BRIDGING: Acceptance of Multiple Truths

By Vida Manalang

I felt a lot of resistance writing this particular piece. I have been having trouble coping with the duality of the blog as a form of creative output and the blog as a quarterly task. I was full of insecurity surrounding the idea that this blog is a space for realization and expression - easy, inspired, and curious in nature. How dare I view this opportunity as a chore. 

However,  I've recently come to a space where I can recognize the act of writing this piece on the blog is both: vacillating between an implementation of inspiration and a boundaries expectation. 

What authorized and mobilized me to be able to do exactly what I am doing right now - writing this blog - was the practice of acceptance. Radical, radical acceptance.

I am training to be a therapist and am currently at my internship sites seeing clients of my own. The work I have done with my clients and supervisor thus far have re-invigorated my understanding and curiosity of life with new ways of thinking and conceptualizing what it means to be.

I have been fixated on a lesson I am borrowing from Dialectical Behavioral Theory (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), both of which are rooted in Zen Buddhism (and subsequently Buddhist Psychology - a topic I’ll save for another time). 

The lesson is simple:

Acceptance ≠ Approval

Accepting multiple realities, sometimes even dissonant or contrary realities, is possible. Something something Walt Whitman, something something containing multitudes or whatever. 

Accepting circumstances as they are, without a want for things to be different, is - seemingly impossible - the crux of change.

Acceptance does not mean that you have to appreciate everything about a situation. Acceptance does not mean you have to like everything that is happening. 

Acceptance is simply the absence of non-acceptance.

This lesson above comes with a subsequent postulate: 

Non-Acceptance = Pain × 2

Wherein the act of not accepting the truth of the pain, results in twice the suffering.

For example, my root ‘pain’ was that I was stressed about writing this blog post. My non-acceptance of the stress (saying things like: This should be easy and enjoyable or  I should be inspired, not stressed) only resulted in more resistance and anxiety. 

With anxiety comes the tendency to flee or to freeze (I am not much of a fighter). In this way the ‘pain’ doubled and tripled over itself.

So what changed?

Acceptance. I accepted that writing was a stressor. I also accepted that writing was a creative act. They were two realities that were not competing, but just existing. 

By not leaning into one truth or another - not assuming one truth to be correct or right, I accessed my ability to be, and to do.

I guess I should talk about bridging now.

In this context, the act of acceptance is the act of bridging convergent, complementary, and divergent realities. It is not about breaking the mold or reinventing the wheel. It's not even about letting one thing connect to another in the traditional sense of “bridging”. It is about increasing psychological flexibility and our ability to see beyond our own comfortable point of view of reality - and for the discomfort that may come with it to be okay. 

The bridging in this case is being able to say:

"This is a piece of land, and that over there is a piece of land also."

First, we have to accept that both pieces of land exist before we bridge between them.