S5 E9: A Nuanced Discussion about Acceptance

Listen Now!

• EPISODE RESOURCES

• EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

  • Acceptance can feel very challenging because it is oftentimes connected to accepting something we do not like.

  • There is no one-size-fits-all way of accepting things in life, it can be an individual process people go through. 

  • Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic approach that helps people to accept their ambivalence about change rather than trying to force others to change, which often backfires. It helps people to explore their own reasons and ways in which they can consider and implement changes in their life. This is especially useful in the realm of addictions in which change is often resisted when people are told to change. 

  • Taking in different perspectives and viewpoints can create cognitive dissonance, meaning that we can feel distress while holding opposing views in our mind at one time. It can feel conflicting. This can lead people to have the urge to think in an all-or-nothing way rather than accept this internal conflict and find ways to resolve it. 

  • Some psychotherapy approaches suggest that internal conflicts are at the source of our mental health issues and it is important to find ways to resolve that inner conflict and to find a form of integration. 

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy suggests that how we react in the present and cope with situations could be a pattern we formed earlier in life within our family structure and dynamics. When applicable to someone’s therapeutic process, this can help the person to feel less anger at themselves or shame for their dysregulated and harmful reactions they have but instead have compassion for how they developed and gradually begin to replace these coping  mechanisms with healthier forms. This is a form of acceptance for things we do not like about ourselves via compassion, which can create space for change. 

  • Anger, the opposite of acceptance, can often come from feeling misunderstood by others or having a hard time communicating what you want to communicate to others. Having space to explore anger (understand what triggered it and what influenced it) can be more helpful than displacing it on other people with irritability and picking fights rather than resolving the anger somehow when it is possible. At the same time, having healthy outlets to express and/or to allow ourselves to sit with our discomfort and anger can also be helpful sometimes too. 

  • Anger can sometimes hold us back from thinking openly and flexibly in a way that can help us address our problems and issues. 

  • Acceptance can come from understanding ourselves first before trying to figure out how we approach life; like how we can show up in situations, how we learn, how we take care of ourselves, how we relate with others, etc. If we don’t understand ourselves, including our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we can resist help and an openness to trying different approaches rather than being stuck in expectations or inflexible patterns. This goes for helping others, as well, as it is important to understand the other person. 

  • We can find ways to be vulnerable with others in appropriate ways that can lead to genuine support rather than just getting attention. 

  • Being vulnerable does not mean we need to berate ourselves with terribly negative beliefs and thoughts about ourselves. 

  • Sometimes if we can accept circumstances that we do not like allows us to be vulnerable and in turn transform the experience into something that could be meaningful, genuine, and powerful to grow and evolve in the long-run despite the short-term distress and struggle with acceptance. 

  • Sometimes we don’t need to change and ‘biohack’ everything about ourselves; which can become an obsession and avoidance of acceptance. 

  • The unhealthy coping mechanisms and negative beliefs we hold may mask our more authentic sense of self on the inside, which can help us to not attach too much to coping  mechanisms as an identity.

  • Accepting of a circumstance you are in can be a starting point to finding clarity as to how to navigate the circumstance, whether that is to step back instead of trying to change or taking action to make a change. 

• TRANSCRIPTION

  Gerald Reid  00:09

  Music. Welcome back to season five, the ReidConnect-ED Podcast. Today we're going to talk about acceptance. You may be asking yourself, What does acceptance even mean? Maybe you have found yourself saying in your life. You just want me to accept this. How can I accept this? Because in many ways, it's almost like an existential conundrum, because acceptance is often, if not always, connected with something that we do not like or do not want to accept in the first place. So in today's episode, we're going to discuss the topic of acceptance, but before we do, we're going to have to accept that there is no straightforward piece of advice or process by which you, the listener or we the speakers can really, truly accept things in life. It's really an individual process that we may need to go through to get to that point. There is no magic pill. There's no way that we can just expect us to magically accept something that's hard. It's a process. It takes time. So we're going to try to talk about this in a nuanced way. And we also do not expect that Alexis and I are going to solve the riddle of the universe and or bring you to some sort of state of enlightenment. Because, you know, acceptance is again, it's not a magic pill, it's not a straightforward process, but we do feel like it is important, and there's been many therapies in the world of mental health that revolve around the idea of acceptance. It's a complicated topic, for sure, so we do encourage you to utilize your own resources and not just take this information at face value, but really try to understand how it applies to you and even bring it into your own therapy, if you are in therapy and if you're a therapist, maybe take some ideas and bring this into how you work with your patients. All right, so why don't we start with a general question, and the question for the audience would be, you know, why is acceptance so significant? Why is it important when it comes to mental health, and you know, people's well being and the way people navigate life, why don't we start with that as just opposing as a general question, why is acceptance so important? Why is this significant? So

  Alexis Reid  02:12

  I just want to preface this whole conversation in the context of our expertise and specialty, right? Because the idea of acceptance has come up for, you know, 1000s of years, from the Stoics, the ancient religions, philosophies, from stoicism to Buddhism, and all the different religions in between, right? We can, we can find portions of this idea of acceptance in a lot of different ways, in a lot of different places, and by no means are we saying we're experts in those things. So we're going to be talking in the context and in the realm of our expertise through understanding mental health, thinking about well being, thinking about learning, education, growth and development, which are our specialties. So I want to, just before we dive into all this again, like you said in the introduction, recognize that there's so many different ways to talk about this, but for this episode, we're going to talk about it in the realm of like where we are right here, right now, currently in 2024 and you know, when we think about acceptance, it's really about understanding and appreciating where we are right Now, right instead of this idea of just constantly chasing and wanting and and pursuing more and more and more, and that's a really difficult thing to consider and to appreciate, especially in this day and age where we're constantly fed this idea that we need to be better, to do better, to have more, to accomplish more, To set goals to Once you accomplish those goals, create some new goals. And you know, this is actually a conundrum in my own work, in my own personal life, too, sometimes that, you know, I'm known as the productivity person that helps people to be more efficient and productive. And yeah, that is a big part of my role and job. But when we think about, like, constantly chasing something more. I think we lose so much so when, when I think of this idea of acceptance, it's more of like, can I appreciate where I am right now in the present moment? Yeah,

