Practice an accepting approach
It’s hard to accept things that we would rather didn’t exist. Actually, it’s not a negative event or situation in itself that we need to accept, but the emotions that are triggered by it. We need to be aware of the current situation and make an active decision.
For example, if you’ve hurt a friend, you can apologise and try to repair the damage, but you can’t go back in time and undo the action. Yet it’s easy to go back to the event in your mind over and over again and put energy into wishing it never happened. You may also want to make negative judgements about yourself. What happens then is that you feel bad both about the event itself, and also about the negative judgements you identify with.
To help you to adopt an accepting approach in the example above, you can:
1. Describe the event as objectively as possible (e.g. “I’ve hurt a friend”)
2. Describe the feelings and thoughts that it evokes (e.g., FEELINGS: “I feel regret, disappointment and sorrow” and THOUGHTS: “I think it things might never be the same again. I think I must be a horrible person to have done this”).
3. Notice how the thoughts themselves can give rise to additional emotions that may not be directly related to the event itself. Note that the thoughts are coming and try to let them be. One way to create a distance from your thoughts is to note and label them, for example, “Here comes a self-critical thought”.
4. Make an active choice to adopt an accepting approach – decide to allow all the emotions related to the event, however unpleasant they may feel. Think about whether there’s anything you can or want to do (for example, apologise), and make sure to do it. Try to otherwise refrain from repetitive thoughts about how you wish things were. Replace them with: “This is how things are right now. I don’t need to change anything.”