All right, welcome back. Again, Vincent for The Meaningful Sh!t Show, and today we are going to talk about the second part of our distress tolerance, which is all about reality, acceptance. Remember, last time we talked about crisis survival, just simply getting through the situation, not overreacting, staying regulated, more or less, staying cool, and not making it worse. That's the important part. The most important part was not making it worse.

So that's great. But lesson one is not really complete without lesson two. So I don't know, it's going to be an interesting episode. And we're back in the usual recording setup. I do have, I don't have a new mic, but it's a different setup. So this is the Shure SM7B. I'm a little bit of an audio nerd, although I don't understand quite the amount that I would like to understand.

But yeah, I'm going to try to see how that goes instead of my other mic, the Shure MV6. And I'm sure that nobody can tell the difference. Or hear the difference. But hey, microphones are fun. Yeah. And I'm back on an HD camera as well. One of these days, I would want to upload the 4K video. But then again, this is mainly a Talking Hat podcast. You know, does it matter?

No, absolutely does not. Anyways, enough about the AV nerding. Let's dive into our reality acceptance skills. Okay. Why is reality acceptance important? It seems kind of like an obvious question. But still, it is very central to everything that is happening in dialectical behavioral therapy. By the way, this is going to be a DBT episode again. And I didn't mention it explicitly. I put it in the show notes.

I didn't mention it explicitly in the episode. But I realized that, of course, I should give a disclaimer. I am not formally trained or licensed in any way. I'm a DBT practitioner. I like to use it. But again, I am not a licensed mental health professional. If you're watching this video and you are in some extreme crisis, consider or I would advise you to consult with a licensed mental health professional.

This video is educational. It's supposed to give you inspiration, insights, teach you new things. But don't just use this video to get through an extreme crisis. There's so much that you can do through a video like that. Sometimes you need a back and forth, one-on-one collaboration with a therapist. So be aware that that is a tool you should use when you're in severe distress and things are in danger.

All right. So after that disclaimer, let's go ahead and have fun. Let's dive in. So what I said before, DBT is all about dialectics, meaning two seemingly opposite sides of reality. All right. And in this case, reality acceptance is important because in order to change, we need to accept what is and then allow change. And that dialectic is something that a lot of people tend to skip.

They just want to feed forward to the change. Can we change yet? Can it be done yet? Can it be done yet? That's not how things tend to go, especially if they're deep rooted problems. We first have to become intensely okay, accept the fact that this is the case. You can't just get rid of it easily. Right. So that's very important to keep in mind. And that's why reality acceptance is a skill.

Without going through that deep radical acceptance, you're not going to be able to really truly change it. Because probably you're not really going to understand what's going on. Depends on the situation, obviously. The first skill that we're going to talk about is radical acceptance. The second skill that we're going to talk about is turning the mind. A willingness, number three. Half smiling and willing hands, number four.

And finally, number five, allowing the mind mindfulness of current thoughts. That's just the standard mindfulness part that you see in every DBT module. But all shenanigans aside, all jokes aside, let's dive in. First of all, radical acceptance. So this is one of these other skills that DBT is known for. It's kind of, you know, radical acceptance. The radical is interesting and something that is a therapy modality.

Usually, that's like kind of buttoned down and that's like scientific words such as crisis survival sounds, you know, straight laced. Radical acceptance sounds more like a new skateboard or, you know, a movie. So, but maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that this is one of the things that looks a little bit different, a little bit different from what you're accustomed to getting from a modality as a DBT.

So, let's dive in what radical acceptance is. So, you want to use radical acceptance when you cannot keep painful events and emotions from coming your way. So, first of all, what is radical acceptance? Radical means, so ultimately, it is a scientific-ish term. It means all the way, complete and total, right? So, it's not halfway, it's not like a little bit, it's all the way, complete and total, you know?

Lock, stock and barrel, right? That can be very hard to do. It is accepting in your mind, in your heart, and in your body. So, it takes that approach of, it's not just an intellectual understanding of what's going on, it's like a hard thing as well that you got to be okay with it in like sort of your spiritual discourse with your higher being, whatever that is for you, your wise mind, your best self, God, whatever, universe, and in your body as well.

A lot of people forget that when something needs to be accepted, it is something that your body needs to accept as well. Because, of course, mind and body, they're interconnected. So it's like somewhat of a lengthy, well, not a lengthy necessarily, but it's not just something that happens intellectually. All right. So let's think about a couple of examples, right? Let's go ahead and think about a breakup.

Think about the situation that your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, husband, wife, whatever, leaves you, right? That is going to probably get you in distress. It's going to get you through a distress cycle. And if you think about truly accepting that this relationship is over, that's not just an intellectual thing. It's not just, oh yeah, okay, Roger, that, you know, that's... Whenever someone pretends that that's just kind of how it is, that you can just accept it in the moment and move on, you should, you know, be wary, be suspicious.

Normally, in this situation, it takes some time for all of that stuff to settle, right? And you can probably imagine how, like, the heart piece comes into, comes into play if you think of the grief cycle, right? Like, you're first going to resist, you're going to deny it, and eventually you're going to not just accept it in your head, but in your, your, your heart. It's going to become part of, like, your narrative, your story, and your body will catch on, you know?

It's going to, like, feel that that's the new now, right? Your body has to get used to that as well. It's, um, you do radical acceptance, so this is the third characteristics, is when you stop fighting reality, right? You stop throwing tantrums because reality is not the way that I want it, right? You let go of the bitterness. That is not the way that you want it.

