Edit (2024-07-31): I changed the introduction.

If you have Googled “how to do acceptance” and you have found a lot of the explanations confusing or in conflict with one another, you have come to the right place. Learning about “acceptance” as a mental move was surprisingly challenging to me too, and I think it’s because of these reasons:

1. It is obvious that “acceptance” has different dictionary definitions (and hence mental moves), but when “acceptance” is used in more casual advice, they can be unclear. Take a look at these three examples: (a) “you should accept yourself”; (b) “you should accept your feelings”; and (c) “you should accept reality”. Ask me to differentiate these back in 2023 and I’ll probably give you some “vibey” answers that are probably half-correct. I’m usually fine with just going off from vibes, but they seem to bounce off from me this time.
2. More comprehensive advice do describe the actual mental moves at a concrete level, but they’re also all quite different from each other despite using the same word. In fact, I’ve found nine different types of “acceptance” related advice from ten different sources (e.g., Acceptance Commitment Therapy). A single standard for “acceptance” doesn’t exist.
3. Furthermore, a few of these sources incorporated new definitions (e.g., kindness) into “acceptance” that are not in fact dictionary definitions of “acceptance”. “Radical Acceptance” is one source that did that. And I got the sense that “acceptance” as a concept has been “stretched” pretty far.

Taken together, they turned my journey to practise “acceptance” into an amateur disentanglement exercise. My cursory search of “acceptance” turned into a much wider literature review, including literature around the use of words in relation to truth-seeking. And I’ve decided to put some of my findings down in this writing with this following structure:

1. “Acceptance” as seen in dictionaries
2. “Acceptance” as seen in various advice
3. Some thoughts and analysis on how “acceptance” is commonly used

Here’s a warning, this piece of writing can get tedious--I’ve written this for people who have found literature on “acceptance” confounding. Or if you’ve been wanting to practise “acceptance” but don’t know where to start, you can just jump straight to Section 2 and pick a type of advice that you resonate most with. Or if you’re just interested to learn more about my thoughts on “acceptance”, Section 3 should be your next step.

1. “Acceptance” as seen in dictionaries

I agree with Yudkowsky (2008) that dictionaries are more of a historical record of how words are used, rather than an authoritative record on how words should be used. And I also agree with him that words can be treated as public goods—the more one uses a word in a way that has a very different meaning than how people commonly use it, the harder it is for people to coordinate. For example, if a significant number of people start calling pens as “pencils” and pencils as “pens”, you’ll need to constantly ask (probably with annoyance), “wait, are you talking about the thing that has ink or the thing that has graphite?”

So, there’s no need to worry about the dictionary police enforcing how you should use a word, but understanding how “acceptance” is commonly used and comparing them to definitions found in common advice related to “acceptance” might help us better understand how boundaries are drawn between acceptance, kindness, love, etc.

I’ve chosen six definitions out of many that I thought are most commonly used by people from the Oxford English Dictionary (n.d.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (n.d.), and I’ve listed them below:

1.a. Acceptance as receiving something

Definition:

• The act of taking or receiving something that is offered or given (e.g., gifts, payments, responsibility, etc).

Example:

• "I accept credit card payments.”

1.b. Acceptance as agreeing

Definition:

• The act of communicating yes to an offer, or promising to do a particular thing (e.g., invitations, job offers, etc).

Example:

• “I accept your offer.”

1.c. Acceptance as giving someone or something a positive value judgement

Definition:

• The act of approving something or someone, where approving means the act of giving a positive value judgement to something; or assessing and believing something as favourable, proper, suitable, or fulfilling certain conditions or requirements.

Example:

• “I accept this quality of work.”

1.d. Acceptance as allowing a person to join a group

Definition:

• The act of admitting someone into or allowing someone to join a group, clique, community, or organisation, either informally (e.g., through casual interactions) or formally (e.g., through an application process).

Example:

• “I accept your admission into our organisation.”

Notes:

• There’s a sense of fulfilling a person’s needs for belonging, inclusiveness, and like/love, support, respect, acknowledgement, and social safety.
• Possible confusion: note that acceptance as the act of admitting someone into a group does not automatically imply another definition of acceptance, specifically the act of giving a positive value judgement to someone or something (e.g., I want Kit Xiang to join our group because they’re a good person).

1.e. Acceptance as believing something as true

Definition:

• The act of believing something is true, correct, or valid, sometimes even when one initially believes differently.

Example:

• “I accept this hypothesis.”

Notes:

• Possible confusion: Note that acceptance as the act of giving a positive value judgement (related to axiology) and acceptance as the act of believing something as true (related to epistemology) are sometimes used as one combined definition. But there are cases where only one of the two definitions are only used, which can lead to ambiguous interpretations.

