Acceptance vs Avoidance: How to accept difficult emotions like anxiety

"You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf" Jon Kabat-Zinn

Acceptance vs. Avoidance - Dealing with difficult emotions like fears and anxiety.

Avoidance of negative emotions

I was prompted to write this after a conversation with a client regarding how best he should deal with a fear. I explained that to help him overcome his fear, he should learn to accept it. However, he thought that this meant avoiding the activity that was causing his fear to avoid any discomfort, until he had overcome his fear. However, this is the opposite - avoidance, and would make things worse.

Although this avoidance may well be what your brain/ego is telling you to do and is in the short term, much more comfortable, this behaviour reinforces your fear. Avoidance worsens fears and phobias, because you are telling yourself that the object of your fear is so so bad, that it must be avoided at all cost! Further, the fact that you are staying firmly in your comfort zone, means that that is exactly where you stay and you never learn to feel safe in the feared situation. Further, comfort zones can often get more and more limiting as quite often fears and phobias will get worse over time as your brain errs on the side of safety and will generalise to other similar situations. Further, you can then lose self-confidence and this can all lead to a downward spiral.

All emotions are normal

It is normal to experience a whole range of emotions in life, including the ones we perceive as negative such as anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, shame, guilt. In fact it is necesary to experience all of our emotions. One example is when I saw my young son about to step out onto a road when a car was coming. My fear response enabled my adrenaline to shoot up so fast that I managed to grab him and pull him back to safetly.

Negative emotions are uncomfortable and can give rise to negative thoughts, however they tell us when something is wrong, so it is important that we feel into them. As Jon Kabat-Zinn said "You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf." How we deal with these emotions can significantly impact our life.

What is Acceptance?

Acceptance means allowing the mind to have true deep understanding of how things really are. It allows us to become fully aware of difficulties, and to respond to them in the most skilful way, using time and space to work out the wisest way of responding. Accepting experience means simply accepting this moment, whatever is going on, rather than trying to create some other state. We simply notice and observe whatever is already present: we let it be. This is the way to relate to experiences that have a strong pull on our attention.

Acceptance literally means “taking what is offered”. It doesn’t mean giving up or admitting defeat; it doesn’t mean just gritting your teeth and bearing it. It means fully opening yourself to your present reality - acknowledging how it is, right here and now, in letting go of the struggle with life as it is in this moment.

So, to give you an example, if you have anxiety of using an elevator, acceptance would be acknowledging that you have certain uncomfortable sensations when you go in a lift. When you go in a lift, you will aim to accept the uncomfortable sensations - allow them to come, don't battle them or try to make them go away. If you try to battle anxiety or fear, you will never win! If you stay in the lift, your brain has learnt that nothing actually happened - you were in fact safe after all. Your brain can learn to feel safe again in the end, if you keep going into the lift and being accepting of your sensations. Over time your fear tends to reduce as you feel more and more safe.

The Benefits of Acceptance

Choosing acceptance over avoidance has numerous benefits. Firstly, acceptance helps reduce the power that fears and anxiety hold over us. When we confront rather than run from our fears, we begin to realise that they often diminish in intensity over time. This process can lead to resilience and personal growth. Additionally, acceptance can enhance our coping strategies, enabling us to develop healthier reactions to stressors rather than resorting to avoidance patterns that may lead to greater anxiety in the long run.

Using Mindfulness to Embrace Acceptance

To practice acceptance effectively, you could consider using Mindfulness techniques: Start by observing your feelings without judgment. Rather than labeling your anxiety as 'bad' or 'unacceptable,' try to experience it fully.

Use the breath as a gentle and friendly way to bring curiosity to the part of the body experiencing discomfort by breathing into that part on the in breath and breathing out from that part on the out breath. You could say to yourself “it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. Let me feel it”. Then just stay with the awareness of the bodily sensations and your relationship to them, breathing with them, accepting them, letting them be. It might be helpful to repeat “it’s okay, whatever it is, it’s okay to feel this right now”, using each out breath to soften and open to the sensations. Then just stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations and your relationship to them, breathing with them, accepting them, letting them be. You could ask yourself if the sensations have a colour, texture, shape or weight? Notice if sensations change, move, intensify, with a sense of just watching, like you would watch clouds in the sky.

It's also important when dealing with anxiety and fears, that you stay out of your head, as your brain will be producing negative thoughts which can lure you in and make things all the worse. By keeping your focus on your bodily sensations you give your brain a more useful focus.

The Path Toward Acceptance

Navigating difficult emotions such as fears and anxiety through acceptance offers a powerful alternative to avoidance. While avoidance may seem like the easier path initially, it often leads to increased anxiety and more limitations over time. By embracing acceptance, we can learn to understand and break free of the control that fears can create. Understanding that fears and anxiety are a part of life can allow us to cultivate a healthier, more compassionate approach to our emotions. Remember, acceptance is not about erasing all difficult emotions but rather transforming your relationship with them to set you free.

Acceptance was a very important tool for myself when overcoming my anxiety and pain. For example, I would fear walking more than a mile, as this would often cause pain. Then once I was in pain I tended to ruminate on it, focus on where and how I could feel the pain and try to work out how long it was going to be there and get angry at myself for having overdone it again. All this fear and rumination would fire up my fear response in the brain and drive up my pain, which would then increase rumination, and so on.

By practicing acceptance (and staying out of rumination) I broke the cycle. I would go for a walk and say to myself, "I may experience some discomfort, however I know that the walk is not going to cause any damage and I can still enjoy my walk". I would focus my mind on my walk, feeling into positive sensations in my body, noticing the trees, plants etc around me (instead of purely zoning into my knees to see if there was pain there yet!). When I did notice any pain, I would go "Ok, there is a sensation on my knee cap" ... and I would have a sense of curiosity about it - is it a dull sensation? Where is it exactly? Oh... it's moving, that's interesting..." and so on. I would notice the automatic disaster thoughts pop up and remind myself "it's ok, I am safe, I'm just getting sensations from moving my body". I would also keep a smile on my face to tell my mind and body I was safe.

Obviously some days I struggled more with keeping accepting of my pain than others, and I would still get sensations - it didn't have overnight success in making my pain go. In fact if I practiced with this in mind it would backfire and my pain would stay. However, over time I would learn that I could keep calm and enjoy a walk even when there was discomfort, so I become more accepting of pain as it wasn't going to ruin my day like it did before. The more I accepted it and wasn't fearful, the less pain I had and the more empowered I felt. I would say that this practice was one of the most useful tools for overcoming my pain. It is still a practice I use regularly to deal with any of the uncomfortable emotions and situations that are just part of living. I would encourage you to give it a try and persevere - you are more powerful than you know!

If you would like to seek one to one or group tuition in Mindfulness, or book in some sessions to help you break free of anxiety or other difficult emotions, please get in touch to see how I can help.

If you would like to learn more about how to overcome chronic pain, please see breakfreeofpain.com.