Acceptance is Key

Hi Holistic Blissers, please note that each article will build on the previous, so if you haven’t already, check out my January article on emotions and its key skill of mindful breathing.

Emotions are incredibly important to our life as they provide colour to life’s canvas. We feel connection, elation, satisfaction and these feelings often encourage us down the pathways of our strengths and talents. Unfortunately, society has huge myth and beliefs about emotions that get in the way of us naturally feeling and expressing. For example, we may be told not to cry or not to get angry. As we’ll go into later on – emotions serve a purpose and also provide vital information, even the negative ones.

This is tricky territory as often we have well-practiced behaviours and ways of avoiding what we feel. We’ve often become very skilled at ignoring our feelings, or we mask them with wine, chocolate, TV… almost anything you can think of. Similarly, we are often rewarded for ignoring our feelings – people, even those close to us, can view emotions as unnecessary ‘drama’ and only engage with us, or be positive towards us if we are in certain emotional states.

A key aspect of therapy is acceptance of the client – no matter what they are feeling, thinking or how they are behaving. Often we link this with non-judgment, which is essentially stepping away from any resistance to the person’s feelings or other beliefs about them. Any good relationship involves allowing and accepting the other person. This has to occur for true healing to take place. This acceptance, and the strong positive relationship between therapist and client, is an incredibly powerful effect. Research has shown that it provides 30% of all benefit in therapy. In other words, if someone was to have a session but only talk about their life, and never offered any skills or strategies to make changes, there would still be a 30% improvement in their difficulties.

My personal example of acceptance is what we can observe in young children, before they are shut down and controlled. The child may be bouncing around, happy to go to the park. We buy ice creams, and it’s the best day ever!! The child isn’t paying attention, watching a butterfly, and the icecream slips onto the ground. A tragedy – tears, crying and screaming. But if we allow them to be upset, and understand and accept their feelings, then within minutes everything is fine, and they are back to bouncing around, happily playing on the swings.

So for the next month, give yourself the gift of acceptance. When you feel something negative, don’t avoid it or suppress it. Allow it space, breathe, and give it time to pass.

Luke La Vie

www.lukelaviepsychology.com

To make an appointment with Luke please phone: 0481 861 560

For more information, please visit Luke’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093426380082

Luke La Vie

Luke has a Masters in Clinical Psychology and more than fifteen years experience assisting children, adolescents and adults overcome their psychological challenges, so that they can live their ideal life.

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