  Gerald Reid  04:12

  it's a good point that you make. And certainly over the past few decades, the way, the way that it's almost like everything becomes you gotta be better. You gotta be the best. You have to compare yourself to other people. It can feel like, you know, everything's not enough, and also the way everything is at our fingertips at all the time. So work never you never leave work, right? You know, it's not like a nine to five you go home like you're constantly having, like we all have. A lot of us have work that stays with us. It lingers. So it always feels like we have to be doing more, and it's hard to set boundaries around, you know, our time and our energy, because it feels like we always have, even, you know, within families or parents, right? You always, you always have access to the person that you want to reach out to. So there's not a lot of boundaries anymore around time and energy and space. So. Feels like there's more and more and more, which can make it hard to really just be present with where you are and feel like compartmentalized in some ways, where you are and being where you are. So it's an interesting kind of change societally over the past few decades that could make it more challenging to accept things as they are and not constantly be thinking about something else that needs to get done, or things that need your attention.

  Alexis Reid  05:23

  Now, for the listeners, I kind of want you to press pause and reflect yourself on like, what does acceptance mean for you? What does acceptance mean for you right now? Because there might be a slew of things that you're grappling with or that you feel like you need to do, or there's pressure in your world that's put on you to do, either, you know, something that's perceived or actual. And think about like, what does that mean in your world right now? And Jerry, I wonder if you could do that for yourself too. This is something that I am constantly reflecting on. Like, you know, where am I at? What are the things that are more urgent for me to tend to and and how can I compartmentalize those sometimes so I can be present? And we've talked about this on the show too, that in our roles, in our jobs, like we have to be very present in every session that we have, in every meeting that we have. And you know, even in our jobs, as much as we can be mindful and present. Sometimes there's there's these little distractions, and this is a big part of my work, this awareness training. There's awareness of the things that pull out our attention, that pull out our emotions, that pull out our physicality, that can sometimes distract us from the present moment. And it's really important just to press pause and check in and say, Okay, where am I right here and right now? Because I think that's ultimately the first step, the way to start in even understanding, appreciating and actualizing some sort of acceptance in your world and in your life.

  Gerald Reid  06:56

  Yeah. And so let's, let's kind of dive into the idea that, you know, in some ways, talking about being present, and we want to get to the idea of acceptance. And like you said, being present is a is a cornerstone. It's a foundation to becoming more accepting and and like you said, when we have sessions with people, I think it's a it's a real blessing for people. It's almost like a sacred space to it took a ritual to to enter into a presence in the moment experience, which I think people appreciate, and they don't even realize that they need it or they wanted it in the first place, because we just don't have spaces like that in society so much anymore, where you can just be with someone and just explore and be open minded and not feel this pressure to accomplish something or to be distracted or to rush things. So let's talk about the idea that slowing down and accepting kind of just what is right now right could be number one scary for people. You know, even with therapy, right, it's hard to just sit, you know, sit with emotions or thoughts or things people don't like about themselves, about life, and just to sit with it and just to talk with it and process it. And in some ways, therapy is a reframe for that that actually, that is therapeutic, to just sit with it, talk about it, process it, rather than just kind of push it away or suppress it or or ruminate about it, but actually just experience it. And so, you know, I think sometimes people feel like they don't want to accept that they can just sit with something, or just be with something, or just accept what's happening, even if it's unpleasant, because it feels like it's being complacent. And I think acceptance sometimes is it's misinterpreted as being complacent, meaning or lazy, right? Meaning that it's not productive to just accept something for what it is. Because people, you know, it's almost like, it's counterintuitive, right? When I'm encouraging people to sit with and accept things that are not the way they want them to be, it seems counterintuitive. Because why would you want to accept something you don't like? So it's a, it's a, really a paradigm shift to realize, actually, that is therapeutic, to be able to sit with something you don't like, because if you can't, you know, you're just pushing it away and suppressing it, you know, brushing it under the rug, and eventually it's going to come out in different ways, right? So obviously, it's hard, it's a process to learn how to do that. But, you know, I think it's a it's important for people not to misinterpret acceptance as being complacent and lazy. Actually, it could be the opposite, right? Because if you really want to heal and grow or solve problems, the first step, really a lot of times, is accepting it and truly understanding it and accepting that exists. Because if you can't accept it, you can't truly dive into it and understand it on a deeper level and process it, because you're just going to be pushing it away or rushing through it or trying to, you know, run away from it, which is not actually the way that therapy works.

  Alexis Reid  09:46

  You know, I can't let the word lazy come up without pointing out that that's my least favorite word, right? I always say because, you know, a lot of the people I work with, they call themselves lazy. They've been called lazy because maybe they're feeling. Unproductive or procrastinating or have a difficult time prioritizing things, but you know, essentially, you're making a choice in those moments. It's more of you're maybe choosing to avoid, you know, avoiding this idea of this is where I'm at. This is some a part of me that I need to accept, just as the same way as like, behaviorally, when people are choosing to avoid the thing that maybe feels challenging for them, I think it's a really important point to kind of just zoom in on here, because ultimately, we're making choices.

