DBT Distress Tolerance and Reality Acceptance

This video on reality acceptance follows up on the radical acceptance video in the previous post. When we allow in our unpleasant experience, accept them, and let them be, we take away their power. Reality acceptance doesn’t make distressing experiences go away, but it makes them more tolerable.

Reality Acceptance, Allowing and Letting Be

Now we’re gonna look at the idea of allowing and letting be and how this can help us practice acceptance. Allowing and letting be simply means allowing whatever we’re experiencing right now to be there. No matter what comes up, we simply allow it into our awareness and let it be however it is.

Mindfulness based cognitive therapy used the poem “A Guesthouse” by the poet Rumi to give an example of the flavor of allowing and letting be:

This being human is a guesthouse

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness

Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows

Who violently swept your house empty of its furniture

Still treat each guest honorably

He may be cleaning you out for some new delight

The dark thought, the shame, the malice

Meet them with the door laughing and invite them in

Be grateful for whoever comes

Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond

And so allowing in and letting be involves taking whatever we’re experiencing and inviting it into our awareness, and we invite these things into our awareness even if they’re unpleasant and greet them laughingly. And so we’re not just tolerating them or resigning ourselves to their presence but inviting them in with a friendliness.

And so by inviting these things in, we can experience them without creating any excess suffering for ourselves like we would if we tried to slam the door in their face and shut them out or tolerate their presence begrudgingly. And this is why it’s important to cultivate this attitude of acceptance and allowing in and letting be, because if we’re unwilling to allow certain things into our awareness by fighting against them or trying to shut them out, we only give them more power, feed them more fuel, making it more likely they set off cycles or pull us in a downward spiral, the consequences of which are much more unpleasant and difficult to recover from than if we just allowed the unpleasant experience into our awareness in the first place.

And so allowing these experiences into our awareness and letting them be diminishes the power they have over us and we’re much less likely to be hijacked by them and led down some negative road. And if we do get caught up in some automatic cycle of negative reactions, a way to pull ourselves out of something like this is to meet it with an attitude of acceptance and allowing in and letting be.

And by allowing these unpleasant thoughts and feelings into our awareness and noticing the effect they have in our body and paying attention to these thoughts, feelings and body sensations, following them in awareness and allowing them to be, we have the chance to see how our experiences aren’t static and are constantly changing from moment to moment in quality and content and intensity, coming and going, waxing and waning, and that if we just allow them to run their natural course they tend to become more manageable, lessen in intensity without us having to do anything about them except notice them, allow them in, accept them, and let them be.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them on the YouTube video page.