1.f. Acceptance as tolerating or giving in

Definition:

• The act of tolerating or enduring something unpleasant or undesired with restraint or patience.
• The act of surrendering, submitting, yielding to something unpleasant or undesired without resisting, fighting, or changing it.

Example:

• "I have accepted that my chronic back pain will never be cured.”

Notes:

• Possible confusion: I’ve included two definitions for this type of acceptance, because both dictionaries cited combine these two subtly different meanings into one definition. And I wanted to make this distinction more explicit, because acceptance-related advice are much more likely to use the second definition than the first.
• The first definition (i.e., act of tolerance) implies that there’s at least a bit of resistance or some stubborn unyielding-ness from the person doing the acceptance. One example could be a person calmly and patiently biding their time before fighting back. Another example could be a person tensing when visiting a dentist.
• The second definition implies that there’s no resistance or struggle in the acceptance. An example could be a person fully embracing the sadness of losing someone. But I don’t think it’s possible to always get to zero resistance, e.g., a person experiencing extreme pain.

2. “Acceptance” as seen in various advice

First, let me be clear with the kind of “acceptance” I’m looking for in advice. It needs to fulfil both of the following criteria:

1. They are mental moves. When you do “acceptance”, you’re taking an action or series of actions that happen inside your head.
2. One of the outcomes they have, either primary or secondary, is the regulation of one’s own emotions, as suggested by Wojnarowska et al (2020). You can use “acceptance” for other purposes, such as being more authentic or happy. But I suspect that, for many including me, regulating one’s own emotions is one of the most common, if not the most common, reasons for practising “acceptance”. They are usually found in personal development or mental health related advice.

And now, here are the nine types of “acceptance” related advice I’ve found.

2.a. Acceptance as an act of letting go of one’s struggles

Objects to accept:

• Almost anything that is causing one to struggle or feel frustrated

Actions to take:

• To withdraw your commitment to work towards a certain outcome, and allow the current outcome to continue even if you find that undesirable
• (Or in my layman language) To stop trying to fix or change an issue, and allow the issue to exist even if you don’t like it

Referenced in:

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

“Acceptance does not mean ‘putting up with’ or resigning yourself to anything. Acceptance is about embracing life, not merely tolerating it. Acceptance literally means ‘taking what is offered’. It doesn’t mean giving up or admitting defeat; it doesn’t mean just gritting your teeth and bearing it. It means fully opening yourself to your present reality—acknowledging how it is, right here and now, and letting go of the struggle with life as it is in this moment.” (Harris, 2007)

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

1. The definitional equivalent of the act of tolerating or giving in is used here, but things that cause frustration are the primary objects of “acceptance”.

2.b. Acceptance as an act of receiving subjective experiences without resisting

Objects to accept:

• Subjective experiences like emotions or thoughts that are usually negative

Actions to take:

• To observe the emotion or thought, receive it without changing or resisting it, and let it pass

Referenced in:

• Vedic or Buddhist inspired mindfulness

“Traditional Buddhist meditation manuals describe mindfulness as paying attention to what we experience, not what we would like to experience. In short, mindfulness implies friendly acceptance of the totality of our changing experience rather than avoidance or manipulation of experience.” (David et al., 2013)

“To practice nonattachment is to accept that the objects of experience wax and wane, and that to allow them to come and go naturally is preferable to any attempt to control or retain them” (Williams & Lynn, 2010)

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

“Mindfulness is the defused, nonattached, accepting, nonjudgmental, deliberate awareness of experiential events as they happen in the moment.” (Hayes & Smith, 2005)

• “Radical Acceptance”

“By accepting absolutely everything, what I mean is that we are aware of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull away. I do not mean that we are putting up with harmful behavior—our own or another’s. This is an inner process of accepting our actual, present moment experience. It means feeling sorrow and pain without resisting. It means feeling desire or dislike for someone or something without judging ourselves for the feeling or being driven to act on it.” (Brach, 2003)“

•  
  • “Radical acceptance” is not an academic or technical term, but I’m including it anyway since the book where this term came from is rather popular.

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalents of (a) the act of receiving and (b) the act of tolerating or giving in are used here, but subjective experiences are the primary objects of “acceptance”.