  Gerald Reid  10:49

  And the thing too, Lex is that it may not even be conscious, you know, like we go through life doing things we may not even know what's motivating us to avoid something. Yeah, and, and so, you know, part of acceptance is to to not be, you know, to not beat yourself up for having a problem, to not beat yourself up not judging yourself so much for for the things that we're running away from, to just try to just have compassion for yourself, to understand, okay, maybe this, maybe there's a reason this problem happened, or maybe there's a reason there's parts of myself I don't like, you know, Dr Richard Swartz created what's called internal family systems therapy. Ifs it's really an integration of other therapies that have been developed over time. And he's, you know, suggesting like other therapies do, is that the way that we react to situations could be kind of patterns we've developed over time within our family structures when we were growing up, and to learn that these are just kind of coping mechanisms. They helped us to get through hard times, right? When different issues happen within families or traumas or stress or challenges, right? We all have to cope somehow. And when you're younger, you don't know how to cope. You just cope the way that you react, and that's kind of how you get through it. And so the idea is that you learn how to have compassion, that that was the best you can do. And now that you're older and you kind of have these same patterns, you can learn how to replace those coping mechanisms. So there's those patterns, replace them with something different, right? Something more adaptive, something more healthy, that makes more sense now, instead of just kind of repeating the same patterns. But again, the acceptance piece comes in really importantly here. And Dr Schwartz wrote a nice paper about, you know, we're always told to change, change your behavior, change who you are, change what you're doing. And in many ways, when we're told to change, when we have pressure to change, sometimes the opposite happens. We don't want to change. We become stubborn. We dig in our heels, we avoid we feel embarrassed, we feel ashamed, right? So, so therapy and, you know, the the idea of acceptance is important, because instead of having a shame or guilt or or anger towards yourself for things about yourself you don't like, you can learn how to have compassion and realize, oh, okay, that was, you know, these are relics of the past. This is, you know, whatever, like, you know, people who experienced tough things growing up like, these are just relics of the past, where this has just helped me to survive, but they're not healthy anymore, right? Maybe they weren't healthy in the first place, but that's the best I can do. And now I can learn how to develop more mature or more flexible, adaptive ways of coping that are not just these same patterns over and over and over. A lot of ways, it's like breaking generational trauma, breaking generational patterns that that happen that's not uncommon. We see it all the time throughout history, right? That things are just generational, kind of passed on. And you know, hopefully through therapy, people can kind of break those cycles. And it's not like good it's gonna go away forever, right? They can re crop up as time goes on and new generations happen. Because we're human, we're vulnerable. We're never gonna be perfect, but we can learn and grow and evolve, you know, generationally. So, so all this is to say back to the idea of acceptance. You know, when we're told to change, when we want to change, we want to run away from it. We want to resist it. We can try to have compassion for ourselves and understand where these patterns came from and how they're just coping mechanisms, and understand them and make peace with them in order to change in the first place. We

  Alexis Reid  14:15

  definitely have our professor hats on today. That was a really great lecture. Thank you, but I think you hit on so many important points, and it's reminiscent, actually, of the course I'm teaching right now in child growth and development, going back to where you started, and talking about, like we react in different ways, sometimes based on, you know, some internal systems that are coming up for us. You know, when it, whether it's sensorily or emotionally, that sometimes we have a predisposition to react and respond to situations in different ways. And, you know, I was just teaching a module on, you know, nature, nurture, and thinking about how sometimes we react the way we've seen people around us react, and it doesn't necessarily perpetuate, you know, the path that might feel more. Most comfortable to you, and it's so interesting. As you were talking about all this, I'm thinking about how for a lot of listeners, depending on generationally, where you're at in your life and what your experiences have been historically, this might seem very foreign to you, because you grew up very differently. Either there's frustration or there's stress, and stuff comes up, and in those moments where things maybe feel uncomfortable or conflictual because you're like, I know this is the way we've always talked and communicated, but this doesn't feel right to me. Do we accept that like, do we accept things that don't always feel like they're in line with our values, what with what feels right for us? You know, this is a really tricky concept to explore, and I'm sure we'll get into it in a couple minutes, and we're gonna have a whole episode on this too. But you know, the idea of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is all around. Can we accept the things that exist in our worlds, things that either we do or don't have any control over, and how do we react and respond to those situations? Are we, as you say, going to just cope with them the way we've gotten through before? Or can we take that point of acceptance and recognize where potentially there could be, as they say, in acceptance, Commitment Therapy, act a choice point, or I call it a pivot point, where maybe you're not making a huge shift, but maybe it's a small, incremental pivot or or adjustment that feels more comfortable for you in a moment to be able to get through a situation. Or, you know, the bigger, grander scheme of things kind of shape your trajectory in your life, potentially,

  Gerald Reid  16:43

  yeah, and that's also, I think, a nice reframe for change in general. We did have an episode about change, but when you can look at change as a process in small steps, it's way less overwhelming. You know? I think people sometimes can, they don't even know where to start, right? And so I like what you said is just kind of break, like a small change could be a breakthrough for a person, and it may not seem like a big thing to you or to someone else in their life. They may be like, well, they still haven't changed, right? But that's not the point. The point is you're actually involved and engaged in the process, and that, that, that, that those steps could look like anything. It depends on the person, right? I mean, you know, working with people in therapy that that change could be, Oh, wow. Like I didn't really realize all the details, all the things, all the triggers, all the ways I was thinking about this situation that led me to react that way. So I guess I have, you know, just learning about that and also accepting that that's the case, right? You got to be vulnerable and to accept that is actually a breakthrough. And just because the person hasn't changed, you know, as a therapist and as people in as people in the patient's life or the person's life, I think we can all, you know, people in their life can, can rally around the fact that, wow, that let's celebrate just the person becoming, you know, having more insight into themselves and more compassion towards themselves, rather than it being kind of like a fight, you know. And you know, sometimes when you're fighting with yourself or you're fighting with other people, it kind of just perpetuates, you know, the resistance to anything getting better, right? And anger certainly has its place in the world. You know, anger helps us to fight injustices, but I think if you get stuck in anger, which a lot of times is the opposite of acceptance, it actually prevents us from having an open mind. And you do need an open mind to think flexibly, to be open to different ideas, because you're not always going to have the answers yourself. And that's part of being vulnerable and accepting that we're human. None of us have all the answers. None of us are perfect. And I can't tell you how many times I work with people and I ask them, you know, how many times have you talked to somebody else about this? And a lot of times they're like, nobody, not this, not in depth, not this much. And just by talking about it, just getting it out, rather than just obsessing over something over and over and over and only having one perspective, just just talking about it and opening up about it is therapy. It is therapeutic. And it's a learning to accept that you can just talk about it. Let's just accept that. All right. Let's

