S3C9. The Fourth Pillar: Acceptance – Surrendering the Fight Against Thoughts

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While acceptance is one of the foundations of mindfulness, I believe it merits separate mention. Some people feel that they accept their OCD, but they only acknowledge its existence grudgingly. It is more like, ‘What can I do? I have it now and I have to live with it.’ This may be acknowledgment but not true acceptance. It creates pressure to recover before pursuing their dreams.

True acceptance is when you say, ‘Yes, I know I have OCD. I don’t like it, but I accept it. I will work to do my best despite it. Accepting your OCD does not mean you will not work toward getting better. You will, however, work with a better frame of mind – one of strength rather than weakness. In other words, acceptance means “taking a stance of non-judgmental awareness and actively embracing the experience of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations as they occur” (Hayes et al., 2004).

If you think about it, what do you really need to accept? Things going well for you? If I win the lottery and get a million dollars, can I really say I am accepting my situation? What is there to not accept about it anyway? So, things going well don’t require acceptance. So, what about things that are neither good nor bad, but neutral? Like normal everyday life. There is no real need to claim that you are accepting neutrality as well. It just is. Neither good nor bad. That leaves us with things that we do not like, things that are not going well for us. That is what we are expected to accept. So, if you wonder, ‘How can I accept such a bad situation?’, the answer is: that’s exactly what you need to accept. If it were not bad, who would even ask you to accept it?

The next question, more out of frustration than out of rationale, is, ‘Why should I accept? Why couldn’t things have been better for me like they are for others?’ This is understandable angst but not entirely reasonable. One, we do not know what others are going through – perhaps something worse. Two, not accepting the situation does not make the pain go away. It makes it worse. So, while it’s true you shouldn’t have had OCD, you do—and accepting it will help you handle it better.

Say, you are trying to get from point A to point B. Unmindfully, you fall into a pit. You do not keep wallowing in the fact that you have fallen into the pit and that there is no hope for you. You accept that you have a problem and try your best to come out of the pit. Let us see what all you are truly accepting in a situation like that and lay that understanding side-by-side with your OCD thoughts, as shown in Table 3.9.1.

Thus, if you can accept these conditions and work towards coming out of the pit, you can also learn to accept everything and work towards getting rid of your OCD. Another simple example is that when a girl menstruates, she may experience three to five days of discomfort, irritation, cramps, and so on. Yet, girls learn to accept it as a part of their life without denying the unpleasantness. Similarly, OCD is unpleasant. But like it or not, it is present. The more we learn to accept it, the better we get at dealing with it.

Table 3.9.1: Acceptance Comparison Illustration

NoFalling in a pitHaving OCD
1You are in a pit.You have OCD
2You are going to be delayedYou may take time to achieve your dreams
3You have to try to come outYou have to try to get better
4You need to want to come outYou need to want to get better
5You can come out.You can get better
6You may have to seek helpYou will have to use the 12 pillars
7The process of coming out is difficultThe process of recovery is difficult
8The process of coming out is worth itThe process of recovery is worth it
9You will reach point B, but laterYou will achieve your dreams, but later

Or, imagine that you are trying to reach the bus station to catch a bus. You think you may miss it, and hence you sprint to the bus stand. When you finally reach the bus and catch it, you feel a sense of achievement. But you also feel tired. Your breathing is labored, and your heart is pounding. You are probably even sweating and flushed. But you accept it, don’t you? You know that if you sprint, these physical reactions are a package. You couldn’t have said, ‘I’ll run to catch the bus if I don’t feel tired afterwards.’ With sprinting comes tiredness – package deal. If you didn’t want to get tired, your narrative would have been, ‘I don’t care if I miss the bus, but I am not sprinting.’ Without sprinting, you miss the bus – again, package deal. You know these, and you make your choice.

Thus, whatever situation we are thrown into, we have a choice to make. And with every choice, we have to accept the troubles that come with it, as they are a package deal. The best we can do is to learn to deal with those troubles and make life simpler. Non-acceptance of those troubles does not make the troubles go away. It only makes our life harder. 

There is a self-administered psychometric test called the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Revised (AAQ-2; Bond et al., 2011) included as PT4 in the Worksheets for Incest OCD file. The AAQ-2 tests your psychological flexibility, that is, how accepting you are of your situations and how you act when life throws a curveball at you. Take the test and make a note of your psychological flexibility. Remember that the higher you score, the more inflexible you are. You will need to work towards lowering your score to be more accepting of your situation.

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