And this is a deep one. This can pretzel up your mind, right? And oftentimes, I get to situations where something fucked up happened to someone. Even if I think about the fucked up things that happened in my past, I've had conversations with people close to me that underwent like some of the same fucked up shit or other fucked up shit. And almost they would find the concept of radical acceptance, they would find it minimizing.

Why can't I say that this shit is fucked up? Why do I have to accept it and like accept it in my heart? No, it fucking sucks. And it's terrible that the world is this way. They have a point. But that is not at odds with radical acceptance. Right. The world can be in that perspective fucked up. The situation can be fucked up. Whoever did that to you can be an asshole.

All of those things are not inconsistent with radically accepting that. It also isn't consistent with just being a doormat. Right. That's really important to remember. Accepting something does not mean being complacent. Right. Accepting that you lost your job, for example, that you got fired, shouldn't necessarily make you complacent in the sense of, oh, I'm not even going to fight it. You know, if you got fired and there's a legal problem with that, they were not allowed to fire you.

Unjust causes depends a little bit where you are in the world. Radically accepting that you got fired does not mean that you don't pick up the phone and call a lawyer. Those things are not the same. For some reason, this doesn't gel for a lot of people, right? It feels the moment that you accept something that you move on. And that's not the case. That is very counter DBT in a way, because DBT is all about that dialectic of first deeply accepting.

And then in that state of fully accepting, instead of like the devil's chasing you, trying to set right reality, more move with how reality now is, how you've deeply accepted that reality is. So the last part is the bitterness, letting go of the bitterness, that does take time. And why should you let go of bitterness? It's a good question. Again, I go back to some of these conversations, like something fucked up has happened.

Someone has slighted you. Why shouldn't you be bitter about that? You should be bitter about that. Right. But go into devil's advocate mode in a bit. The moment that you are bitter about something, who is that most unpleasant for? Is it most unpleasant for the person who slighted you? Probably not. They're probably not around you. Maybe it's your partner, and they are around you. So they get some of that bitterness.

Maybe that's the way that you will negatively want to influence them. But if you're bitter, you're still with yourself 24-7, right? And it can be like sort of a skills problem where you're like, okay, I'm sure, like, okay, Vincent, I get you. Being bitter is not a net positive thing for me, because here I am sulking, here I am feeling bad, like all those things, right? But I don't have to, I can't do it.

There's just no way that I'm going to let go of that bitterness. Right? And now we're getting somewhere, because that's skills, right? That you're not able to do that, because A, it's fucking hard, and B, you haven't practiced it. And so maybe you don't even know how. You don't have a framework to do that. You do not have a nice, sharpened tool to help you do that.

Well, I have great news, because that's what this skill is all about. So when we're talking about radical acceptance, what are we accepting? Reality as it is in our best estimation, right? Everyone has their perspective, right? Like moment that I'm talking about reality, it doesn't mean that we're trying to get some kind of like grand objective truth, where we're like, okay, I can accept reality, but I have to know everything about the situation.

I have to know what she did, how she did it, who she did it with, at what time, I need a phone, I need, no, no, no. Although some of those things may make sense in some situations, it doesn't really have that much to do with acceptance. What you can accept is a reality where there's unknowns. Right. There might be a situation where you're really curious on what basis your boss fired you, what that coworker told them about you.

You might even have a sneaking suspicion that the reason that you got laid off is because that guy said that thing and that's a misunderstanding. All of that may be true, but the reality, accepting the reality as it is, is accepting as well that you don't know if that's true. Your boss might not have laid you off because of that thing. It might have been a spreadsheet decision.

It might have not even been your boss's decision. It might have come up from down the command chain, as it were. You accept the facts as well as you know them. Facts are interesting. I mean, as a therapy modality, they're pretty straight-laced about that, that you know facts. I think that, although I don't want to get in too much of a metaphysical discussion, but facts are still like, I feel like what is a fact to me is probably still 99% perspective.

I'm not trying to be too airy-fairy about that, but I'm trying to allow you to accept better that you're accepting your personal reality. It doesn't mean that in the process of you accepting your personal reality, that person over there is accepting the exact same reality, or your boyfriend over there is accepting the same reality, or your boss over there. No, no. That might be completely different. Their perception of the past, their perception of the present may be different.

They are not wrong, you are not wrong, they are not right, you are not right. In the grand scheme of things, everybody is doing what they feel is right in the moment, right? And that is a big thing to accept. Even if you know about some lack of knowledge that someone else has, and even if you are aware that you don't know certain things, the fact that you don't know something, that you are unsure about something, that's something to accept.

That's as it is to you, that's presenting to you as a fact, right? So it's important to accept these things even if you don't like them. It seems obvious, right? That those are the things that are hard to accept. So there are limitations on the future for everyone, but only realistic limitations need to be accepted, right? So that comes down to if something egregious happens, again, the example of you getting fired, or maybe you're sexually assaulted, or assaulted, or you get in an accident, or anything happens.

So although there is a limitation to the things that you can do to get what's owed to you, it is really important to not sell yourself short, right? A realistic limitation that you cannot fly, that's probably a realistic limitation to accept. But this is not an exercise of getting your box of limiting beliefs and radically accepting your limiting beliefs. No, no. That's why that first point is focused on facts, right?