  Alexis Reid  19:16

  go back for a second though, because I think and two really important points about anger is that one, it can manifest in a lot of different ways, if you do, just hold on to it. So sometimes the experience of releasing the anger or talking through, you know, the things that are making you feel angry in a certain situation are really important because, you know, there's, there's new research and studies coming out now, and thinking about, you know, the the psychosomatic impacts of of holding on to anger for a long time. And then the other piece too, is that, you know, Jerry, I know you're talking about anger, sometimes it could be negative and detrimental to your life, but sometimes it could also be, like, one of those pivot points, actually, when you release it, and then you're like, oh, okay, wait, I had to. Is get that out so I can think clearly, because I think there's also that other side of it, and having, you know, a safe space to be able to release anger in a way that is, is not going to be judgmental, and is that that will be supportive, I think is really important to remember too, because, you know, we also don't want to judge ourselves when we feel the emotion of anger, because that's going to come up too frustration can perpetuate anger, which can, you know, potentially turn into something that's really productive. And, you know, I say this all the time with the students I work with in different contexts than you're working in, but the same emotions come up where a lot of times, a lot of kids, the younger kids, especially who can't articulate the emotions that are coming up for them, they will experience anger, and sometimes it gets projected to me or to the teacher, to the work, but really a lot of times, in the situations I'm experiencing with them, they might just be angry at themselves because something feels difficult, or They don't understand it yet, where that comes up, and in my work and what I try to do, and me understanding the emotional side allows for me to say, hey, look, this just happened. I'm glad you released what you were feeling. It seems difficult to really describe why and how this is helpful, but I wonder what we can do with it from here, because that was a huge learning moment that we just had in that moment of frustration and anger. And I always say like these moments, I said this in the book too, that you know, a student of mine years ago, at the beginning of my educational teaching career, that was so frustrated with something mathematically. He was diagnosed with dyslexia and anxiety and and and struggled a lot, and I helped him, kind of like, sit in those stuck moments. And he went from, like a really angry moment, yeah, and then all of a sudden, there was, like, a distinct change in his disposition, in his mental clarity, in the way he was approaching his work, where he literally went from an to an aha moment. So I also want to, like put that in context too, that sometimes the anger, though it could create this big cloud and manifest in a lot of negative or detrimental ways. Sometimes can be a clearing point too.

  Gerald Reid  22:21

  Yeah, so I love that example, and I agree with you. I think anger as an emotion could signal a lot of times, is feeling misunderstood or not being able to communicate what you want to communicate to other people. I think a lot of times it comes into those realms, right? It's not always those two things, but interpersonally, I do think that happens is that the anger is basically signaling to you, oh, this person doesn't understand me, and I don't know how to help them to understand me better. And that's on the one hand. On the other hand, it could also be, you know, just feeling frustrated with yourself. And you know the movie Inside Out, right? Talks about how anger is sometimes masking sadness. We're actually sad. We don't know how to communicate our sadness, or how to validate our sadness, or to be vulnerable enough to talk about it. So we get angry, because it's easier to be angry than to be sad, right? Yeah,

  Alexis Reid  23:14

  you know, sometimes we get stuck, like even compost is filled with nurture nutrients. And it's the same thing with these really dark, heavy moments that the compost will fertilize the ground and the seeds to allow for growth to happen. So even when it feels heavy and disgusting and dirty and messy and like gross, it could potentially turn into a beautiful moment, if we can Let the rain wash it away, if we can focus on the process, if we can accept that this is momentary and it doesn't have to be forever. Yeah,

  Gerald Reid  23:49

  I wrote a song called sit with it, and the chorus is, sit with it for a moment and hold still the world. It will keep on turning until we can see another view and we can hear each other too. And you know, it's about sitting with these emotions, and then eventually things can come together. And you know, we're kind of getting into the idea of being vulnerable and accepting help when we're struggling with something. And I think that is acceptance. And you know, how many times have we both worked with people and just part of being human, everyone does this is when you don't feel like you can ask for help, you get angry, right? And you feel like you're angry with yourself because you're blaming yourself, because you're taking on too much responsibility for something that you may just need help with. Maybe you're misinterpreting something, you know, working with athletes who put in so much work into their sport and they're tired, and maybe they just need space to rest sometimes. Instead, I was

  Alexis Reid  24:41

  just gonna say that actually, and in those moments, sometimes you just need time. You need space. You need to actually, just like, you know, take the opportunity to slow down. I think this is why meditation and mindfulness practices are so helpful and important. Because, you know, like you said before, what. Might look like. Laziness is avoidance, and when we keep going the opposite side of like, the behavioral, quote, unquote lazy, the opposite side of it is busyness, sometimes too, where we're not accepting and we just keep going, Yeah, instead of actually quieting and going inward.

