RADICAL ACCEPTANCE PART II—FOUR STEPS TO RECLAIM YOUR POWER WHEN PARENTING TEENS OR IN THE EMPTY NEST | EP. 209
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever thought, how am I supposed to accept this thing that I absolutely do not want? If so, you're exactly where you need to be. In a recent episode, I talked about radical acceptance as a way to stop wasting your emotional energy on what you can't control, and how to shift your focus to what is in your power, to create more peace, clarity, and steadiness in your life.
Today, we're taking that work deeper, because intellectually understanding radical acceptance is one thing, but actually practicing it in the midst of messy, emotional moments of life, that's where most of us get stuck. And that is exactly what I'm going to explore in today's episode. So let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. I've been loving the feedback I've been getting about my episode on radical acceptance, and so I wanted to do a follow-up episode, because what I'm hearing is that many are attracted to this idea of radical acceptance. Maybe because it sounds like what we should be doing, right? And certainly, we all want the promise of radical acceptance, that it could actually bring you more peace in your life, and even more confidence in how you show up to your life.
It sounds like exactly what we all want. But what I'm hearing from the feedback is that this word acceptance has a lot of meanings, and not all of them feel comfortable. Maybe that's because when you look up the word acceptance in the dictionary, the first definition is quality or state of being accepted or acceptable.
The second definition is the act of accepting something or someone, or the fact of being accepted. It implies approval. So our reaction to this word is understandably mixed when we're talking about accepting things in our life that we don't want.
In fact, in these circumstances, acceptance feels like the opposite of the emotion that's actually accessible to us. Our gut instinct is to reject or try to change these parts of our life. And so acceptance, getting there, feels really unattainable.
I have to be honest that in the most difficult moments of my parenting journey, and frankly, even in the moments that weren't overly dramatic but were painful in their own way, there wasn't any instinct in my mind or body that wanted to say yes to whatever the situation was. When my kids were struggling socially, for example, I didn't want to be like, yeah, that's what happens. We've got to struggle socially.
Or when my kids would blow off their homework or get a grade that didn't reflect their potential, I wasn't thinking, yeah, I guess that's how they learn. Even when I think about the struggles I had with my son when he was ignoring the state-mandated curfew when he first got his driver's license, I struggled with accepting the reality that he was coming home late, night after night, and risking the natural consequence of losing his license if he got pulled over after 11 p.m. In fact, I can think of quite a few situations where I had a hard time accepting the reality that my kids would face the natural consequences of their choices. You know, it's no wonder we have the problem of taking the step of enforcing our own consequences, because we don't even want life to deliver consequences to our kids.
And these are just examples of a small, everyday challenges. But then we can also face some pretty big, scary situations, or situations that feel like they could have a lifelong impact on our kids, on their health, or success, or our relationship with them. I remember those times with my own boys.
I had a really hard time saying yes to those challenges, to the reality that I was facing, because there was nothing in my mind or body that wanted to accept that reality. Absolutely nothing. Something that often comes up when I'm coaching moms is that they'll tell me they know they need to let go of their expectations.
They see that their kid isn't meeting their expectations in some way. Actually, often in many ways. And so the solution seems to be that we as moms need to adjust what we want so it more closely matches the reality of what is actually happening.
I think this is another area that is really fraught with challenge for us, because lowering our expectations also seems to require that we accept reality in a way that's not comfortable. When I think about the concept of lowering my expectations, the words that come to my mind are things like, I've got to settle. I've got to give up on those expectations.
Or I have to lower my expectations to the point where my kid actually meets them. To me, this doesn't feel like acceptance. It actually feels like resignation.
And resignation doesn't actually bring us this feeling of peace. And so I wonder if there was a part of you listening to that episode on radical acceptance that felt a little resigned. Maybe even powerless.
Like you were being asked to just let go of the hope that things might get better. The truth is, I think we can interpret acceptance to mean that we need to be okay with a reality that we don't want. But the truth is, we're not.