As best as you can estimate then. And you kind of know in your heart's heart, when something is a limiting belief, and when something is more like a fact, right? You know. Sometimes you pretend that you don't. But oftentimes, if you reflect, if you introspect, if you journal about that, you do know. So requires stepping up a little bit, because otherwise you can get in a victim situation, right?

Like in a victim situation of like, oh, if my spouse leaves me, I will never love again. Never. That is a limiting belief. You can decide that. You can not decide that. But that is not something to be radically accepted, right? That is not a limitation that you need to accept. Not part of radical acceptance. Third thing, everything has a cause, including events and situations that cause you pain and suffering.

That's something to accept, right? So it's partially a little bit of a belief as well. It's a world view, but let's face it, it's a very common world view. We live in a world of cause and effect, right? So if we're looking at what we're radically accepting, what we're radically accepting in this situation is that things don't just happen in a vacuum, right? Like if someone has slighted you, if you got fired, if your partner left you, there is a cause attached to that.

You might not know the cause. The cause might not be like sort of like crystal clear. I don't think that causes often are, especially if it comes to like interpersonal relationship or interpersonal communication. But it didn't happen in a vacuum. So you're also accepting that things more or less happened, I wouldn't say for a reason, but with a cause, right? There's some kind of reason that happened.

Again, I'm using the word reason, not from like a sort of grant. Like there's a reason, capital R, for that, but there's a cause, effect, relationship to it. The fourth thing that we're radically accepting is that life can be worth living even with painful events in it. And that comes down a little bit towards to the things that I was talking about at point one, whenever I have conversations with people that are like, oh, but that this fucked up thing happened to me.

And that's just fucked up. And why can't I call that fucked up? Right? So it is important as part of the radical acceptance to get yourself a point of view that that's that point of the point number four, basically, like, in a way, life can be worth living even with painful events in it. See that there's a can in there. We're not saying here life is worth living even with painful events in it.

So there is a freedom of choice in a way in it. In a way, if I read this statement, what I can go is like, okay, yes, life can be worth living even with painful events in it, but these painful events that just happened to me, they make it so that my life is not worth living. That is acceptable in this situation. You can choose that perspective.

That's why there's a can in there. Probably, this point is not in there to just throw an arbitrary possibility towards you. That this choice or this condition or statement or whatever is there because there is a lot of value, wisdom in a statement like that, right? And really reflecting on that can be very important, right? There's a school of people that really think that a lot of people think these things happen for a reason.

Now, I am talking about the capital R reason. So like, for example, trauma happens to us so we can heal, that we can heal people around that. That can be airy-fairy for a lot of folk. Like there's parts of me that buy into that. There's part of this meaning that I can feel that I ascribe to a situation like that where I can see, oh yeah, this is really good that this happened to me.

You know, in a way, it's painful as f!ck, but it's good that it happened to me. There's also more realists that think in the direction of f!cked up sh!t just happens. Bad stuff happens to good people, can happen. It doesn't really matter which of these two branches you ascribe to, because f!cked up stuff can happen, but life can still be worth living. And if things are happening to you for a reason, even more so, life is worth living, because you are on some kind of grand path.

And that grand path can be chosen however, however you think about it. Okay. So, why accept reality? So we've talked about this a little bit already. And that's the part where I was talking about accepting reality does not be being complacent. So I'm going to rehash. I'm going to, there's going to be some overlap there. I got a little enthusiastic there. But let's just go through the points, right?

So number one, rejecting reality does not change reality. So that is a very important part, right? Think about how deep that statement is. Because we really want to do that. We want to be disgusted with certain things like that changes something. It doesn't. I mean, it changes your personal experience. That's true, right? It does change things. But in the most productive way, I think not. Changing reality, I also talked about this, requires first accepting reality.

So that's a statement that some people could not agree with. They could be like, why the fuck do I need to accept that this thing happened before changing it? Right. Like, I can just not accept that I've been fired and just move forward. But think about it. It's going to catch up to you. You're going to have to assimilate that into your world view in some way, shape, or form.

Right. So why postpone that? You know it is inevitable. Right. So. The third point is pain cannot be avoided. It is nature's way of signaling that something is wrong. Again, feel how deeply that is true. So that doesn't mean that you have to transmute. Oh, that's the fourth point actually. That pain into suffering, because if you reject it, that's what happens. Otherwise, pain is just pain. Right.

It hurts. But suffering is when you're rejecting that pain, when you're trying to stuff it down, when you're not accepting it. So these are psychological truth, right? These are things that are true about us as humans. And remember that DBT is one of the therapy modalities. There's a ton of research behind this. So some of these things, if you go into your philosophical armchair, you're just like, oh, well, that's not objectively true, right?

Like, we don't know, like, you can do that. That is an option that is absolutely open to you. But be aware of evidence and be aware of something like Wu Wei moving in line with the force of nature. You can think and be convinced that you work in a certain way and that you're special. I mean, you are special, but that you're special in a way of like things work differently for you.

But it behooves you to realize what kind of mind, what kind of body you have, that yes, you are special, but at the same time, you have the same hardware, software, wetware, whatever you want to call it, as other people have. You are not as unique as you think you are. You do not need special, unique rules. At the same time, you do. That is like sort of the counterintuitive nature of that.

But there's so much to be learned from these modalities, from people that have done research on it. And you can poo-poo and they say and criticize this research for not being perfect. That's all well and good, but it's not going to help you much in life. So try to accept this, to work it into your world view, and work within the forces of nature. Work within the forces that are part of you, except that you are a social creature.