  Gerald Reid  25:18

  I mean, the classic example is taking a nap. You know, it's very healthy for athletes at high levels to take naps. It's like, actually recommended. It's actually good for their performance. And like, societally, if you look at someone taking a nap, you're gonna be like, Oh, this person's lazy. I mean, you want to take naps appropriately. I think Dr, J, dr, Jade Wu said nap responsibly. I

  Alexis Reid  25:41

  think that's the theme of our whole podcast. Take naps,

  Gerald Reid  25:45

  no, but certainly you know that can change everything. So it's accepting what your limits. And part of it, you know, acceptance, as we're going to get into as

  Alexis Reid  25:53

  well, is, can we just, like, highlight that again, accepting limits. Say that again, accepting our limits. I

  Gerald Reid  26:01

  think accepting just limits, it's kind of a conundrum, right? Because, on the one hand, we don't want to feel like we have limits. We want to push boundaries. We want to grow beyond what the expectations are. And there's some healthy aspects to that. There's no doubt, right? That's what you know, creates progress. Evolution changes breakthroughs, right? But on the other hand, if we don't have limitations on ourselves or to realize that we need to set limits, we can push ourselves too much, right? We can push other people too much. We can not actually accept ourselves and other people for who we are and expect too much. And when you expect too much too often. It's just a recipe for burnout, and it's also a recipe for people getting angry at each other, okay,

  Alexis Reid  26:46

  doctor, we're talking about vulnerability and accepting assistance. Those of you who know me know that creating limits and boundaries for the work I do and most of the things I do is is kind of difficult, right? And and we'll have a whole episode on burnout. This is definitely something I see in our future. But you know that point of acceptance around I'm having a difficult time creating the boundaries and limits for myself that I know nurture me and care for me is impacting my ability to see clearly about what is happening in this moment, which might be the antithesis of acceptance. Yes, so,

  Gerald Reid  27:29

  so in therapy, there's something called motivational interviewing, and the idea is that you don't want to just, like, tell people to change. I'm

  Alexis Reid  27:36

  so glad you went there, because, like, for our listeners, this is for all the educators, coaches, parents, yeah, and

  Gerald Reid  27:42

  the spirit of motivational interviewing, as I call it, the spirit of MI is actually to respect people's autonomy. You know, you're not trying to manipulate them to do something. You're actually trying to just help people to be true to themselves, about what they actually want, what they actually care about. Because, like, you know, it's really used in addiction a lot, right? Because people who have issues with substances, they'll, you know, it's very, very common for someone to say, I don't have a problem. You know, stop bugging me about this, and they'll find any possible which way to avoid confronting the issue that they might have. And so motivation interviewing was developed for that problem, but it's applied to all situations, because change is hard, not only with addiction, but with all aspects of life. And so the idea behind Mi is actually to help people to, you know, make a make an argument, make a case themselves for why change is important to actually find so, you know, one of the the classic examples is having a decisional balance, where you kind of have pros and cons of changing or not changing, right? And you make a list, you know, and you want to even identify how much you value each thing on your list, because different things can have different values. So you know, you want to have really just think more critically for yourself. Now, nobody's forcing you to do it. Nobody's telling you these are things that are important, but you're doing it for yourself, and this is really about being honest. And you know, having a trusting, compassionate relationship with someone helps to open up the honesty to really explore the pros and cons of doing something or changing, not changing, not only over the short term, but also in the long run. I think

  Alexis Reid  29:16

  that's the core of a lot of relationships, is building that respect and comfort and familiarity with each other, that you can explore this stuff, and to keep in mind that, like we talked about in episode one of the season, that you know different chapters of our lives, different seasons of our lives, we might value or emphasize the importance of something more in one way at one point in time than we do in the other, right? And I think in a lot of times we get stuck in this is just the way we always did it. This is just the way I've always been. This is, you know, I hear this a lot from students and parents, like, Oh, I'm just not a math person. I just stink at this. I've never been good at that. Instead of, you know, that openness that you were talking about before you. Not that like a huge change needs to actually occur. And I want to dive deeper into the fact that, you know, change doesn't have to be this huge, monstrous thing, but just the openness to the fact that if something's not working, we've accepted that maybe this isn't in line with my values. For one maybe this is something that is not helping me feel the way I want to feel every day, or this is something that maybe isn't actually, you know, leading me towards where I want to be and how I want to show up in my life and in my world. You know, there, there are other possibilities. And from a executive function, neuro developmental perspective, you know, this is this cognitive inflexibility, which can be teamed with emotional inflexibility, which is a big theme in act as a therapeutic process too, to understand that when we get so stuck in the this is just the way it's always going to be, it actually prevents us from growing,

  Gerald Reid  31:02

  yeah. I, you know, if you listen back to the interview we did with Alina Mueller, who's one of the best hockey players on Earth, you know, female hockey player plays for the Boston fleet, the professional women's hockey league, yeah, you know, she said something so wise. And I really remember her saying this. She said, You know, you know, when I went through my hockey journey and with teammates and with the process I went through, you can be right in certain times, and then as time goes on, maybe what was right back then isn't right anymore. And you can be open to different perspectives and to grow. Yeah, what a wise thing to say. Well,

  Alexis Reid  31:38

  I think it's so important. And you know, in society, we see examples of this all the time, that especially now that everything's on record, everything's posted on social media these days, it's like if you said something 10 years ago, people expect that to be the exact same thing you think and do now. And it's like a really slippery slope. And a lot of people, you know, we're not gonna go into this, but are getting in trouble for that. But I think if we can think flexibly about how each experience we have in our life, the more we learn, the more interactions we have, the more you know our I'm gonna just say our spirit grows and shifts and changes with the wisdom, with the experiences, with the opportunities. If we as a society, I'm going there in my soapbox, if we as a society can be more open to this, I think we would have a more respectful dialog, instead of just these monologs of just our own narrative going on in our heads, or these oftentimes single faced commentaries on the world, on opinions that we see in social media show up?