2.c. Acceptance as an act of suspending value judgements

Objects to accept:

• Almost anything that elicits a negative value judgement, such as:
  • One’s personhood or specific parts about a person (e.g., appearance,  emotions, even the value judgement itself, etc)
  • Situations one might find themselves in (e.g., a loss, a conflict, uncertainty, etc)
  • External environments one reside in (e.g., poverty, a flawed democratic system, lookism, etc)
  • Information one receives (e.g., feedback, a counterargument, a rejection, etc)

Actions to take:

• To suspend one’s judgement, or to withhold judgement
• To observe the value judgement, receive it without changing or resisting it, treat it in a non-serious and lighthearted manner, and let it pass (somewhat similar to the acceptance of subjective experiences)

Referenced in:

• Vedic or Buddhist inspired mindfulness

“Nonjudgment involves describing stimuli rather than adding evaluations of them. Nonjudgment is a central component of mindfulness meditation, and can be found in the Zen concept of fushizen-fushiaku, literally “not thinking good, not thinking bad,” which represents a transcendence of distinguishing phenomena as good and bad” (Fischer-Schreiber et al., 1991, as cited in Williams & Lynn, 2010)

•  
  • However, non-evaluative acceptance may not be practice in all or most schools of Buddhism. And it may in fact be a secular or Western interpretation of Sati (or mindfulness). I’m not entirely sure myself, but I’m leaving the following quote here for now.

“This is why evaluation—judging the best way to maximize the pleasure of the breath—is essential to the practice. In other words, you don’t abandon your powers of judgment as you develop mindfulness. Rather, you train them to be less judgmental and more judicious, so that they yield tangible results.” (Bhikkhu, 2016)

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

“Obviously, the ability to judge is vital to our wellbeing. But as we have already seen, many of the mind’s judgements are extremely unhelpful. All too often they set us up for a struggle—with ourselves, our feelings or reality itself. As with any unhelpful thought, the aim in ACT is to let such judgements come and go; rather than buying into them, we can simply acknowledge, ‘It’s a judgement.’” (Harris, 2007)

• Person-Centred Therapy (PCT)

“... It means that he prizes the client in a total rather than a conditional way. By this I mean that he does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways, and disapprove of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing positive feeling without reservations, without evaluations. The term we have come to use for this is unconditional positive regard.” (Rogers, 1961)

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  • Here, I interpret “without evaluations” as the lack of value judgement.

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalents of (a) the act of receiving and (b) the act of tolerating are used here, but things that elicit negative value judgements are the primary objects of “acceptance”.
• The authors added one new definition or mental move (that isn’t a dictionary definition of “acceptance”) on top of existing dictionary definitions mentioned above:
  • The act of stopping oneself from doing something

2.d. Acceptance as an act of treating people kindly

Objects to accept:

• People, usually when they’re suffering

Actions to take:

• To treat people with concern and dignity, and to support them.
• Note that I’m less certain whether the act of empathising and giving a warm attitude is a necessary part of compassion, but I thought I should mention that I left these mental moves out.

Referenced in:

• “Radical Acceptance”

“The second wing of Radical Acceptance, compassion, is our capacity to relate in a tender and sympathetic way to what we perceive. Instead of resisting our feelings of fear or grief, we embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child. Rather than judging or indulging our desire for attention or chocolate or sex, we regard our grasping with gentleness and care. Compassion honors our experience; it allows us to be intimate with the life of this moment as it is. Compassion makes our acceptance wholehearted and complete.” (Brach, 2003)

• Popular psychology

“Perhaps more than anything else, cultivating self-acceptance requires that we develop more self-compassion. Only when we can better understand and pardon ourselves for things that earlier we assumed must be all our fault can we secure the relationship to self that till now has eluded us.” (Seltzer, 2008)

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• None of the dictionary definitions of “acceptance” are used here.
• The authors created an entirely new definition or mental move (that isn’t a dictionary definition of “acceptance”):
  • The act of treating people kindly or compassionately
• Note that Brach’s (2003) “Radical Acceptance” has both mindfulness and self-compassion components in it, so one could technically interpret that as adding a new definition on top of existing definitions. But I thought it’s more clarifying to separate both mindfulness and self-compassion into their own mental moves.

2.e. Acceptance as an act of liking a person

Objects to accept:

• People, or parts of people (e.g., their behaviour, their motives, their feelings, etc)

Actions to take:

• To like a person, or to love a person (if feelings are stronger)
• (To be more concrete) To give a person a positive value judgement and to find them enjoyable to be with

Referenced in:

• Person-Centred Therapy (PCT)

“Putting this in simpler terms, to feel unconditional positive regard toward another is to "prize" him (to use Dewey's term, recently used in this sense by Butler). This means to value the person, irrespective of the differential values which one might place on his specific behaviors. A parent "prizes" his child, though he may not value equally all of his behaviors. Acceptance is another term which has been frequently used to convey this meaning, but it perhaps carries more misleading connotations than the phrase which Standal has coined. In general, however, acceptance and prizing are synonymous with unconditional positive regard.” (Rogers, 1959)

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  • Here, I interpret “prizing” as the act of valuing something highly. However, acceptance as used in PCT is usually mentioned as a part of unconditional positive regard (UPR) or just positive regard (which also has a similar meaning to prizing or liking). You can find  about UPR in the appendix.
     
