Acceptance, the highest expression of self-control? No, I haven’t encountered this idea before. Can we, please, explore it further?
Adina is 29 years old, and I met her three days after her boyfriend sent a message telling her not to wait for him. Ever. They had been and lived together for four years.
Now, three months later, at session number 13 (hm…), Adina seems to be once again stepping back from the path that could bring her to the point of accepting the breakup.
Conversation About Weather
– It’s gotten so hot. I left early this morning when it was cold, really cold. And look now. This weather irritates me.
– So changeable, right? What can you do about it?
A few seconds of silence pass as Adina looks for her notebook in which she writes down everything she wants to bring up in therapy for each session. Just as she’s about to read, I remind her that she hasn’t answered the question. And because she frowns, puzzled, I repeat:
– What can you do about it? The weather, I mean.
Slightly annoyed:
– Nothing, what can I do?
– Nothing but accept it as it is.
– Well, wait a minute. It’s not the same as what’s happening to me, is it? How could I not accept the weather? What could I do? Change it? It’s absurd.
– You say it irritates you.
– Yes, right. And what can I do? I don’t understand where you’re going with this. I can’t accept this breakup the way I accept that the weather is what it is.
I feel that without reassurance that I know where I want us to go together, I’ll lose her. Adina doesn’t believe in stories or metaphors. Even therapeutic metaphors. She told me clearly right from the start, when I introduced my working style. So I returned to clear, unequivocal methods. But it didn’t work as expected. So why not take a chance? Today, the 13th.
– Trust in the path I’m just opening up. I understand that it’s hard for you now to make any rational connection between the state of the weather and the situation you’re in. Just let go a little. That’s all I’m asking. And if it doesn’t work, I promise to stop. So: it’s true that you can’t influence the weather, but what can you do to make your irritation less bothersome?
– I want to trust you, but I still don’t get it. You mean to think positively about the whims of the weather, or what?
– When I said “what can you do,” I was thinking about action. Let me give you some clues. What’s next to your purse?
– The umbrella?
– Yes, I was looking at the umbrella. Why do you have it with you?
– Rain was forecasted, among other things.
– A rain you can’t stop, you can’t influence. You accept it. But you take your umbrella. This is an action under your control. If now I were to add that I consider acceptance the highest expression of self-control, what associations would you make?
– Acceptance, the highest expression of self-control? No, I haven’t encountered this idea before. Can we please explore it further?
Conversation About Terms
Specialized literature enumerates and describes, in various ways, the steps we go through to accept a situation over which we no longer have any influence or which no longer falls within our control. I won’t reiterate them or make another classification.
What I propose is to distinguish between a few common terms.
Control
– That’s what I planned for you today. (See the end of the Conversation About Weather). Let’s start talking about what we controlled today, what we felt we had control over.
Adina smiles.
– Fine, agreed. I have two examples. One: I pushed the limits in the morning meeting, consciously doing so, and managed to convince the HR guy to reconsider his stance on an issue he had already classified. And two: I intruded quite a bit into my colleague’s space to see what she was working on a project that shouldn’t have been assigned to her.
– One: this is an example of how you influenced the HR guy to change his decision. Two: this is an example of spying.
We exercise or should exercise control, among other things, over:
- our daily choices
- major decisions for our lives
- the movements, actions we undertake
- how we express ourselves verbally and non-verbally
- how we manage and express emotions, feelings
- how we integrate external influences into our behavioral, cognitive, affective schema
- how we relate, how we approach people, events, places, objects, etc.
– That’s it?
– Do you think it’s insignificant? Wait to see how much more you can do. Tell me a bit about how you acted in the case of your HR colleague.
– There’s not much to say. I had the correct information, I had documented myself very well, and from this position, I approached the discussion, knowing he is a supporter of well-argued things. Despite this, it was a long exchange of opinions; he got a bit heated, but I knew that if I stayed balanced and especially if I didn’t contradict him and listened carefully, I could win.