  Gerald Reid  32:43

  Yeah, well, I'll say real quick, and I'll relate this back to the individual, is that when we've taken other perspectives, actually creates dissonance in our brains, in our heads and our minds. And dissonance is basically you have two conflicting things, right? And people really want certainty. They want to feel like, okay, what I'm doing or what's happening is what I want, or what makes sense, or is the path for me, right? And so when you have someone else suggesting something else, it's it's conflicting, it's like, well, should, should I believe that? And it becomes like an all or nothing becomes like, okay, one person's right, one person's wrong. And we can even do this within ourselves. And you know, a lot of times, you know, a lot of therapies. You know, some of the old, some of the therapies, like psychodynamic, psychoanalytical theory, you know, would suggest that we're constantly conflicted. Part of us wants something, part of us wants the other thing. Part of us feels this way, part of us feels that way, and it's conflicting, and that creates distress. And sometimes they would suggest that mental health issues are built, are created from this distress of dissonance, of conflict within our minds that we have to try to find ways to resolve that conflict. And that is, you know, something that takes time to integrate different ideas, integrate different perspectives, totally integrate different parts of ourselves, right? Which is, you know, partly what internal family systems, therapy as well, talks about is like integrating different parts of ourselves. And that is not only the internal process that can happen with other people, within the relationships they have, which is a very hard process, which is not, it's not, there's no it's not a surprise why society has a hard time. Our country is actually, you know, built upon different cultures, different people, different ideologies, actually existing together. You can imagine why this has become so robust that people are at such odds with each other, is because, you know, some other countries don't have that. They just have one way of thinking, one philosophy, one culture, and then they exist within that. We're a unique country. It's not actually happened before. You know, we're one of, you know, I'm not a great experiment. No, it really is, right. And so I think, as a psychologist, I like to look back psychologically to understand things that are happening, and I don't really want to get into societal issues or into like, cultural clashes, because, you know, that's for, you know, other people who have expertise in that. But, you know, just to look at it from a. A cognitive standpoint is interesting.

  Alexis Reid  35:01

  And I also want to say that you know what you were saying before, that at these moments, that can feel a lot of we can feel a lot of conflict and dissonance within ourselves. A lot of times, there are points where people will use that anger to push people away, right? And they will, you know, sometimes, and we could think about young children as an example, like, if there's something they don't want to do, guess what's going to happen. They're going to tantrum, right? Even if it's not something that is, is like manifesting emotionally. They often know when to turn it off, to push away the thing that they don't want to do. Like we will see behaviors that happen and they show up across the lifespan of when I don't want to do this, this is what I'm going to do instead. This is how I'm going to avoid this thing that feels challenging, that feels like, you know, there's some dissonance inside of me that doesn't make sense and doesn't feel comfortable for me, because it's scary, it's hard, it's anxiety provoking, and that stress can potentially be one of these points that, again, moves us further away from acceptance or change, definitely.

  Gerald Reid  36:12

  And so, you know, we all have these emotions, we have these internal conflicts, we have conflicts with each other. And part of acceptance, I think, is also to just accept and learn to appreciate that we kind of have to learn how to regulate ourselves and also help other people regulate with each other, right? We can support each other to regulate, because if we don't really kind of slow ourselves down and stop just automatically reacting to every situation we're in, we're not able to resolve these conflicts. We're not able to understand our emotions, we're not able to deal with conflict or express our needs or to communicate effectively. So, you know, I think part of you know when people are having struggles or under distress or having conflict, right? It's hard to accept like, well, maybe I need to do something about this, because they may be upset with themselves. They be angry at themselves. They may be angry at other people. They may be angry about, you know, things that they don't like in life, that they feel like are not right or not just right. And it could take away from the the importance of just of learning about yourself and getting in touch with yourself and regulating yourself so that you can navigate things as best you can, or at least better than they are, right? So, and part of that is sitting with the discomfort. Right? Again, nobody. People don't like discomfort. It's not human nature to say, let me just feel uncomfortable, right? But when we have these conflicts, when we're unsure about something, when we're struggling with something, right, part of therapy is helping people to learn how to sit with the discomfort. You know, sports psychology says, you know, practice being comfortable, being uncomfortable because it's inevitable, right? And plus, you know, we don't grow if we don't have discomfort, right? That's the process of growing, of evolving, is actually to to be able to deal with the discomfort, right? And so hopefully we can have supportive relationships, and we can learn how to regulate ourselves in order to be more comfortable with discomfort, to learn about ourselves, learn about other people, and to allow change to unfold, whatever that change might look like.

  Alexis Reid  38:11

  I want to go back to motivational interviewing a little bit too, and thinking about motivations for change, motivations to accept because in a lot of my work. You know, families of younger children often come to me saying, Oh, my child is struggling with school. They have a lack of organization, and sometimes they're referred to me for different reasons. And sometimes a young person will show up in my office or on my screen and be resistant to working with me, and I always say, like, I have no ego around this. I don't take it personally. I just want to make sure you're getting what you need. So in these moments, you know there are some little strategies that I might use to help to engage the individual, and often part of our discussion is around you realize you're not here because we want to change who you are, right? This is not about you changing you. It's actually finding acceptance around who you are, vulnerabilities included totally. And of course, I'm diluting the conversation a lot for the purposes of like, efficiency in this conversation, but you know, it's actually for us to to to learn more about who you are so you can figure out what works for you and what doesn't. So there's such a strong level of like, I need to understand who I am first before I figure out how I want to show up, right? So there's a there's a strong level of acceptance around, okay, what do I like? What do I not like? How do I learn? How do I not learn? Well, what are the things that actually promote my comfort, my enthusiasm, my engagement, and what takes away from it? Right? And we again, I try. Try not to fall into the all or nothing, black and white thinking that you were referring to before, because that's a lot of where the people I work with live, because their cognitive flexibility, that Executive Function System, is not always fully developed or not always activated in the way that they probably would even want it to be, because they get very stuck. And there's only two ways of doing this. I either do it or I don't. I'm either good or I'm bad. And this becomes, you know, psychologically, a lot of psychological inflexibility too, which I think perpetuates, like what you're saying, these mental health challenges, and potentially, like, a lot of inner dialog and narrative. And I see this a lot with perfectionistic tendencies. And we, you know, we talked about this with Dr Aubrey Carpenter, we had a whole episode on perfectionism. And it comes up a lot in in what we talk about, and in our day to day work, that there's this expectation of, I have to be this way, instead of looking inside and being like, This is who I am. And these are the things that maybe I can tweak, and that's my approach to doing things, because I think as parents, as coaches, as educators, as just society, in our world, like there's a lot of expectations that we might have for young people, especially that they be a certain way they do better than We did, instead of really helping them to understand who they are and working from where they are,