• Popular psychology

“Self-acceptance happens through the process of self-discovery and self-awareness. It’s a state we experience when we welcome, include, and take pride in all that we are and all that we’re not yet. When we welcome every part of ourselves, the pressure to perform or suppress our true characters lifts... It’s only when we like ourselves, and care for ourselves like we would a loved one, that we begin to feel that we deserve to be visible and feel we belong.” (Dobson-Smith, 2022)

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalent of the act of giving positive value judgement is used here, but people are the primary objects of “acceptance”.
• The authors added one new definition (that isn’t a dictionary definition of “acceptance”) on top of the existing dictionary definition of “acceptance” mentioned above:
  • The feeling of enjoyment

2.f. Acceptance as an act of believing that one has unconditional worth

Objects to accept:

• The belief that everyone has intrinsic value or worth

Actions to take:

• To believe that there’s intrinsic value or worth in everyone including yourself, even if one believes certain specific behaviours or traits are bad.
• Note that I interpret the authors below as saying that there is definitely some intrinsic good in each person, but I don’t think they had ever mentioned that every person’s value are equal.

Referenced in:

• Person-Centred Therapy (PCT)

“By acceptance I mean a warm regard for him as a person of unconditional self-worth—of value no matter what his condition, his behavior, or his feelings. It means a respect and liking for him as a separate person, a willingness for him to possess his own feelings in his own way. It means an acceptance of and regard for his attitudes of the moment, no matter how negative or positive, no matter how much they may contradict other attitudes he has held in the past.” (Rogers, 1961)

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  • Despite also appearing in acceptance as an act of liking a person, I’ve also seen PCT occasionally using acceptance as an act of believing a person has unconditional worth. Specifically, PCT uses these terms more often: positive regard or unconditional positive regard. I’ve written more about it in the appendix.
     
• Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)

“Unconditional self-acceptance. You always, under all conditions, evaluate your self (your being or your personality) as a valuable, good person. (1) Because you are you (and no one else); (2) because you are alive; (3) because you simply decide to do so; (4) because you acknowledge your "bad" traits and dislike them but still accept yourself with these; (5) because you refuse to give any global rating to your you-ness but only rate your thoughts, feelings, and actions as "good"-meaning, leading to effective individual and social results; (6) because you believe in some God, who always accepts you with all your failings and has the power to make you a good person; (7) because you use some other unconditional form of total, persistent acceptance of you with all your "good" and "bad" characteristics and performances.” (Ellis, 2006)

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  • Technically, REBT has a combination of believing that you have unconditional self-worth, and not giving yourself any evaluation that compares your entire personhood with everyone’s own personhood. But I think the belief in unconditional self-worth is the primary feature of acceptance in REBT.
     
• Popular psychology

“There is, fortunately, an alternative to self-esteem. It is unconditional self-acceptance. Think of yourself as the crate and all your actions and qualities as the oranges. Your crate – you – contains hundreds if not thousands of oranges – discrete acts and traits accumulated over a lifetime. Many of your oranges (your good deeds and virtuous qualities) are ripe and luscious. But, some are bruised, puny, rotten – your mistakes and faults. When you run across a damaged orange, you may dislike it, even act to rid yourself of it but you never – ever – denigrate or damn your whole crate of oranges.” (Grieger, 2013)

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalents of (a) the act of giving positive value judgement and (b) the act of believing something as true are used here, but the belief that everyone has intrinsic value or worth are the primary objects of “acceptance”.
• The authors added one new definition (that isn’t a dictionary definition of “acceptance”) on top of the existing dictionary definition of “acceptance” mentioned above:
  • An unconditionality clause

2.g. Acceptance as an act of believing something bad as true without resisting

Objects to accept:

• Information that are known to be true or more true (e.g. facts), but have a side effect of eliciting negative value judgements (e.g., negative feedback, bad news about your loved one’s health, etc)

Actions to take:

• To believe a piece of information as true (or more true) and not change or resist it

Referenced in:

• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

“What Is Radical Acceptance?

1. Radical means all the way, complete and total.
2. It is accepting in your mind, your heart, and your body.
3. It’s when you stop fighting reality, stop throwing tantrums because reality is not the way you want it, and let go of bitterness.

What Has to Be Accepted?