Except that there are psychological truth about how your brain works. Try not to weasel out of it because you're special, it works different for you. Again, you are special and wonderful, but I don't think it works different for you. I think it works very similarly too. And if it works slightly different for you, or completely different, it's still a wonderful model to have. Right? Because it can tell you something about how it works for some of the people that you might be in this conflict with.

All right. So refusing to accept reality, I've spoken about this as well, it can keep you stuck in unhappiness, bitterness, anger, sadness, shame, and other painful emotions, guilt, et cetera, et cetera. You get stuck with these emotions. Not your boss that fired you, not your spouse, not your brother over there, is you. So you're making your own life worse. That seems counterproductive to me. Acceptance may lead to a deep sadness.

You might be grieving for a period of time. It might be painful. You might have to sit with this pain early. Luckily, we've learned about crisis survival, so we can sit with this feeling. We can ride this wave. When you sit with this sadness, generally, what you will see is that there is a deep calmness that follows. So we're doing this work for a reason. We're working with the forces of nature, right?

We're allowing our mind, heart, and body to accept this new truth. That happened. The path out of hell is through misery. I remember this from a direct Marsha Linehan quote, where she was quoting about what happened in her life, right? So that's probably how it made it in the book. But by refusing to accept the misery that is part by climbing out of hell, guess what? You stay in hell, right?

So that is an important thing to remember there. So in a way, acceptance is not optional. And if you think about it, if you listen to your intuition, you kind of know that, but you're willful, you're stubborn, you don't want to do it, you want to throw your tantrum, you want to indulge in it. For what purpose? Who are you helping? Certainly is not yourself. Okay. Wonderful.

I think we're off to a great start here. A couple of things about radical acceptance and factors that interfere. So radical acceptance is not approval, compassion, love, passivity, or against change. Again, I am reiterating this, right? That is not the equivalence of radical acceptance, right? So that just means is if you radically accept it, you do not approve it. It's not that it gets your stamp of approval.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you're even compassionate about it. Well, I would recommend to be compassionate about most situation because it makes your life easier as well. Radical acceptance doesn't necessarily mean loving it. It doesn't mean passivity as in being a doormat. And first and foremost, or it's not first, it's last but not least, I guess, it does not mean that you're not going to change it.

Much to the contrary. Radical acceptance is for change. Counterintuitive as it may be. So factors that interfere is, I spoke about this before, you don't have the skills for acceptance. You do not know how to accept these really painful events and facts. It's a skill set. You might not be able to do it. So it's really, really important to learn about this. I'm really passionate about that.

You believe, second point is that if you accept a painful event, you are making light of it or you're approving the facts, and that nothing will be done to change or prevent future painful event to you personally or in the world at large. Right? That is not the case. You are not making light of it. You're not approving it. And you're not subscribing to not changing it.

Something terrible that might happen that you radically accept might actually move you into a situation that you start campaigning against it. Maybe it's violence against women. Maybe it's violence against minorities. Maybe you're going to be so touched by this change that you're going to do a podcast about it. Right? Start a company. That is not easy to do if you're not accepting it. The third thing is that just emotions get in the way.

So you're trying to accept that. It's related to skills. But you have an unbearable sadness. You have an anger that you can just not suppress. You just want to punch somebody in the mouth. You rage at the injustice in the world, in the society that allowed this trauma to happen, that allows it to happen to other individuals. You might have an overwhelming shame about who you are, or guilt about what you did, and that can be very, very uncomfortable to sit with.

Those are barriers that prevent you from truly, you know, integrating whatever happened. So that is not something to poo poo. In emotion regulation, the three episodes I did about that, we went through worksheets, and those are, of course, part of the DBT workbook here, to really look at all these different emotions. How do they pop up? What are the prompting events? What happens in our bodies when they occur?

And what does shame exactly mean? What does guilt exactly mean? What are situations where these emotions are justified versus unjustified? I recommend going back to that episode if those are some of the things that you're in the context with this struggling with. Right. So if you're just looking at radical acceptance from a step-by-step perspective, first of all, what you want to probably observe, or want to try if you're trying to see if you're doing that, is if you're questioning or fighting reality.

Reasoning about that, it shouldn't be this way. I should be getting my way. I should be getting this. I should be getting that. Right. That you're just frustrated and you can't wait to change it. You can't wait to the situation like the current moment is agonizing to you because there is something that's not in its right place. Well, then it is really important to remind yourself that things are in their right place for now.

For this moment, things are where they need to be and they cannot be changed right now. This is what happened. Remember and remind yourself that there are causes for what happened down. Some kind of history led to this very moment. You probably played a role in that, or you may be completely innocent. Don't let me fake them, shame you, right? You might be completely innocent, might just be something that a perpetrator did to you.

But there are causes, there's some kind of history. People's lives have been shaped by a series of factors, even if there is a perpetrator, someone that did someone, someone that burglarized your house, right? Notice that these causal factors exist, and that history led to this moment, and that reality just had to occur this way. This is how things happened, even if it's like, and this is super hard to do, the more severe the crisis is that you're recovering from.

But from a grand perspective, it's this is how things happened. And it's not arbitrary. It's how things just unfolded, is the word that I'm looking for. It can still feel like something is just very unjust, right? If a loved one could just hit by a drunk driver or something like that, there is no meaning to that. There is no like set of events that you could be like, oh yeah, okay, well, considering that, you know, small price to pay, right?