  Gerald Reid  41:25

  yeah, because everybody has strengths and vulnerabilities, right? And as I said, in different episodes, your My strength could be a vulnerability in a different context, yeah, and your vulnerability could be a strength in another context, right? So it all depends on the context, and sometimes, yes, sometimes it depends. But what I'm really saying is that, you know, we are grappling with the fact that we're human and that it's impossible to not be vulnerable at times. And you know, it's important for people to actually make that argument for themselves, that it's actually helpful to be vulnerable, right? It's not, it's not helpful or adaptive to never be vulnerable, ever. It's, number one, immense pressure you're putting on yourself. Number two, you're not going to have all the answers all the time. And so part of acceptance is to realize that we are human and to stop, stop assuming that everybody else is not, is perfect or doesn't have their own vulnerabilities, and step outside of the this matrix that we're living in with the social media that you know people are perfect, or you know people are not vulnerable. And to take, take away all that pressure and to pull back and again, it's not an all or nothing. Doesn't mean that you just sit there and do nothing. It means that you allow yourself some grace to be vulnerable and to not feel like you have to prove things all the time. The other

  Alexis Reid  42:50

  thing I want to just say, I want to add the caveat, I'd be remiss not to bring up that, especially for young people who might be listening, there's a spectrum of vulnerability, and there's a proper time and place for vulnerability too, because I think we're going on the opposite ends of the spectrum with social media too, where, like, there's the perfect and then there's like, the like, I'm sobbing on a video, to get people to, like, attend to me and give me attention in that way too. Because so I want to just like, preface this conversation about vulnerability is there's a time in the place, and, you know, you really want to make sure you trust the person you're being vulnerable with, which is going back to the core concept we started with thinking about, how do we build relationships that foster this opportunity to be vulnerable in these different situations? Because, you know, again, we we can be vulnerable without sharing every part of ourselves all the time with everybody we come in contact with,

  Gerald Reid  43:44

  right? And that could be driven by different motivations, right? You might be getting your needs met and maybe not the best ways, right? Because, you know, if you really want people to understand you, and you know, if you're doing it in these dramatic ways that are in some ways, could be getting not the, not the attention you actually really want. You know, it could be kind of not, not genuine attention that you really want. It might be and it could, it could backfire sometimes too, right, you know, but at the same time, we don't want to neglect that people need help, and people need to reach out, and sometimes things are cry for help, and so, like, again, it's all contextual, and part of it is actually, I would say, focus. You know, the focus is also just accepting yourself, being vulnerable with yourself. Be vulnerable with yourself. You know, that's such a great point. You know, we don't, you know, yes, it's important to have people allow us to be vulnerable with them. It's also important for us to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and not to think like, oh, I'm this terrible person, I'm flawed, I'm weak, I'm terrible, right? People carry around the most negative things about themselves, and it's, you know, that's something that people need to heal from, right? And they can heal from, and I've seen it, you know, as they go through the process of therapy, whatever therapeutic journey or healing they're going through, or growth they're going through, right? They can grow out of that. And. And you gotta, you know, find ways to do that. It's different for different people, but, you know, allowing yourself to be vulnerable with yourself and to accept that we have vulnerabilities. Do it for yourself. Because it's, it's, it alleviates so much of the pressure, and it also helps you become stronger in the long run. That's the reality. You get to know yourself more. You know, kind of a good metaphor is athletes. Athletes are so structured, right, especially the ones that play at a high level, right? Every day, they have the same routine. They have people telling them what to do all the time, right? And they can become good at just following directions and living up to other people's expectations. But the moment, you know that's gone. Let's say they get injured, or they don't have this they don't have like, the position they want or the role they want, they don't make the team they want, right? They can fall apart because they don't have that ability to just be vulnerable with the fact that things are not going the way they wanted to or think they should go. And if you can't be vulnerable, you're not going to be able to adapt and grow and heal and evolve from that into to and I'll give you know, I think part of what they learn to do is to have more of a sense of self that's not just being told what to do and doing what they're told to do, but actually understand themselves on a deeper, more holistic level, and to grow.

  Alexis Reid  46:16

  So I think that's important. I think they're I think all of it is actually important, right? Because, and I see this a lot today from students, and I used to see this when I was in graduate school teaching undergraduate students too, as a TA that they're like, give me the algorithm, give me the steps to get the a to do the best. And there's a place for that, actually, when we're learning new skills, like, you know, learning the scales and the guitar? Yeah, probably why I'm not a guitar player, because I didn't put in the time to learn the scales, where I didn't have to think about it, and I could integrate that into a song. So we, I talk about this all the time, that we can have the wisdom of what to do. We can practice, you know, what are the skills I need to develop? We talked about this on the show several times, too, that there's the process of learning these foundational skills that allow for us to build in these points of flexibility. So you said vulnerability, and I see the vulnerability as like, the stepping stone to being flexible, to be able to like, integrate all that we're learning through experiences, through our emotions, through, you know, the therapeutic process, whatever your context and situation may be, to allow for the growth. I'm not even gonna call it change, because I wanna be super mindful of that, that everybody thinks they need to change these days. And this is why, you know, the podcast with, like, do these three things, and you'll be the best. Let's bio, hack this and that, and you'll be the best. And it's like, that's it's not like, we can't boil it down to that. We have to really think about the process and how it's constantly evolving, that we are adjusting and adapting as we do as humans throughout our lives, and

  Gerald Reid  47:55

  we're getting more in touch with ourselves. Yeah, instead of changing ourselves, I've seen people go through hard times, and that's when they have, I use the word evolve, because they're just really growing into themselves, of who they are, because they spent so many years in this darkness or in this hole or this obsessiveness, and that's not really who they are.