1. Reality is as it is (the facts about the past and the present are the facts, even if you don’t like them).
2. There are limitations on the future for everyone (but only realistic limitations need to be accepted).
3. Everything has a cause (including events and situations that cause you pain and suffering).
4. Life can be worth living even with painful events in it.”

(Linehan, 2015-a)

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  • Not to be confused with Brach’s (2018) “Radical Acceptance”, which is related to the acceptance of one’s subjective experiences.
     
• Contemporary rationalist communities (like LessWrong or Astral Codex Ten)

“... I think most importantly - you should always be striving to accept some particular argument that you feel isn't sinking in.  Strive to accept "X implies Y", not just "Y".  Strive to accept that there are no ghosts because spirits are only made of material neurons, or because the supernatural is incoherent.  Strive to accept that there's no maniac behind the door because your thoughts don't change reality.  Strive to accept that you won't win the lottery because you could make one distinct statement every second for a year with every one of them wrong, and not be so wrong as you would be by saying "I will win the lottery." (Yudkowsky, 2009)

“What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.”

(Gendlin, 2003, as cited in Yudkowsky, 2007)

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  • Technically, Gendlin is not at all associated with any contemporary rationalist communities. The quote came from Gendlin’s book on Focusing, a type of psychotherapy.

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalents of (a) the act of believing something as true and (b) the act of tolerating or giving in are used here, but facts that generate negative value judgements are the primary objects of “acceptance”.

2.h. Acceptance as believing that one has limited control without resisting

Objects to accept:

• The belief that we only have influence on things that are within our control, and we lack influence to change things that are outside of our control

Actions to take:

• To believe that some things are within our control and some things are outside of one’s control, and focusing on things that are inside of one’s control is better
• Note that this is a more specific version of acceptance as an act believing something bad as true. I’ve separate the two, because I’ve seen this use of acceptance a few times and thought it should have its own distinct section.

Referenced in:

• “Popular Stoicism” (in the style of popular-psychology-like content)

“When we encounter difficult situations, there are often things we can control and things we cannot. The Stoic approach to acceptance teaches us to focus on what we can control and accept what we cannot. This can help us to feel more at peace and in control of our emotions, even when faced with adversity.” (Stoic Simple LLC, n.d.)

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  • I suspect popular Stoic content creators used “acceptance” as a modern and easier-to-understand interpretation of a certain part of Stoic philosophy. I think I was able to trace this specific type of acceptance to Epictetus (n.d./2014), but I’m not certain, because the word “acceptance” isn’t technically used in the translation.  Here are some relevant quotes:

“What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes. ‘How does it come, then?’ As God wills.” (Epictetus, n.d./2014)

“Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing. 2. The things that are within our power are by nature free, and immune to hindrance and obstruction, while those that are not within our power are weak, slavish, subject to hindrance, and not our own. 3. Remember, then, that if you regard that which is by nature slavish as being free, and that which is not your own as being your own, you’ll have cause to lament, you’ll have a troubled mind, and you’ll find fault with both gods and human beings; but if you regard only that which is your own as being your own, and that which isn’t your own as not being your own (as is indeed the case), no one will ever be able to coerce you, no one will hinder you, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll accuse no one, you’ll do nothing whatever against your will, you’ll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because no harm can affect you.” (Epictetus, n.d./2014)

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• The definitional equivalents of (a) the act of believing something as true and (b) the act of tolerating or giving in are used here, but the belief that we have limited control are the primary objects of “acceptance”.

2.i. Acceptance as an act of acceptance

Objects to accept:

• One’s personhood or specific parts about a person (e.g., appearance,  emotions, mistakes, etc)

Actions to take:

• (This is a circular definition so I’m confused myself🤷.)

Referenced in:

• American Psychological Association (APA)

“Self-acceptance. n. a relatively objective sense or recognition of one’s abilities and achievements, together with acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s limitations.” (American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.)

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  • This is probably closer to “acceptance of reality”, but I’m uncertain.
     
• Popular psychology

“[Self-acceptance is] an individual’s acceptance of all of his/her attributes, positive or negative.” (Margado et al., 2014, as cited in Ackerman, 2018, Pillay, 2016)

“Self-acceptance is the act of accepting yourself and all your personality traits exactly as they are. You accept them no matter whether they are positive or negative. This includes your physical and mental attributes.” (Perry, 2021)

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  • I’m guessing it’s pretty close to acceptance as an act of believing that one has unconditional worth (even if you don’t like parts of yourself).

How is this advice different from dictionary definitions?

• Since the authors used circular definitions to describe “acceptance”, I’m not exactly sure how they’ve used “acceptance” differently.

