is not acceptance. It is like loving. Love seeks no reward but when given freely comes back a hundredfold. He who loses his life finds it. He who accepts, changes.”
― Marsha M. Linehan

This certainly applies to chronic illness itself—and it’s had a transformative effect on my daily experience. But it’s also served me well in honestly facing the beauty and suffering around me and in skillfully adapting to our ever-changing world.

Photo by Alessandro Guarino on Unsplash

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

I first started getting DBT about 3 years ago. The 4 main components of the therapy modality are: mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. At the heart of it all is developing the ability to hold seemingly opposing truths simultaneously. One learns the importance of acknowledging the truth about us and the world around us and working towards effective, values-based change in our own lives and in the world. A similar DBT principle is the importance of staying in tune with both our logic and our emotions.

After working hard (and gently) on these skills, I now have more capacity for joy and grief, intensity and serenity, moral clarity and nuance.

“The word dialectic (in dialectical behavior therapy) means to balance and compare two things that appear very different or even contradictory. In dialectical behavior therapy, the balance is between change and acceptance….You need to change the behaviors in your life that are creating more suffering for yourself and others while simultaneously also accepting yourself the way you are. This might sound contradictory, but it’s a key part of this treatment. Dialectical behavior therapy depends on acceptance and change, not acceptance or change.”
― Matthew McKay

Applications

These developing skills have served me well in the contexts of chronic illness, this fallen world, changing technology, public health, close relationships, casual acquaintances, the good things of life, hopes for the future, wars and suffering, evil people misusing their power, missing out on important events, and pursuing personal growth in holiness.

This looks like:

• Acknowledging what is real right now—not fighting reality—and then deciding what I choices I can make in order to influence it.

• Cultivating an eye for joy, beauty, and goodness.

• Allowing the intensity of grief to wash over me for a time, and then purposefully distracting myself with something soothing in the present.

• Learning that a person cannot be reduced either to their best or their worst quality, belief, or action.

• Making space for hope, without pinning all my hopes on that hope.

• Recognizing that there are often a myriad of good/reasonable options, while other times there are few to none.

• Realizing the validity of taking even small steps in the direction I want to go—and standing still when there is nothing at present I can do.

Acceptance and Change.

Final Thoughts

Isn’t this how our God is? He loves us and saves us exactly as we are! We don’t have to pretend to be better than we are or hide our bad parts. We don’t have to clean ourselves up before we come to Him. All we need is to acknowledge our need of Him as we run to Him!

God accepts us—deeply and truly.

But He loves us too much to let us stay in our immaturity and sin. Instead, because of His love, He changes us to be more whole, holy, and mature—so that we image our Savior. He does this not so that He can accept us at some future time, but because He already loves us!

What a glorious Savior! May we more fully rest in His love and more consistently seek to live to show that He is worthy!

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