Acceptance: An ability to accept and allow rather than avoid either good or bad feelings
Once we’ve made the decision to be more open to life and people, or to not be so self-protective, a range of good and bad feelings might come up. Perhaps memories or depths of feelings that we haven’t allowed ourselves to feel. Either way now that they are fully allowed the next skill required is compassionate acceptance. This goes for positive and negative feelings.
It may seem obvious that if someone decided to be open to feelings then they would be accepting of them, but that’s not always true. Someone might have made the decision to be fully open, but then have a reaction to the feelings when they come up and want to ignore them or distract themselves again. Allowing the discomfort is often foreign to us and goes against our impulse to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
The first step is to accept the feeling, not try and get away from it, or blame yourself or other people for it, as that can also stir it up more. To accept the feeling means to allow it through, or to have a non-judgmental, non-resisting response to it. In this way, it does not get stirred up or increased by judgments. Nor does it get avoided using strategies about what can be done with it. When such emotion is given room, we can get a much clearer picture of the beliefs that cause it, and what we can do about it.
There are a range of upsetting emotions such as anger, fear, or sadness that may come up. If we’re not used to letting these be felt fully, they can affect how we act. At times if it is not appropriate or helpful to communicate the feelings, for example at work, we can still allow them but manage their expression. At other times, it might be good to communicate what’s happening which may change how we act in situations or when we are with people.
This greater level of openness and emotional honesty might upset partners, friends, family, or people we work with, as they are used to us being a certain way. For some, it might please them if they were asking for us to be more emotionally open. Others might want us to stay the same as it might suit their own preference to not be too open. Each event can be judged for itself and it’s always good to be open to feedback.
In this skill we work with our automatic reactions to good, bad, or neutral feelings that come up. The first goal is to allow them to be here without resistance. A secondary goal is to see that they are a direct result of the beliefs we have constructed, and these beliefs can change. These emotions, like thoughts and sensations, are what mindfulness calls passing mental events, they come and go.