3. Some thoughts and analysis on how “acceptance” is commonly used

3.a. How different are dictionary definitions of “acceptance” and definitions of “acceptance” used in advice?

Looking at the diagram below (Figure 1), I found that:

• In terms of distance,
  • 4 out of 9 “acceptance” related advice are very close in meaning to the dictionary definition. The only difference is that these advice have a more specific object to practise “acceptance” on.
  • 2 out of 9 are somewhat close in meaning. These advice have an added definition that doesn’t take their primary dictionary definition too far away.
  • 2 out of 9 are somewhat far in meaning. Both of them have definitions that are not from any dictionary definitions, such as the act of stopping oneself from doing something or the act of treating people kindly.
  • 1 out of 9 is “undefined” (?), because it uses a circular definition—acceptance as an act of accepting X.
• In terms of frequency, the most used dictionary definition, from most to least, are:
  • The act of tolerating or giving in (referenced in 5 types of advice)
  • The act of believing something as true (referenced in 3)
  • The act of giving someone or something a positive value judgement (referenced in 2)
  • The act of receiving something (referenced in 2)

Overall, I feel like that most of the “acceptance” related advice given have a pretty similar definition with dictionary definitions. Even the least similar advice (treating people kindly from “Radical Acceptance”) still seem pretty close to “acceptance” in concept space. Despite that, reading about “acceptance” still confused me a lot, perhaps because there’s like nine type of advice that are all subtly-to-moderately different from each other, and some advice has more than one dictionary definition or an entirely new definition inserted.

I also think it’s interesting that the “acceptance” definition of the act of tolerating or giving in is probably the most typical type of “acceptance” in advice. Not too surprising, because I had this instinctual vibe that acceptance feels like surrendering yourself to something, so you stop struggling and be less frustrated.

3.b. Do writers often need to point out possible misinterpretations or confusions?

Another way to spot how “acceptance” can be a challenging word to use, and I do see some instances of authors clarifying or pointing out subtle differences in “acceptance” and other kinds of confusion. Here are some examples:

Confusion between tolerating and giving in

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy

“Acceptance does not mean ‘putting up with’ or resigning yourself to anything. Acceptance is about embracing life, not merely tolerating it. Acceptance literally means ‘taking what is offered’. It doesn’t mean giving up or admitting defeat; it doesn’t mean just gritting your teeth and bearing it. It means fully opening yourself to your present reality—acknowledging how it is, right here and now, and letting go of the struggle with life as it is in this moment.” (Harris, 2007)

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  • Here, Harris probably wanted to clearly delineate these two very-close-in-meaning types of “acceptance”.

Confusion between giving in, giving positive value judgement, and believing something as true

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy

“The very concept of accepting the reality of facts that are not in dispute can be difficult for many participants. This is particularly true when participants have been victims of horrific abuse and believe that life has been very unfair to them. A common pattern here is believing that to accept something is to approve [giving positive value judgement] of it or to be passive and not change things [giving in] that are destructive.” (Linehan, 2015-b)

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  • Linehan probably thought that people often get these three definitions of “acceptance” confused, when she only meant acceptance as an act of believing something as true.

Confusion between unconditional and conditional acceptance

• Person-Centered Therapy

“The phrase “unconditional positive regard” may be an unfortunate one, since it sounds like an absolute, an all or nothing dispositional concept. It is probably evident from the description that completely unconditional positive regard would never exist except in theory. From a clinical and experiential point of view I believe the most accurate statement is that the effective therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client during many moments of his contact with him, yet from time to time he experiences only a conditional positive regard...”” (Rogers, 1957)

“However, its hidden paradox emerges when one critically analyzes Rogers' definition of the self and its relation to behavior. Rogers postulates a self in personality which is separate but causally related to behavior. Herein lies the paradox: if the self is causally related to behavior how can one respond conditionally to the latter without doing likewise to the former since some element of a cause is always inherent in its effects?” (Patrick, 1980)

“It is important to make a distinction between experience and external behavior - between, on the one hand, all my client's feelings, thoughts, fantasies, desires, and, on the other hand, his actual behavior. Unconditionality refers to my acceptance of his experience.” (Lietaer, 2001)

• Popular psychology

“... to fully accept yourself and all of your flaws and mistakes does not mean that you condone any bad behavior or accept and embrace unhealthy or harmful actions... You do not need to condone or approve of your actions, traits, and characteristics to accept that you did engage in those actions and that those undesirable traits and characteristics are a real part of who you are.” (Ackerman, 2018)

•  
  • Note that this quote here could also be in point 2 above.

3.c. Did the authors achieve what they wanted with the way they defined “acceptance”?