But you can acknowledge that it is how it happened without blame. Practice accepting with the whole self. So I'm talking mind, body, and spirit, right? That can be a spiritual endeavor. And be creative in finding ways to involve your whole self, not just an intellectual exercise there. Use accepting self talk, but also use things that we learned in crisis survival, relaxation, mindfulness, half smiling, willing hands, we're going to talk about that.

And thinking about what feels unacceptable. Prayer can be very useful there, even if it's of a non-religious kind. Going to a place that helps you bring to acceptance, your meditation center, your church, your synagogue, your mosque. And using again imagery, we know that from a previous episode. We also want to practice opposite action. We learned about that in emotional regulation. You would list all the behaviors that you would do if you would accept the facts, right?

If you're resisting the facts, there's opposite behavior that you're doing. There, if you go into opposite action, you're more going into the right direction, right? You can start acting like you already accepted the facts. Engage in the behaviors that you would do had you really accepted reality. That helps sort of prime the pump, smooth the way for that acceptance to come in. You already are moving in the direction of reality.

You also want to use the Cope Ahead skill, also from emotion regulation, right? So as part of this radical acceptance, you might see that there's going to be events in your near future that you can hardly cope with. You might have to go to the police station to identify someone who did something to you. You might have to confront a family member. You might have to call that lawyer, and you might have to get in front of your boss because he fired you for unjust reasons.

So coping ahead with these events is very important as a part of radical acceptance as well because if you're doing that opposite action, you're going to act in a way like you already radically accepted it, which means that it comes with really accepting that you're going to go through some of these behaviors that you need to do that can be very hard. Refer back to that episode about coping ahead, how you do that and you use a lot of the power of the imagination.

Attend to bodily sensations as you think about what you need to accept. So from a somatic perspective, is your jaw tight? Is your chest tight? Do you feel it in your stomach? Can be good things to be aware of. Allow disappointment, sadness, or grief to arrive with you. Do not push them away. Allow them. They are supposed to arrive to the scene. Acknowledge that life can be worth living even when there is pain again.

Can be worth living. It's good to repeat. It's not per definition. DBT is not telling you you're a jerk because you're not seeing that life is worth living. Just be open to the possibility that it is, without having to radically accept right now that that's the case, but radically accept that it's possible. Now we're going to get into some of the other skills where right now, we've just spoken about radical acceptance.

Just really aligning yourself with the truth. And we refer to some of the other skills that are coming up, and some of the skills that we've talked about in the past. We're going to talk about next is turning the mind. Turning the mind is like facing a fork in a road. You have to turn your mind towards acceptance and away from the road of rejecting reality. So this builds on the whole, you know, helping you radically accept things.

Remember, that's the aspect of what we're doing. We did crisis survival, which is just, you know, not really dealing with the content of your crisis, just getting through it. And now we're really getting into the meat and potatoes. So turning the mind is choosing to accept, because probably your default is rejecting, right? The choice to accept does not itself equal acceptance. It just puts you on the path.

You're not done yet. So what are the steps that you practice when you're turning the mind? You first of all observe that you're not accepting, right? You can do that whenever you find talk that is going against that. So if you're anger, if you're bitter, if you're annoyed, if you feel like you're avoiding emotions, if they're self-talk like, why me? Why is this happening? I can't stand this.

It shouldn't be this way. That is all not in the direction, not aligning yourself with reality. The moment that you observe that, that is completely fine. I have an analogy here, analogy that I'm probably going to use a bunch of times. Imagine yourself being at a train station, being at a platform. There's trains coming and going, trains coming and going, you know, and just imagine that there's really like infinite trains at the same time coming and going.

At any time, when you're noticing that, but you can basically, these trains represent some of those thought patterns that you go into. So you might actually sort of like awake to the fact that you're on the better train. You're on the train of bitterness. You're putting energy in that, right? That's how it can go, because a thought can arise. You're not on the train yet, but you can unconsciously get on that train.

You start feeding that bitterness. But the moment that you become aware of it, know that you can get out of that train. You can get back on the platform, maybe not instantaneous, right? Maybe it requires a couple of seconds, but you can get out. You can go stand on the platform, and you can choose a new train to get on. Or you can choose to not go on a, stand on a train at all.

You can just see the trains come by. But remember that you have a choice there. So the second step that is mentioned here is go within yourself and make an inner commitment to accept reality as it is. So make a commitment to get on the train in the direction of acceptance, not the rejection train. You're going to find yourself on the rejection train anyway at one point.

And what do you do? You get out. You get on the other train. You know, might go take you back where you just came from. And then it's going to happen again. Guess what? You're going to do it again. You're going to do it again. You're going to do it again. You're going to do it again. And you're going to do it again over and over and over and over and over.

Expect that you're going to find yourself on the wrong train. Don't edge yourself on it for it. Just get out and take the other train again. Develop a plan to catch yourself catching the train into rejection. Because as you do this multiple times, remember, awareness alone can be curative. There's probably tells of yourself that you can become aware of when you're about to unconsciously pop out of that acceptance train and take the rejection train again in the wrong direction.

Develop insight there. So maybe that happens to you while you're showering, your thoughts just kind of drift, right? Or maybe it happens to you when you're on the phone with someone, or when you're doing grocery shopping. And then make some mental flags around that time, that before you get to that situation, that you can remind yourself of your commitment again, where you're just like, okay, I'm going to be very aware of, like, when I get out of that train, when I'm, you know, getting out of the acceptance train, by the way, is not necessarily, like, bad in this situation.

