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Q: My husband of many years recently walked out on me. I was completely caught off guard and don't know how to make sense of it. I thought we had built a life together and now see that it was all a sham. I keep turning over in my mind where I went wrong. I don't know if I'll ever get over it.
A: Like my patient, most of us can be blindsided by traumatic events. An accident can leave someone so grievously injured that they are unable to continue the activities that gave their life joy and purpose. A romantic partner can suddenly decide they want to date other people. We can get diagnosed with an incurable illness. Someone we love can die or take their own life.
Even if we are lucky enough to escape life's harshest outcomes, nothing insulates us from the humiliations and losses that are an everyday risk of being human.
What's a soul to do?
• Start by doing nothing
A growing body of research suggests that the more you fight against your pain, the stronger and louder it's going to get. Marsha Linehan, a retired University of Washington psychology professor and creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), calls the process of allowing the feelings to come without judgment or action "radical acceptance."
She advises that "the pathway out of hell is through misery. The more you fight your misery, the more you stay in hell." The goal of radical acceptance is not to condone or approve of a situation but to recognize its existence and let go of the emotional suffering caused by fighting reality.
We are often our worst enemies when managing our reactions to painful events, especially those over which we have little control. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that our minds didn't evolve to make us happy - they evolved to keep us alive. From that perspective, our brains are wired to focus on detecting risks, reviewing past mistakes and anticipating dangers.
Unfortunately, this evolutionary legacy has left us with an incessant mental soundtrack - a relentless voice that fixates on our shortcomings, drills into past mistakes and anxiously forecasts future conflicts. Regret and anticipation become unruly tenants in our minds, ​​undermining our peace and well-being.
Radical acceptance gives us the fortitude to bear negative events and tough emotions. It builds emotional resiliency, a key component of mental health.
Because not every problem is actionable physically or mentally, what else is advised by radical acceptance?
• Give yourself room to experience the feelings fully
Don't try to push them down or away. And don't judge yourself for feeling whatever it is that you're feeling. For example, in the face of your breakup, radical acceptance means a full-fledged acknowledgment that the relationship is over and he's not coming back.
"Your pain needs space," Megan Devine writes in "It's OK That You're Not OK." "Room to unfold. Maybe your pain could wrap around the axle of the universe several times. Only the stars are large enough to take it on."
​​​Criticizing or shaming yourself binds you to your suffering. Self-condemning thoughts such as: "I'm too sensitive. How come I'm not over this yet? Why did this happen to me?" make the pain of your situation more intolerable.
"We cannot change a thought that is already here," Mark Levine, a psychiatrist and founder of the nonprofit Mind to Mindful, told me. "The more we struggle to fix or change our negative thoughts, the more we agitate the nervous system and inadvertently strengthen the very thoughts and emotions that we wish to avoid."
• Note and detach from negative thoughts
Making room for your thoughts and feelings also allows your "observing self" to avoid latching onto the negative dictates of the "thinking self," according to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ​​Australian psychotherapist and physician Russ Harris advises the following based on the ACT model: "If your mind says that your life is going to be terrible, you can acknowledge that you're having the thought your life is going to be terrible. Or if it says that an event proves that you're unlovable, you might say, ‘I'm having the thought that this proves I'm unlovable.'"
While that might sound simplistic, the act of prefacing statements with "I'm having the thought that" means you have already begun to note and detach from it. ​​You're also telling yourself that it's just a thought that doesn't require your action. In doing so, you become free to think or act more in line with your values and needs.
Pain is unavoidable. It's what we do with the pain that matters. As Devine writes, "When you are broken, the correct response is to be broken." Accepting that reality doesn't make life more painful - it makes it more bearable - especially when it feels impossible to bear.
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Joshua Coleman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in the Bay Area and senior fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. His newest book is "Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict." Buy it in hardcover at a 44% discount! by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 22% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.)
Previously:
• A psychologist explains how a new in-law can tear a family apart
• The heartbreak of parent-child estrangement, and how to cope