Yudkowsky (2008) argues that the purpose of drawing boundaries around words or categories is to figure “where to cut reality in order to carve along the joints”, or in my own interpretation, to define words in a way that allows for empirical predictions. The author talks about one could technically put dolphins in a set that are mostly fishes, but putting dolphins in a set that are mostly other aquatic mammals allows one to have a more accurate model of the world (since mammals and fishes are quite different).

However, Alexander (2014) suggests that the purpose of drawing boundaries should be about capturing “tradeoffs you care about”. He gave a thought experiment about a time traveller failing to convince King Solomon that whales are a type of mammal and not a fish. The time traveller failed, because the only thing that Solomon cared about was whether whales should be butchered in the coast (where his ministry of fish is located) or butchered inland (where his ministry of legged creatures is located). So in essence, you can define words however you want as long as they are achieving your goals.

Without thinking hard about this, I’m leaning closer to Alexander’s stance on this.

So, do I think the authors, who gave the bunch of advice above, defined “acceptance” in a way that helps people understand how to regulate emotions better? Overall, I would give them a "B" score for the following reasons:

• What makes the use of “acceptance” in advice more confusing?
  • “Acceptance” as a word already has way too many dictionary definitions (more than six). And of the six I’ve listed, four of them are primarily used in advice. Furthermore, some advice has a mix of different dictionary definitions alongside other non-"acceptance" related definitions.
  • There is a glut of “acceptance” related advice—nine different types of advice from ten different sources, and some of them are pretty close in meaning to others.
• What makes the use of “acceptance” in advice less confusing?
  • Almost all authors did write about concrete level actions to practise “acceptance”. So even if they use “acceptance” at first, they’ll eventually fill you in with the actual actions.

So how does one get to an "A" score (from me) when talking about “acceptance”?

• This might be nitpicky, but I would prefer if they gave more close-but-not-similar examples to differentiate the “acceptance” they want to talk about. For example, “some people use ‘acceptance’ in X, Y, and Z ways, but in this writing, I want to talk about doing it in W way.”
• Or better, just taboo “acceptance” totally (not one word of it) if one is planning to use it.
• Or even better, someone should write about “Super Ultra Level 9999 Acceptance”. 9999x more radical than Brach’s “Radical Acceptance” or Linehan’s “radical acceptance” (Dialectical Behavior Therapy). It combines all nine “acceptance” related advice this, plus adjacent virtues like forgiveness, empathy, courage, etc. That way when someone wants to write about “acceptance”, someone else could go, “oh didn’t you hear? Someone already wrote about all the different kinds of “acceptance”. There’s no more alpha here.”

3.d. So, should one love every part of oneself, even if one likes hurting people?

Mostly likely not. But I might write more about this in the future.