There are situations where you're just at the station, right, watching everything go by. You know, let's call that the state of mindfulness, right? You're not in default mind. You're not in thinking mind. You're just observing, right? So it's not bad to be on the platform, but when you're on the platform, make sure that you're not getting on the wrong train. You know, have, like, marker moments in your head around that.

Know when you're prone to just popping into the right direct, the wrong direction. So that's turning the mind, right? There is a next skill, which is willingness. And I find willingness a confusing term, and I find it a hard skill to truly understand. So I'm going to do my darnest to explain it in the right way, right? So we have, just from a definitions perspective, we have willingness on one end, and we have willfulness at the other end.

If you're like me, these things, the terms don't even make true, complete sense. And this is sometimes the case with therapy modalities where they have to use very specific words that might not completely make sense to you yet. And maybe they do, and then great. But a willingness is, like, willfulness is like being stubborn. Like, willful is like, you can think of like a willful toddler. You're just like, I'm not doing it, I'm willful, I'm, you know.

And that can feel satisfying in a way. Willingness, of course, is the reverse. So, it's getting out of that mode of like, knowing that you're doing the right thing, and just aligning yourself with the forces of nature again. The Wu-Wei, right? So, in each situation, there is a willing response. Willingness is doing what is needed, moving along with the forces of nature. Again, I find this is a very bunch of Wu-Wei skill.

I've spoken about that a bunch. You can always Google for it, what it exactly means, because I just use it colloquially. I probably do an episode about Wu-Wei, but really, I've said that before. It's the principle of cutting with the grain, right? You're moving, like if you're chopping wood, you want to do it with the grain, because it's just going to make your life, chopping the wood a lot easier.

So you want to align yourself with the forces around you and not against you. So sailing is Wu-Wei, and rowing, in a way, is not. It doesn't mean that you can't do things that isn't in line with the forces around you, because sometimes you've got to break an act to make an omelet, right? But by and large, it behooves you to align yourself with the forces around you, because if you're going against the stream all the time, it's probably not really going to do that much for you.

You're going to get exhausted. You're going to get dragged away, right? So you've got to pick your battles. So willingness is wholeheartedly, without dragging your feet, doing the thing. Listening to your wise mind, acting from your wise mind, acting with awareness and awareness that you're connected to the universe. And if you don't like that, just to the people you like and you don't like, you're connected. You're connected to the floor.

You're part of the whole system of forces, right? You are not separate. You're part of it. You can flow with it. So you want to replace willfulness with willingness, right? Willfulness being is to refuse to tolerate the moment. Willfulness being is to refuse to make the changes that are needed. Willfulness is giving up. Willfulness is doing the opposite of what works. Willfulness is trying to fix every situation.

Willfulness is insisting on being in control. And the willfulness is an attachment, and I find this the one that's the most poignant. It's an attachment to me, me, me, and I want it right now. Instant gratification. That's willfulness. Willingness step by step, again, is very similar to what we just talked about, about the acceptance and the rejection. You want to start by observing the willfulness. I am on the willful train.

Okay. Label that. Experience. Oh yeah. I am on the willful train. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know what? You can get off that train. It's about to stop. So radically accept that you are on that train. You at the moment feel and you might be acting willful. You are on the train after all. And you cannot fight willfulness with willfulness, right? That is one of the things you can't willfully with action go against.

Like it doesn't work in a willful way. It works in a willingness, a letting go way. So you want to turn your mind towards acceptance and willingness, and you're going to leave that train by itself, right? Because that train, you only stay on that train as long as you're willful. That's like your ticket to ride in a way. You can try half-smiling and a willing posture. I think half-smiling is like the next skill, but half-smiling is, I'm going to talk about it in a bit, but it's exactly what it sounds like.

But there's cool signs behind that. And a willing posture. So what is a willing posture? And you can find all kinds of videos on the internet, although some of these things about power poses has been debunked. But you can probably feel it, the difference from doing something like this to just opening it up. And the difference between closed hands and open hands. Hands facing down and hands facing up.

So some of these things can be a placebo. It doesn't really work until you believe it in a way. Who fucking cares? Go and believe it. What's stopping you? Just believe it. And maybe you may want to believe something else. You might want to do like the live long and prosper sign, and that is for you the way to be willing. Right? That's fine. You can find out whatever the thing is.

Maybe if your hands are going down, you feel willing. Doesn't matter. Make a marker for it. Right? And maybe make it easy on yourself by using some of the markers that the rest of your society uses. But hey, you can be willful about what your willing posture is, like within reason. When you really feel that that willfulness is immovable, like you can't get off the train, so that you're just stuck there.

There's no accept, there's no letting go. You can ask, what's the threat that I'm protecting me against? Because that's probably, that's usually the reason why you're staying willful. There is something that you're fearing. Once you have that, you know, sort of in your sights, you can do another iteration, right? Generally, what you will see is that the threat of staying willful, like, the threat is manageable. And then there are situations where the threat is not manageable, and then you're right to be willful.

That's the other side of things, right? By and large, in this work, willingness is the direction to go into. Okay, let's talk real quick about half smiling and willing hands, although I'm saying real quick, I know myself it's probably going to take some time. So, what half smiling and willing hands is, is accepting reality with your body, builds on what we just talked about. How do you hold your body to embody willfulness?

That's a lot of bodies right there. So, of course, DBT comes with research-based ways to do that. And again, you can be willful about these things. I'm thinking about some situations and people who would be like, oh, that's not going to work for me. So, that's okay. But just learn what the evidence of this research tells us. So, first of all, relax your face from the top of your head down to your jaw and chin.