And I want to offer you that maybe you don't have to be. I've found in my own life that lowering my expectations of my life or other people doesn't actually bring me any sort of relief. One of my clients recently explained this feeling beautifully.
She said when your life isn't what you want, you so quickly feel like you become the victim of your circumstances. Because you have certain expectations. And when they're not what you want, you feel like you're trapped in this reality that you don't want.
Like you're the victim of that reality. I was coaching another mom just yesterday who was explaining the challenges she's going through with her son. And she said to me, this anxiety is taking over my life.
I'm not able to thrive in my life because all I think about is what's going on with him. How I can get him to see and change. She shared that more often than not, she didn't even want to go home because she felt so consumed by what was going on with him and afraid of getting in another fight.
When you're in that place, you're already stuck, feeling like a victim of your circumstances. So trying to wrap your head around just accepting that, like this is where you are and you've got to stay there, just accept it, that feels terrible. It feels hopeless.
It's like you're already stuck and the concept that you should just be accepting this reality and just say, well, it is what it is. It feels like you're telling yourself you need to just accept the pain that you're in, that there's no way out of it. And I think that's the crux of the issue we have to unravel to get to true radical acceptance.
Because I in no way subscribe to a life where I want to be stuck in pain. No, thank you. I've been there and it's a miserable place to be.
You feel powerless and trapped and you also start to feel resentful because it feels like it's these circumstances that you don't want that are keeping you stuck in pain. When I was in that place, before I truly understood what radical acceptance is, before that, if someone had told me I needed to step into radical acceptance, I would have called BS. I would have thought that is terrible.
You're just telling me to suck it up. It just didn't seem possible to me or even desirable. So if that was the reaction you had to my episode on radical acceptance, even in any small way, I completely get it.
When you're stuck in pain, the last thing you want to do is just accept it. In other words, accept that you have to stay stuck in pain. But I want to invite you to consider that this is not what radical acceptance means.
And one of the reasons why I spend so much time talking about what radical acceptance looks like is because until you really understand it, you are in a lot of ways always going to be the victim of your circumstances. Because if you think life creates your emotions, then you basically need life to be steady and predictable and meeting your expectations as much as possible, just so you can feel some semblance of steadiness and peace in your life. But you and I both know that life doesn't work that way.
So if you're always feeling like your emotional experience is being triggered by and influenced by the way people act or the way people disappoint you, especially your kids, you're kind of stuck on this roller coaster where you feel good when things are good, and you're right back down when things aren't. And it's exhausting. It's emotional whiplash.
And it's especially exhausting in these seasons with our kids where things can get really challenging, where the circumstances themselves are really not what you want. So how do you find peace without lying to yourself, without pretending you accept what's happening, and without forcing yourself to be okay with something that you're absolutely not okay with? Because when you think about it, when you come back to this truth that it's our thoughts that drive our emotions, those thoughts you have about not wanting whatever's happening, those thoughts are very real and valid. That is your reality.
You don't want these things, these circumstances, this behavior. That's your truth. And you don't have to change your mind about that.
But because we so often think it's our circumstances creating our emotional experience rather than our thoughts about those circumstances, we default to focusing all of our energy on changing the circumstances of our lives just so that we can feel better. That's why when we're struggling with our kids, we're so focused on changing them. Because we think if they would just do what we want or change the thing we don't like, then we could finally feel better.
So we focus on changing the circumstances, but then we realize that we often can't, especially when we're talking about our kids. But truly, it's true of anyone in your life. Other people don't change just because we want them to.
But if that's what we need them to do so we can feel better, we're left feeling stuck, like we can't feel better. So what if you were to first accept the truth that your mind is fighting against this reality in your life? What if you were to acknowledge, I don't want this. And you gave yourself just a little bit of compassion in that.
I remember when I was in those painful struggles with my son. When he was pulling away from me so dramatically, I was heartbroken. There was nothing about the situation that I wanted.
And the first step I took towards radical acceptance was looking in the mirror and saying, this is what my son is doing, and I don't want it. This is reality, and this is how I think about reality. I don't want it.