  Alexis Reid  48:15

  Wait, double down on that for a second, because I talk about this all the time, because I see, you know, the generation of young people, high school, college, young adults, holding on to these situations and experiences that they've had as if that's who they are. Yeah, right, like I am anxious, I am depressed, I have no attention. And believe me, these diagnoses are very helpful in treatment and understanding how to navigate the world. I am not discounting that at all, but it is also not Jerry or Bob or Jane or whoever. Right? This is, this is a part of experience as we go through life

  Gerald Reid  48:59

  totally and again, going back to the coping, right? These obsessiveness, this constant state of depression, this constant state of anxiety, I'm not minimizing it. It's terrible, right? And we want to help people come out of it, but as they come out of it, you know what? I'm just reframing, what happens when people go through a therapeutic process is, I think they actually become more who they are, because those things are kind of masking, you know, their inner self, right? And that's, you know, they may have fell into, as we talked about, you know, even with eating disorders or addictions or this or that, right? People may be coping with their pain through these behaviors and through these obsessions and through these things, but they're just coping mechanisms, right? That coping mechanism is not your true self. It's not who you are on the inside and and part of it is, you know, allowing that inner self to come out through experiences. And it's a beautiful thing when it happens. You know, I've worked with athletes who have gone through a lot of hard times with injuries or changes or disappointments, and. They become more confident in themselves over time, because they're actually confident in themselves. It's not a false sense of confidence, like, Oh, I'm the best and I'm living up to everybody's expectations, right, which they may have done in the past. It's more of an internal, authentic confidence. They know who they are, they, they understand what's important to them. They, they feel grounded in just being themselves, right? And that is acceptance. I want to kind of get back to the point of this episode, right? That is acceptance. It's acceptance of the pain that you've been through. It's acceptance of the coping mechanisms that help us to cope with the pain, and then to eventually, it's acceptance of getting in touch with our, you know, our more genuine, authentic sense of self, which takes time, it takes its process, but it's a beautiful thing when it happens. And something we're doing our whole life, it's not like it ends. This is something we're constantly doing, and we may never fully get there anyway, and that's okay too. We have to kind of accept that too, you know, just it. But to me, it seems like a process that's worthwhile. Well, I think it definitely is

  Alexis Reid  51:00

  a process. And I think these experiences, that humanity has right through, we'll use anxiety and depression and addiction as examples. You know, I think these experiences that we have as humans, as many psychological theorists propose, like all of these emotions, all of these experiences are signals to, you know, shine a light on different aspects of our lives that maybe we need to pay more attention to or pay attention to differently, to help us to find out more about ourselves in this journey of life. You know, I know it sounds so cliche, but there is never really just a destination. There are only, like, a few things in life that are absolutes, that are going to definitely happen. But you know, along, you know, the process of becoming who we are, we're always becoming we're always figuring it out. And I think that's the difficulty in relationships. That's why relationships sometimes shift and change. Yeah, and it's hard to accept that you know the person you knew 10 years ago might show up differently than you expected them to, right? We talked about this in episode one too, that there are going to be different expectations we have for ourselves and for others that might not be the same. And I think it's really important to get to this place of acceptance and presence, and we're bringing a lot of things we've talked about already on the show together here to be able to say, you know, how do we bring it together? And think about where we are right now and be okay with where we are, instead of feeling like we constantly need to change, right? I know he said that word a lot. We'll have to go back to the transcripts to see how many times it came up. But, but again, I think one of the biggest takeaways I have for the listeners for this episode today is to is to consider like, Are we okay with just being where we are? Is is it okay to be okay? And if there are points of change. Can you accept that maybe though there's going to be a little work involved there, or maybe we need to be vulnerable enough to get real with ourselves, or get into that messy space to figure it out and to reach out to those who we feel safe, comfortable and respected enough to engage in that process together, because if we can be open enough to appreciate that none of us are perfect. We are all humans that are constantly learning, changing, evolving, experiencing, which is shaping every part of our reality, I think that we can better understand each other, and we could appreciate that even in the messy, difficult times, that's a part of our process. Yeah, it doesn't have to be labeled as good or bad. It just is where we are totally

  Gerald Reid  53:53

  and sometimes doing something or trying to change something or trying to change is counterproductive, actually, like there is nothing to change sometimes and sometimes, just allowing things to be as they are is actually the more healthy adaptive thing. So giving, as you're saying, giving ourselves space to just sit with what we're feeling and sit with what is happening helps us to have more clarity as to how to navigate Situations, Relationships, processes in our life. And sometimes we do need to take action, but sometimes, you know it all depends, right? But you can't have clarity if you don't accept it in the first place. So So with that, we're going to accept that this is the end of our episode.

  Alexis Reid  54:32

  So we will be talking more about acceptance, commitment, therapy, acceptance through mindfulness and different meditative practices. This will be coming back again. But I think it's an important concept right now, is that, you know, sometimes we need to accept where we are and not always, try to just keep changing everything for ourselves and other people. We might actually appreciate things a little bit better and find a little joy in between,

  Gerald Reid  54:58

  definitely and sometimes. Something that we do need to change as well. Is part of it too, right? It all depends. This is such a complicated episode, isn't it?

  Alexis Reid  55:08

  It always says, Life is complicated. Life is hard, as you say. Chair,

  Gerald Reid  55:12

  yeah, it is. But here we are. We do it together, just like we always say, We're here together. We're gonna do it together. So it's great.

  Alexis Reid  55:18

  Thanks. Jer, great conversation. Too. Lex,

  Gerald Reid  

  Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and we look forward to future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.

In this episode, Gerald and Alexis have a very nuanced discussion around the topic of acceptance. There are many therapies that revolve around acceptance. This discussion focuses on the psychological aspects and concepts that pertain to how individuals can understand, grapple with, and figure out where and how acceptance fits in their life.

Be curious. Be Open. Be well.

The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings, educational therapist, Alexis Reid, M.A. and licensed psychologist, Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com

*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.