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Chronic Pain
How to Move From Resignation to Acceptance
A Personal Perspective: Accepting what you cannot change eases mental suffering.
Posted May 5, 2022 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- Resignation signals indifference to life; it can lead you giving up on improving your circumstances.
- Acceptance is often accompanied by a sense of peace with your life as it is.
- Acceptance also carries with it open-mindedness about what might happen next in your life.
The dictionary provides multiple definitions of resignation and acceptance. In this post, by resignation, I’m referring to giving up on life, that is, becoming indifferent to what happens. By acceptance, I’m referring to actively engaging your life as it is at the moment, even if it’s unpleasant.
Acceptance
Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron wrote a book titled Start Where You Are. Where you are right now is the place where acceptance can begin to take root. It starts with self-compassion. If your life is tough at the moment, be kind to yourself. That’s all that self-compassion means. Let the calmness of self-compassion arise. If self-blame arises instead, tell yourself that everyone’s life is tough at times. It’s not your fault. Then be kind to yourself. This is the beginning of acceptance.
From this place of calm acceptance, your mind will be able to see possibilities for improving your circumstances. And so, there’s hope in true acceptance.
For many years, my start where you are place has been chronic pain and illness. This is because I’m, in effect, a “long hauler” from a viral infection I caught in 2001.
Take a moment to consider where your start where you are place is. It could include ongoing health challenges like I have. It could include difficulties on the job. It could include ongoing worry about a loved one. It could also include happiness in a relationship or joy in nature. I use the word “include” because our lives are usually a combination of joys and sorrows.
From your starting point, try opening your heart and mind to possibilities. In other words, think about what you could do to make your life easier and more fulfilling, even if you are limited in what you can do. The artist Frida Kahlo survived devastating injuries due to a bus crash and started painting from her bed, lying on her back with canvases suspended above her.
Several years ago, from my starting point, I began writing books from my bed. Recently, I began creating fabric art from my bed. But before I could do either of these, I had to accept without aversion that I could no longer engage in many of the activities I used to love. If your starting point is difficulties on the job or in a relationship, calm acceptance can allow you to examine what changes you might be able to make.
Working on accepting your life as it is—as opposed to the way you want it to be—takes courage, but it’s worth the effort.
Resignation
In contrast to acceptance, which is a fruitful starting point in life, resignation stops you in your tracks. You’re apathetic, even hostile, about your circumstances, so you don’t see possibilities. This mind set can lead to anger and resentment: “Life is unfair. I give up. I'll just be miserable from now on." When you’re stuck like this, you don’t see possibilities for change, and so you can’t even choose ways to make life better for yourself. This is why resignation is a such a sad and painful mental state.
Moving from Resignation to Acceptance
After coming down with that viral infection in 2001, I went through a period of painful resignation over the fact that every single day of my life, I’m sick and in pain. But then I realized that, even though this posed tremendous challenges, resigning myself to it offered no hope for a way forward. Once I accepted my limitations with compassion, I began to see ways I could change my life for the better.
What helped me move from resignation to acceptance? Some of the Buddha's teachings helped me turn that corner. (I practice Buddhism not as a religion but as a practical path.) Most people have heard of the first noble truth. In it, there's a list of unpleasant experiences we can all expect to encounter at some time in our lives. The list includes illness, aging, separation from loved ones, grief.
One day I read what I now call “The Buddha's List” from the first noble truth, and I thought, "Wow. Chronic illness is a natural part of the life cycle." That was eye-opening for me. Few of us are taught that difficulties and sorrows are an inevitable part of the life experience. Taking the Buddha’s list as my starting point was a way of accepting with grace my life as it had unfolded. That left the door open to making the best of what I had.
By contrast, had I been stuck in resignation, from that dark place, I wouldn’t have seen a way forward—a way that helped me take advantage of what life was offering me right now, including the ability to write this.
Self-Compassion Always Helps
If it's too hard to suddenly move from resignation to acceptance, start with baby steps in the direction of self-compassion. Self-compassion is a mental state that simply asks you to be kind to yourself. Start by acknowledging how tough life is for you at the moment, and then speak kindly to yourself about it. I always suggest crafting self-compassion phrases that address the specific difficulty you’re facing: “It’s hard to have to miss out on so much due to chronic pain.” “Work is unpleasant right now and that’s tough for me.” “I’m sad that I’m not in a loving relationship at the moment.”
Speaking like this to yourself tells you that you care about your mental suffering, and this goes a long way toward alleviating it.
Once your suffering calms a bit, you can begin the healing process of accepting your life as it is.
My best to everyone.
References
These posts might also be helpful: “5 Tips for Handling a Bad Mood” and “Tapping Into Self-Compassion to Ease Everyday Suffering.”
