Mental Health writing about Acceptance

This information comes from Ypsiwrites.com, a writing prompts workshop.

Writing about Acceptance

Acceptance is experiencing people, things, and situations the way they are without trying to change them. Radical acceptance means recognizing that what we cannot change sometimes includes our thoughts and emotions before, after, and in the moment.

Acceptance is not approval! Accepting someone rude to you, for example, does not mean that you are okay with their rudeness-but instead, that you have freed up your emotions to respond wisely. Tough emotions are part of everyone's life, and acceptance can be a process that takes effort. We can only control ourselves.

Explore acceptance through a prompt or two:

1. What are some things you've accepted in your life? An embarrassing or regretful moment? A loss? A less-than-satisfactory job? A professional or scholastic challenge? A failure? A disagreement? What did you do to accept one of those situations?
2. What's an example of a time you practiced radical acceptance? What was a tough thought, feeling, or behavior you worked to accept? What was that like for you?
3. We don't always have all the skills we need to manage every challenge in our lives. Sometimes, acceptance is like putting the problem on a shelf until you can work on it: That can look like asking for simply receiving -support from someone else. What's an example of a time you accepted help from someone?
4. What do you typically think of when you hear the word acceptance? Approval? Acknowledgment? Do you have a negative, positive, or neutral relationship with acceptance?

Has this worksheet changed your sense of acceptance? How so?

If you live in Washtenaw County and are struggling with your mental health, call the CARES team at 734-544-3050.