Acceptance and Challenge
Acceptance of another person can be a very powerful gift to give. Being fine with how someone is can be affirming. For the person who has experienced being unacceptable, it can be a restorative thing simply to have someone not find you a problem. This has obvious applications around how we collectively treat people from minorities, and people who are disadvantaged or simply different.
However, acceptance doesn’t work in all circumstances. It can mean leaving a person stuck. If all a person knows comes from trauma, limited opportunity or bad examples, then accepting them may deny them the scope for change. When we don’t challenge each other, we can deny each other opportunities for growth, for healing and for better understanding.
Challenges like this are essential for overcoming traumatic experiences. People take most damage from trauma when the trauma becomes normal to them and informs their expectations. When that’s happening, the suggestion that you might actually be safe right now can be challenging. Being told that the thing you fear most isn’t happening, when you are triggered, can help a lot with healing, but isn’t easy having your reality challenged that way. For the person unpicking the effects of being gaslit, hearing things that don’t fit with your distorted and damaged sense of reality can be painful, but it is the only way of recovering.
It can be good to be challenged to be a better person. That’s not always easy. There’s real discomfort in having to look hard at your own behaviour and admit that you could do better. It’s also hard when not being able to do better wasn’t lack of effort, but lack of opportunity – that can be a painful place to find yourself. The challenge of not accepting what’s been normal for you can mean breaking with family norms, your background, your culture in order to strike out and do better.
Sometimes acceptance itself can be challenging. “Bring it” is a powerful invitation, when you can tell someone you aren’t just tolerating them but actively welcoming who and how they are. If there hasn’t been space for you as a person, then feeling welcome and learning how to show up as yourself can be challenging. These are good challenges to have and to offer but that doesn’t make them easy.
One of the challenges we can all take on is to consider the ways in which we accept, or do not accept other people’s suffering. How do we react to suffering that can’t be fixed – long term illness and disability aren’t always curable. Do we accept what people tell us about their conditions, or do we put pressure on them because we want them to be well, and we want a cure? Management of chronic illness tends to be kinder than relentlessly pushing for impossible fixes. Do we accept mental illness in those around us? Do we push them to fix themselves because we want to feel better? Are we prepared to find out what’s causing the problems and to tackle that? Are we willing to accept poverty as a political necessity? Are we prepared to
throw a percentage of people under a bus so that the super-rich can continue taking far more than their fair share? Are we willing to accept hunger, and homelessness as issues for other people?
It’s all too easy to accept things for other people and challenge only in face of your own discomfort, but I think often those are the least helpful responses.