References

1. Ackerman, C. (2018, July 12). What is self-acceptance? 25 exercises + definition and quotes. Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/self-acceptance/
2. Alexander, S. (2014, November 21). The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/NHXY86jBahi968uW4/p/aMHq4mA2PHSM2TMoH
3. American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology (n.d.) Acceptance. dictionary.apa.org dictionary. Retrieved July 24, 2024, from https://dictionary.apa.org/acceptance
4. Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (2015). The Relationship Inventory: A Complete Resource and Guide. Wiley-Blackwell.
5. Bhikkhu, Ṭhānissaro. (2010). Head & heart together: Essays on the buddhist path [Ebook]. Metta Forest Monastery.
6. Brach, T. (2003). Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With The Heart of a Buddha. Bantam Dell.
7. David, D., Lynn, S. J., & Das, L. S. (2013). Self-acceptance in Buddhism and psychotherapy. In M. E. Bernard (Ed.), The strength of self-acceptance: Theory, practice and research (pp. 19–38). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6806-6_2
8. Dobson-Smith, D. D. S. (2022, August 8). A Sense of Belonging Starts with Self-Acceptance. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/08/a-sense-of-belonging-starts-with-self-acceptance
9. Ellis, A. (2006). The Myth of Self-esteem. Prometheus Books.
10. Epictetus (n.d./2014). Discourses, fragments, handbook (Hard, R., & Gill, C.). Oxford University Press.
11. Farber, B. A., & Doolin, E. M. (2011). Positive regard and affirmation. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Evidence-based responsiveness (2nd ed., pp. 168–186). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737208.003.0008
12. Farber, B. A., Suzuki, J. Y., & Ort, D. (2022). Understanding and enhancing positive regard in psychotherapy: Carl Rogers and beyond. American Psychological Association.
13. Fischer-Schreiber, I., Ehrhard, F., & Diener, M. S. (1991). The Shambhala dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston, MA: Shambhala
14. Gendlin, E. T. (2003). Focusing. Bantam Books.
15. Grieger, R. (2013). Unconditional Self-Acceptance. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-purpose/201302/unconditional-self-acceptance
16. Harris, R. (2007). The happiness trap : stop struggling, start living. Exisle Publishing, , Reprint.
17. Hayes, S., & Smith, S. (2005). Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. New Harbinger Publications Inc.
18. Lietaer, G. (2001). Unconditional acceptance and positive regard. Research Gate. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Germain_Lietaer/publication/232513039_Unconditional_positive_regard_A_controversial_basic_attitude_in_client-centered_therapy/links/54ae44d50cf24aca1c6f834c
19. Linehan, M. (2015-a). DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.
20. Linehan, M. M. (2015-b). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Publications.
21. Morgado, F. F. da R., Betanho Campana, A. N. N., & Fernandes Tavares, M. da C. G. C. (2014). Development and Validation of the Self-Acceptance Scale for Persons with Early Blindness: The SAS-EB. PLoS ONE, 9(9), e106848. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0106848
22. Ort, D., Moore, C., & Farber, B. A. (2022). Therapists’ perspectives on positive regard. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 22(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2022.2104751
23. Oxford English Dictoinary (n.d.) Accept. oed.com dictionary. Retrieved July 24, 2024, from https://www.oed.com/dictionary/accept_v?tab=meaning_and_use#40558959
24. Perry, E. (2021). The path to self-acceptance, paved through daily practice. BetterUp. https://www.betterup.com/blog/self-acceptance
25. Pillay, S. (2016).  Greater self-acceptance improves emotional well-being. Harvard Health Blog. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/greater-self-acceptance-improves-emotional-well-201605169546
26. Rogers, C. (1957). The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045357
27. Rogers, C. R. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships: As Developed in the Client-Centered Framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Formulations of the Person and the Social Context (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw Hill.
28. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person. A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Pp. Xi. 420. Constable & Co.: London; Printed In U.S.A.
29. Schmitt, J. P. (1980). Unconditional positive regard: The hidden paradox. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 17(3), 237–245. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0085917
30. Seltzer, L. (2008). The Path to Unconditional Self-Acceptance. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/200809/the-path-unconditional-self-acceptance
31. Stoic Simple LLC. (n.d.). Stoicism and the subtle art of acceptance. Stoic Simple. Retrieved July 24, 2024, from https://www.stoicsimple.com/stoicism-and-the-subtle-art-of-acceptance/
32. Suzuki, J. Y., & Farber, B. A. (2016). Toward greater specificity of the concept of positive regard. Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, 15(4), 263–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2016.1204941
33. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (n.d.) Accept. ahdictionary.com dictionary. Retrieved July 24, 2024, from https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=accept
34. Williams, J. C., & Lynn, S. J. (2010). Acceptance: An Historical and Conceptual Review. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 30(1), 5–56. https://doi.org/10.2190/ic.30.1.c
35. Wojnarowska, A., Kobylinska, D., & Lewczuk, K. (2020). Acceptance as an emotion regulation strategy in experimental psychological research: What we know and how we can improve that knowledge. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00242
36. Yudkowsky, E. (2008-a). The Argument from Common Usage. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9ZooAqfh2TC9SBDvq/the-argument-from-common-usage
37. Yudkowsky, E. (2008-b). Where to Draw the Boundary? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary
38. Yudkowsky, E. (2009). Striving to Accept. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cxcormwz6jb98gGzW/striving-to-accept

Appendix

Unconditional Positive Regard

Despite referencing PCT’s use of “acceptance” in the table above, I found that the term was not in fact clearly defined in literature. However, I decided to still include PCT, since it was an influential form of psychotherapy and “acceptance” was mentioned quite consistently as being part of “unconditional positive regard” (UPR)—a necessary feature of doing PCT (Rogers, 1957).

Ironically, even the concept of UPR was similarly vague and under-defined (Farber, 2011; Ort et al., 2022; Suzuki & Farber, 2016), making the effort to understand “acceptance” much more challenging. Collating all of the varied definitions of UPR further is beyond the scope of this writing, but for those who are curious, here’s one (modern) interpretation of UPR that is easier to understand. UPR is essentially a merger of two concepts:

1. Positive regard: a combination of positive feelings including care, support,  respect, liking, affection, validation, warmth, support, and affirmation (Barrett-Lennard, 2015; Farber et al., 2022); and
2. Unconditionality: “the degree of constancy of [positive] regard felt by one person for another” or “how little or how much variability there is in one person’s affective response to another” (Barrett-Lennard, 2015).