I didn't try to convince myself that I did want it. But I did have to acknowledge that because I didn't want it, I was in pain. My emotional experience was being driven by my thoughts about the situation, thoughts that were saying, I don't want this.
That was the pain I had to sit with. The reality was, I was in pain because I didn't want what was happening. I couldn't accept the reality of it.
But I had to start by accepting the pain that I was feeling because of my truth, that I didn't want it. For me, the pain I had to accept was grief. My heart was broken.
I felt like I was losing my child. And this grief makes so much sense. How else are you supposed to feel when faced with a circumstance that goes against everything that you want as a mother? Grief was my reality, and I had to process those emotions and feel the truth of them.
I had to accept the reality of them. And as I came to terms with those feelings, understanding how human and real they were, I was able to give myself so much love and compassion in the experience of that. I explained it to a client the other day this way.
It's like you look at your own heart as if it's a young child, and that child is hurting. And all you want to do is comfort that child and tell them, I know it hurts, and I'm with you. I'm here to hold you as you experience this pain.
Can you look at yourself in that way? As I was able to do this, to create compassion for myself and my pain and grief, I was also able to open myself up to compassion for my son's experience. I was able to consider his perspective, and I could see that his feelings and actions actually also made so much sense. It didn't mean I liked it.
It didn't mean I wanted to accept it. But I could see the possibility of why he was showing up the way that he was. He was reacting to his own emotional experience, even if I disagreed with it, even if I didn't want any of it.
That was his experience, and it wasn't wrong just because I didn't like it. And then I was left with this truth, that my emotional experience is valid and true, and mine to work through. And his emotional experience is valid and true, and I can't change it.
This is the first step of radical acceptance, taking responsibility for your pain and allowing other people the grace to understand that they are struggling through their own pain. And we can't change that. But marshalling this deep compassion and understanding, both for yourself and the other person, actually gives you the strength to decide what you want to do next from this place.
For me, it became so clear that the way to reconnect with my son was to stop making him responsible for my emotions, and to fully allow and embrace the reality of his. Again, this does not mean that I said yes to any of it. In fact, there were moments when I had to walk away.
There were moments when I decided I needed to not engage in order to protect myself. There were times when I needed to set boundaries for my own peace and to continue building that internal strength. But what that allowed me to do, time after time, was show up with my son from a place of unconditional love, where I didn't need for him to change in order for me to feel okay.
And this ties directly back to what I talked about in that first episode on radical acceptance. And if you want to go back and listen, it's episode 203. I talked about how stepping into radical acceptance is seeing clearly what you can't control, letting go of the illusion that you can change someone else's choices or emotions, and then embracing the power you do have.
The power of your intentional choices about how you show up, the boundaries you set, even the compassion you show yourself and others. These steps are the foundation of radical acceptance. But I want to take this concept even deeper because actually living into radical acceptance in a painful moment is something many of us struggle with.
So I'm going to walk you through a simple practice that you can use to find peace and radical acceptance in any situation. This practice has four steps. And the first step is simply to get clear on what is happening.
Be sure you get clear on the facts, because our minds are often jumping to the worst case scenario or focused on taking things personally or falling into any number of very normal automatic mindset traps. But when you get clear on what's actually happening, you cut through the noise. For example, the truth is my son isn't talking to me.
Or the truth is my daughter's failing a class. My husband lost his job. My kid is depressed and locked in his room all day.
These are examples of some facts. What circumstances are you facing right now that you don't want? Take a moment and just write it down in simple words. Doing this creates a small bit of space between you and the situation.
You're simply saying, this is what's true right now. Focus only on the facts. The next step is to acknowledge what you think about those facts.
And to be honest, you can simplify this step by just acknowledging, I don't want this. Again, we're creating space. The facts are what they are.
This is reality. And my thought about it is, I don't want it. You don't have to force yourself to accept that reality.
But in this step, just acknowledge your truth that you don't want it. This step validates your emotional experience. It acknowledges the gap between what you want and what's happening.