Right. It's like a guided meditation, right? Let go of each facial muscle, forehead, the eyes, the brows, cheeks, mouth, tongue. Tongue often is like stuck against your front teeth if you're willful, right? Teeth slightly apart so that your jaw isn't set. If that's hard for you, try to tense everything and then let it go, because as you tense it, you feel everything. You become aware of all the muscles there.

A tense smile is a grin. A grin may tell your brain you are hiding or masking your real feelings. The second part is let both of the corners of your lips go slightly up. It's like I'm explaining to someone how to smile like an alien. Not that I want to minimize it if it's really hard for you, right? But it can be, seems pretty straightforward to me is all I'm saying.

It is not necessary for others to see your smile, your half smile. A half smile is slightly upturned lips with a relaxed face. So try to adopt a serene facial expression, dignified. Whatever dignified serene means to you. Remember, your face communicates to your brain and your body connects to your mind. Happy to go on a little tangent here on the vagal nerve, because we've talked about that, that everything like your facial muscles are all connected to the ventral vagal, the top vagal.

I already forget what means top and what means bottom, but basically the part of the vagal nerve that controls everything above your diaphragm is also connected to your facial muscles. So there is a feedback going from your face. 90% of your nerve fibers around your facial muscles are meant to communicate upwards to your brain. There's great evidence on that, and you might have heard of that evidence, where they do research with people where they, I don't have a pen right here, so it's going to look awkward, but where they measure emotional responses between people putting a pencil in their mouth like this, and like this.

When you put a pencil, this is a battery, but if you put a pencil in your mouth like this, what will happen is the corners of your mouth automatically slightly go upwards. What is measured in that research is that, that improves a more positive way of approaching things, a less negativistic, pessimistic way of interpreting events around you. That's knowledge that you can use. So even if you use that, or even if you know that for effect, just doing that has an effect, like all in line with the Polyvagal Theory.

So I love it when these things come together across my different models that I talk about. So use your face to communicate to your brain. The same you can do with your hands, right? So when you're standing, you can drop your arms down from your shoulders, keep them straight or bent slightly at the elbows. With hands unclenched, turn your hands outwards, with thumbs to your sides, palms up, and fingers relaxed.

Right? This is what I was talking about earlier. It's generally a meditation. That is the pose where you're opening yourself to get energy from the world. Right? It's all symbolical, of course. Or, you know, I'm not trying to get too airy-fairy here, but I do just sense the difference in myself, partially because I believe it's so placebo, et cetera. Sitting. If you're sitting, you place your hands on your lap or your thighs.

Again, unclenched, turn your hands outwards, palm up, fingers relaxed. And lying down can be very great if you're in a corpse pose, if you're into yoga, arms by your side, hands unclenched, palms up, fingers relaxed. Allow energy to flow into your system from the outside, and in that way, aligning yourself with the forces of nature instead of controlling it. Right. Remember, your hands communicate to your brain, and your body connects to your mind.

So you use your body posture to communicate, to downregulate, polyvagal theory all over. Cool. Wonderful. What I think, the last thing that I want to touch on here, is the mindfulness of the current thoughts. So just like every module in DBT, and mindfulness is very important, everything that I've talked about is not really possible without mindfulness. Right. So, you, it would behoove you, it has lots of advantages to get better at observing your thoughts.

To observe you getting on trains, you know, being identified with a certain direction, because you're doing that, you're on that train, you chose that train. It can be hard to get off trains, but you have control of that. You do not have control of the train arriving. That happens. But you do have control on getting on and staying on. You can visualize it in a different way.

Oftentimes in meditation, you hear that as waves coming and going. Waves are at the surface, and the surface is restless, but then you can drop in at Jon Kabat-Zinn. Gosh, I'm butchering that name. The guru behind mindfulness-based stress reduction. He talks about it in that way. Observing your thoughts also involves not suppressing them. You do want to see that these trains are coming into the station and not just look away.

Oh my goodness, it's that train. No, they're there. Just don't get on. Don't judge it. Don't judge that train for being there, for existing. That's the train to Sodom and Gomorrah. Like that's fine. Acknowledge that they're there and that you're not getting on. Allow them to leave. Allow them to depart from the platform. Don't analyze too much. Practice that willingness to move along with the forces of nature and step back.

Observe these thoughts. Allow yourself to learn something about the schedule of the trains coming and departing on that station. There might be, at first, that train that you don't want to get on might be coming every three seconds. There's that train again. There's that train again. There's that train. It seems like the train has just been there, but observe the fact that it's not there. It's not like docked at that platform.

It comes and goes. Learn about the schedule of these trains and learn about how it's changing. It is also very important to adopt a curious mind that has to do with learning the schedule of these trains that I was talking about. Ask where the thoughts come from. Where do these trains come from? You know, are they just going in a circle? Are they just materializing there? Like, where do they come from?

Watch and see. Look over your shoulder where they're coming from. Try to see some cause and effect there. Embrace not knowing as well can be very important. Right? Embrace the fact that the train is coming, but you don't know why. But it still comes. You can still see it there. Notice as well as that every train always leaves, every thought eventually leaves. It seems like it's not, it seems like the train is just like living there, like a museum piece, but it does not.

They move, they go, they come and go. Observe, but not evaluate your thoughts. Just let go of the judgment, right? That's, just be curious about it. Don't put them to a standard. Remember that you are not your thoughts, you're standing on that platform. The trains are the thoughts, that's not you, right? And this gets a little, you know, complicated because it refers to what is you, what am I, like all these kinds of like definitions of self-identity.

