I see this look regularly in session: the one where my client's eyes go wide the moment I mention acceptance, like I’d suggested something utterly ridiculous. I may bring it up in the context of something a client has been struggling with for a long time, going round in circles, only to come back at the same point: being stuck, not seeing a way out, and blaming themselves for "still banging their head against that damn wall". With the wide eyes comes a slight tightening, a head tilt, and a body language that pretty much says: "are you seriously suggesting I just… give up?"
I understand it, "acceptance" can appear like a loaded word: passive, even defeatist, like giving up when you've been working (may we say fighting?) hard to change something about yourself or your situation. But that's where the confusion sits: when I say "acceptance", people hear "resignation", which are two very different things, and the gap between them is where a lot of the difficulty lives.
What Resignation Actually Looks Like
Resignation isn't really about the situation in front of you. It's a conclusion you draw about yourself, one that keeps you stuck because "it is what it is" or "I'm not good enough to overcome it" and gosh is it oppressive and sad. It often brings self-blame and self-deprecation, a perfect recipe for guilt and loss of self-esteem and remaining even more stuck.
Let me illustrate this: imagine you're driving and you get a flat tyre. You pull over, look at it, and your mind goes immediately to: I knew I should have checked. I always leave things too late. If I were more on top of things, this wouldn't have happened. Or something along those lines… Defeated, you sit in the car, feeling rubbish and stuck. Not because the tyre can't be fixed, but because you've shifted from "there's a problem here" to "there's something wrong with me."
That's resignation. Not the flat tyre, but what you make it mean. And the effect is a kind of withdrawal, not just from the problem, but from yourself. You stop engaging. You stay in the car.
What Acceptance Actually Is
Acceptance starts somewhere much simpler: acknowledging what's true right now, without the added judgments and verdict about ourselves. Easier said than done, I agree.
Back to our car: the tyre is flat. That's the situation. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, you might be late, cold, annoyed at the timing. Yes it is uncomfortable to feel like this, but those feelings are real and they're allowed to be there. Acceptance doesn't mean ignoring them or pretending they don't exist: it means letting them be true without immediately needing to make them stop. And most importantly, it means without turning the flat tyre into evidence of who you are as a person.
And it's from that place, only from that place, that you can ask the actually useful question: what do I do from here?
This sounds straightforward, but let's not fool ourselves: it's harder than it looks. Because it means sitting with discomfort and all the loud voices trying to convince us of how little of a person we are, without rushing to fix it or fight it. And it goes against how we usually (always?) deal with difficulty, ouch!
The Paradox at the Heart of Change
After mentioning acceptance and seeing in my clients' eyes that sudden wonder about my credentials, I usually bring up a concept in Gestalt therapy I keep coming back to, because I think it describes something most people have experienced without having a name for it. The psychotherapist Arnold Beisser wrote about it in 1970 and called it the paradoxical theory of change: the idea that real change happens not when we try to become something we're not, but when we start by more fully becoming what we already are.
Essentially: the efforts to be different from where you actually are, when driven by rejection of who you are or where you currently stand, can contribute to keeping you stuck in exactly the place you're trying to leave. To be clear though: wanting to change isn't problematic in itself, it’s how we go about it that can be.
The tyre can't be changed from the driver's seat focusing on what you should have done and where you wish you were instead. It can be changed when you accept that from the driver's seat, focusing on what a bad person you are isn't going to do much. You have to get out of the car. You have to stand next to the tyre, in the cold, in the inconvenient moment, and work from there.
The Cost of Fighting Yourself
Something else I've noticed over years of working with people who are trying to shift something in their lives: a lot of the energy that gets called "motivation" isn't really moving people forward, it's being spent on fighting a version of themselves they've decided isn't acceptable.
That kind of energy has a bitter taste: it drains rather than drives. It often comes with self-criticism, impatience, a sense that you're perpetually behind on becoming who you should already be. And because it's rooted in rejection, in pushing away a part of yourself, deemed "lazy", "bad", or whatever your voice qualifies it as, it quietly erodes your self-esteem as it labels itself discipline.
This fight against yourself is so painful, costly and exhausting. And there's a reason it persists despite that: controlling ourselves gives the illusion that we're controlling life. The voices behind the fight say: "If I'm disciplined enough, hard enough on myself, vigilant enough, maybe I can prevent the difficult thing from happening". It's an attempt to manage, or even prevent the discomfort of uncertainty. The same discomfort that acceptance, ironically, asks us to sit with briefly. So the self-criticism doesn't just feel like motivation. It feels like safety. But the more energy you direct at rejecting where you are, the less you have available for actually going somewhere.
This is what I mean when I say that acceptance is far from passive: refusing to accept something costs a great deal. The refusal itself takes so much energy! Like a leak, and if this energy is saved and redirected, it's fuel that could actually be useful.
Evolution Rather Than Change
I like to suggest a different word, because I think "change" sometimes carries the rejection in itself already.
When we talk about wanting to change, we usually mean moving away from something. It can be some trait, some pattern, some version of ourselves we've decided is the problem. The away-from is built into the framing, which means the rejection is built in too.
Evolution feels different to me. Evolution builds on what's already there. It starts from the current position rather than defining itself against it. You evolve by working with where you actually are, understanding it, re-evaluating it, keeping what's good, growing from it. See how it is different from change and pretending you're somewhere you're not?
A flat tyre doesn't disappear. You learn to deal with it when it happens. You're working with reality rather than against it.
What This Means in Practice
Acceptance is not the end point, not the "I'll accept myself when I've changed and achieved X, Y or Z". Acceptance is the starting line.
It's the moment you stop sitting in the car, wishing it was different, cursing at the tyre for being a tyre and the vulnerabilities that go with it (i.e. exposed to punctures at times), and get out to look at what's actually in front of you. That moment, honest, sometimes uncomfortable, requiring a bit of patience with yourself, is where movement becomes possible.
Put simply: resignation keeps you in the car whereas acceptance gets you standing next to the tyre, figuring out the next step.
————-
If something in this article is sitting with you, a pattern you've been trying to shift for a while, or a sense that the effort of fighting yourself is costing more than it's giving, that's worth bringing to a conversation.
You're welcome to get in touch for a free 20-minute call by phone or video, or to simply ask me a question first. You don't need to know exactly what you want to work on; knowing that something isn't quite working is already a place to start.
I offer sessions in person in West Hampstead and Paddington, and online across the UK.