Of course, you feel something about the situation. You don't have to convince yourself you're okay with it. But you're no longer fighting against the reality of your pain.
It's amazing how much even acknowledging the humanity and validity of your feelings that you don't want this, frees up just a little tension. It's like giving yourself a big hug and acknowledging what's true for you. The third step is to name the emotion you're feeling.
Are you feeling scared? Or sad? Heartbroken? Anxious? Disappointed? Whatever it is that you're feeling, it makes perfect sense. I don't want this thing, and so I feel this way. Again, this is moving you even further into validating and even more taking responsibility for your emotional experience.
Notice how all of this is about you. How you're experiencing the circumstances in front of you. This is reality, and I don't want it.
Therefore, I feel some painful emotion. And of course you do. You are having a very human response to a circumstance that your mind doesn't want.
The journey you're taking yourself through here is the shift from feeling like a victim of your circumstances to becoming the author of your emotional experience. You don't have to be wrong about how you feel or pretend to want what's in front of you, but you also don't have to believe that life is doing this to you. Here's the thing, acknowledging the reality and the validity of your emotions doesn't fix everything right away.
You're still in the discomfort of the emotion, but you start to no longer fight it. And when you stop fighting, the intensity of that emotion eases just a little bit. You can even gain a little bit of space to see the situation more clearly.
And this space gives you the ability to take this last step, which is to decide how you want to show up to this situation. In other words, given the truth of what's happening and my feelings about it, who do I want to be right now? A critical part of this step is being very clear with yourself about what is actually in your control. This isn't about changing your circumstances.
This is about making a decision around how you will show up to them. For example, you can make a decision about how you're going to talk to your kid. Even if your teen has attitude or is defensive, you can decide how you want to respond to that.
You can decide to listen instead of reacting. You can also decide ahead of time the boundaries that you want to set and how you want to communicate them. You can even make a decision to let your kid or that other person feel how they need to feel about the boundary you set.
You can decide to let your kid face the natural consequences of their actions rather than feeling like you need to rescue them. You can also just decide to stay curious, asking yourself what might be going on for this other person that they're acting this way. You can decide that no matter how hard this moment is, that you can believe it won't last forever.
All of these micro decisions that you often need to make again and again and again, they are all part of setting the intention to show up in the way that you want with your kid. Showing up as the version of yourself who loves them and wants to connect with them and support them in the best way that you can. This is how you reclaim your power.
Not by changing your kid or fixing the situation, but by deciding who you want to be in response to it. Radical acceptance isn't about accepting your powerlessness, it's actually about finding your power again. These four steps, acknowledging reality, naming your truth about that reality, validating your emotions, and then stepping into who you want to be, they are small steps, but they work together to shift you out of resistance into being present in your life.
You stop fighting and you start choosing on purpose who you want to be. And this is exactly the kind of work we do inside of MOM 2.0, because I know that consistently living into these steps is hard. That's why in MOM 2.0 I give you the tools and the support to be able to take these steps.
This practice is a muscle, and once you understand how to access it, and even more how to build that muscle through intentional practice, it's a skill set you have for life. Not simply to work through the challenge in front of you, but to be able to face and overcome any challenge or opportunity you face throughout your life going forward. My friend, everything we talked about today, seeing the facts clearly, acknowledging the truth of your thoughts, validating your emotional experience, and then choosing who you want to be.
This is the art of radical acceptance. It's not about resigning yourself to the circumstances of your life that you don't want. It's not about lowering your expectations or giving up hope.
It's about telling the truth about what's hard, feeling what you need to feel, and then stepping into the power that you do have in every moment. The power to decide how you show up. This is how you create peace and develop the self-trust to have confidence to show up to the challenges and opportunities of your life, no matter how they come.
My friend, the beauty of radical acceptance is that your peace and confidence and your connection with your big kid, all of this becomes possible not because the circumstances change, but because you learn how to show up to those circumstances in a very powerful way. And you have so much more power than you think, my friend. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