But you are not your thoughts, you are the thing in which the thoughts are happening, right? You do not have to become identified with your thoughts. You don't have to act on the thoughts. Weird thoughts can come to us. Remember the times that you have had very different thoughts, these weird trains pulling into the station, that you don't even know like where, where did this one come from?

If you're doing any catastrophic thinking, you're more going into emotion mind, right? That's not curious necessarily, and you're just more allowing your psyche to shift to out of regulation and just more being like ridden by a demon in a way. Well, that's maybe too excessive, but you know, emotion mind, you're less out of out of control. You're more like hot where a rational mind is more cold and in the middle, you're cool, you're composed.

Remember how you think when you're not feeling such intense suffering and pain because it can feel like this state is just there forever, but it's not. That's a trick of the mind. Number four is to don't block or suppress thoughts. It doesn't work. You know, don't try to like prevent that train from pulling into the station or to get it to move along. Right? That's willfulness. Willing, you know.

You can't ask things about why that train is there. Why would this train be available to me? So in other words, what sensations are these thoughts trying to avoid? Turn your mind into the sensation and then come back to the thoughts and repeat that several times. Right? You can also step back. Allow your thoughts to come and go as you observe your breath. Play with your thoughts.

You can repeat them out loud over and over as fast as you can. Read the destinations where these trains are going to. You can sing them. You can imagine the thoughts in a different way. I clearly like the train analogy. Right? But you can also ridicule them. You can make them into a cartoon train, ridiculous cartoon train with like a clown conductor or something like that. Or as holograms that are getting all tangled up.

Or as like these cute, like what is it again, like that cartoon for kids about, is it like Tommy the Train or something? I don't have kids, so I don't know. But from, is it from cars? I don't remember, but these cartoon trains. Or just as colors that are shooting through, right? Or as sounds, whatever it is, but let them be. And try to admire and love your thoughts as well.

There's no reason, and it isn't helpful to judge in a way that these thoughts are coming. It is helpful to have opinions and to some extent, judgments on which trains you get on. That is something that you can do something with. But them showing up? No. They can show up. They can be there. They'll leave, you know, if you don't ride them. No one gets on that train.

It's gonna disappear from the schedule eventually. It's gonna, you know, pop up every now and again. Just... but they're not gonna be like your regular commuter trains that come in every morning. You never get on. Simple as that. Not that it's easy, but it is simple. Cool. So we really touched on all the skills here. So I feel like they all roll up to radical acceptance. So again, we talked about radical acceptance, turning the mind into acceptance, willingness, aligning yourself with nature, half smiling, willing hands, and allowing the mind to flow, right?

Mindfulness of all your current thoughts. So all of that basically rolls into making it a lot easier for you to accept, right? The wonderful thing or confusing thing or the interesting thing about this module from DBT, Distress Tolerance, right? Is that it's been focused on distress tolerance or crisis survival, right? Just not interacting that much with it at all, just urge surfing, finding ways to just tolerate things that you don't go nuts.

Then we've been focused on reality acceptance skills, just truly accepting, deeply accepting that this is how things are. And the great thing about the distress tolerance skill is that's it. That's what distress tolerance is, because the moment that you've been able to urge surf, the moment that you've been able to hang with the intense emotion and you're still there, the moment that you can then really put the work in to accept that situation that you're dealing with, you get back to a regulated state.

From one perspective, it can still be a crisis. It can still be distress. You can still be fired. You can still be losing your relationship. You can still be in trouble with the law. All these things are still true. But you're now in a state that you can actually deal with them. Now, we can refer to the other skills that we've been looking at. And it can become something of just purely problem solving.

So in a way, as we're getting away from the realms of therapy, of mastering our emotions, of not getting carried away with these things, and we're just moving into a more cool, composed way of interacting with the world, right? And that's if you really think about it, if you really think about anything that happens to anyone that you know, there's like really like big and shocking, it can be terrible, losing children, losing jobs, even if they're committing like horrendous crimes, you know, or abusing someone.

But if you look at the whole situation, how that plays out ultimately, is at one point, things just become life, right? They then have to deal with the consequences in a way, ideally, that does not completely suck, right? And that's what we're trying to accomplish here, right? We're not trying to accomplish to, if we've committed some crime, to get off scot-free. We might still be in prison.

We might still have lost that relationship. We might still have lost all that money. We might still hurt this person. But we're in a situation that we've truly accepted that, that we're not in this judge-mental place even towards ourselves. So we're ready to show up and do things, right? So I think that's really interesting of this skill. Partially, I kind of feel like, okay, what's next? Right?

Like I really feel like we're in a tolerated state. Now tell me what to do. Tell me how to resolve this actual problem. And there's some skills that are still relevant. Like, for example, when we go into problem-solving, problem-solving in DBT does explain some things, how to handle these challenges. But remember, like, this is not like, DBT is not a guidebook how to live your entire life, right?

It's not a guidebook how to start a business or something like that. So although there are some tidbits on how to handle challenging situations, it just becomes more a part of life in general. You kind of have to experience that for that to really truly make sense. Because just at face value, it can be confusing and it can feel incomplete. All right. So I think I'm going to leave that there.

Thank you very much for tuning in. It's been a pleasure for me to talk about this. This has been Vincent for The Meaningful Sh!t Show. See you next time.