– Let me translate everything you’ve said so we can get where we both want. Actually, what you’re saying now is that by being in control of your emotions, the way you communicated and related to this person, you managed to influence a decision. Is that correct? Do you resonate with what I’m saying?
– I can’t contradict you.
Influence
When you manage to be in control of your personal area, which includes everything we mentioned earlier, you have a good chance of influencing, among other things:
- the opinions, decisions of others
- the evolution, unfolding of certain moments, situations
- the outcome of conflicts
- the situational behavior of others
- the affective disposition of others
– Why wasn’t I able to influence Sergiu not to leave? Why can’t I influence him to come back? Just because I’ve lost any trace of control over how I express my emotions towards him?
– To be able to answer that, don’t overlook an important element from what I said earlier. Do you know what I’m talking about?
– I think so. You said: “you have a good chance of influencing.”
– Yes.
– And you think I can’t influence anything here anymore, right?
– Before influencing anything here, as you say, what can you control?
– I’m in a Brownian motion of emotions and feelings, what should I control? I can’t gather myself, I don’t sleep, I find it hard to concentrate, my schedule is a mess.
– Yet today you managed to change the course of a situation.
– Because the stakes were high.
– Is there a higher stake than your peace of mind? Higher than your emotional health? You seek explanations, ask for explanations, try to be around Sergiu even now. Your interventions are, let me call them chaotic, outside your space. This is the Brownian feeling you have.
I felt the tension growing in the space between us. I stopped from doing anything else and led her into a very simple breathing exercise. When we seemed to have returned to a better state, I attacked:
– Please say, “I accept Sergiu’s decision.” Take your time. Then try to say what you felt saying this sentence.
Lightning couldn’t split the air like Adina’s gaze did. I thought, for a moment, that everything was lost.
– I accept Sergiu’s decision.
I’m not a therapist who favors hugging, not even putting a hand on a shoulder to make the person in front of me feel I’m there for them. I silently witnessed, assuring her through a few words that I was with her, the crying that shook her for several minutes.
Acceptance
And here we are talking about acceptance.
We accept any situation, event that is not within the area we can control and no longer falls under our influence.
We accept, in fact, that everyone else has the same right over their areas of control and influence. Once we understand all this, we return to the level of self-control: what can I do with myself in this situation that I have just to accept? What do I do with my thoughts and emotions? How do I detach myself and what type of actions do I choose to take next?
Here is the fine-tuning point. Acceptance is the highest level of self-control because it brings us back to the only real option we have, which is to choose what to do with ourselves.
Acceptance does not mean that we suddenly agree with a context we were striving to influence in the direction we wanted. It does not mean that we like it, it just means that we no longer resist and do not waste our efforts, time, and energy in a direction that can no longer be changed by our intervention.
Acceptance is our objective eye. A step back does more than months of effort to influence. A step back clears the view.
The Road Can Be Rough…
… but we have at our disposal some tools of emotional intelligence:
- attention and respect for the needs and decisions of others
- real listening (to understand, not just to find an answer)
- giving up the status of know-it-all (this implies knowing and accepting our own limits)
- giving up judging what is good, what is bad, and replacing it with “different” (if others choose another path than ours, it’s not bad, it’s just different)
- learning the meaning of the verbs “to accept” and “to integrate”
- using phrases like: I believe, In my opinion, instead of The truth is, Let me tell you how, etc.
The world is richer because there are diverse ideas. We don’t always agree with some of them, but we can accept that they simply exist and that they are the creation of other people.
In turn, we demand the acceptance of our ideas, born from our own education, mentality, perspective, vision, personality, and our own life experiences.
I leave here a model of what we might call a journal for each of the three stages: control, influence, acceptance.
To be completed over 3-4 weeks:
What and especially how I controlled myself today.
What did I influence through the way I expressed myself, acted, communicated.
What did I accept by saying to myself: I accept this situation, so I go to the highest level of self-control (what can I do for myself in the given situation).
