How Acceptance Can Alleviate Stress

There are many experiences in life that cause us stress. It’s a part of life. And we don’t have to like it, but we can move on from it, as challenging as it may be at times.

It can be easy to stay stuck in the residual emotions from stressful events especially if you’re used to this state or don’t know how to cope. However, the chronic physiological impacts to that include a constant flow of adrenaline, cortisone, sugar, and fats pumped into your bloodstream, eventually resulting in burnout, illness, and disease because of the ongoing compromise to your immune system.

As the saying goes, “you can’t change the past,” however, you can get through it, and acceptance can play a big role in moving forward.

First, it’s important to understand that acceptance doesn’t mean you have to like a situation or condone it. It means you’re experiencing life as it is, rather than festering about what it should have been like, or fixating on ways to try and control everything, or fighting the reality of it, which ultimately makes you feel worse and keeps you stuck.

Sometimes things are simply out of our hands, and the sooner you realize it, the easier it will be to let go and accept the reality of your situation, as awful as it may be.

When we accept a painful situation, it can help eliminate the suffering because we’re no longer trapped in that place where we’re desperately trying to hold onto how we think things should be. It frees us up to move on from the emotional chaos.

The path to acceptance is understanding that we can’t control everything all the time. It’s not realistic to believe we can. You can start by realizing that your situation can’t be changed, or it’s not within your power or control to do so, and then decide to accept it as it is.

An easy way to look at it is to understand that non-acceptance is suffering, as it represents holding on to a situation and resulting pain; whereas acceptance is acknowledging it as it is, including the emotions you feel, and then letting it go.

Accepting and letting go of things we can’t change frees us up to new experiences and healthy emotions, including a greater sense of peace. MSM