Hard truths: Accepting them sucks, but it can make life a little easier
Although everyone’s experiences and stories are unique, as a therapist, you start to notice some overarching patterns in conversations with clients. Oftentimes, conversation leads to a piece of truth that is hard to swallow. These truths don’t have a work around, an alternative option, or an easy answer (in fact, to offer one would often feel quite invalidating). Those are what I call the hard truths. When it comes to hard truths, I’ve found radical acceptance to be the most helpful option. Although it is certainly not easy in the short term to accept these truths, doing so can prevent on-going suffering. The most important thing to remember is that radical acceptance does not mean that you approve of or have appreciation for something. It simply means accepting something to be reality in order to save yourself the harmful impact that resisting or not accepting it could cause. Here are some of those hard-truths:
Pain is part of life. No choice we make can prevent all bad things from happening to us or our world.
I want to be clear: pain is not evenly distributed in this world. Horrible things happen that aren’t fair in any way, nor do they singularly have any silver lining. However, life will never be easy or painless for anyone. To expect to ever reach a point where it feels easy and painless is unrealistic. What’s realistic is making life all worth it in its sum. Knowing pain allows us to know what true joy and happiness is. Love itself never comes without pain. There will forever be pain amongst the joy, it is our choice which to lean into. Focus on managing how much suffering the pain causes via the things you prioritize, self-compassion, and self-care. This is the space where we have some control.
2. Love alone isn’t enough.
You can love someone with all your heart and it may not be enough to make that relationship work in the way you want or deserve. Whether it be with a parent, a friend, or a partner, love alone cannot sustain a healthy relationship. Sometimes active work and a willingness to make changes and have hard conversations helps, and sometimes it doesn’t. Or, your someone may not want to participate at all. Sometimes the best option is to walk away, create space, set new boundaries, and/or adjust expectations.
3. There is no “perfect” job. There is no “perfect” match for you.
You can find a job you like, or even love (whether it’s because it’s fulfilling or provides you with what you need), but no matter what, there will be parts of it that you don’t like or that make you question it. Similarly, there is no one relationship meant for you. No matter what, your relationship will take work. You will question it at times. Your partner(s) will piss you off. And yet, you can still find a relationship that feels like it’s worth the hard parts - a relationship that is healthy, stable, and loving.
4. Success does not guarantee fulfillment.
Goals are important. They keep us moving, working hard, and can improve our lives and self-view in many ways. Nonetheless, once you check off all of your goals, don’t expect that one achievement alone to be the key to ultimate happiness. There will always be something else to achieve once we adapt to the new level of success (check out the concept of the hedonic treadmill). Truthfully, the “I’ll be happy when…” mindset is one of the easiest and most common traps to fall into. There is another level of difficulty added when we are often strongly influenced by others’ messages about what will make us happy. If our goals are more based on the expectations of others or society, we can accomplish them successfully only to realize that it brought no additional happiness or satisfaction to our life.
5. Most things won’t last forever.
Things are always changing. We are always changing and growing. With growth and change, comes loss. That means friendships that once meant everything might no longer fill you up. A partner that you once couldn’t get enough of now makes you feel stuck. Careers that felt right, no longer do. None of this means you are doing anything wrong. Relationships and feelings don’t need to last forever in order to matter. In fact, the very things that helped you grow may also be the things you grow out of. It is the beautiful, yet painful, truth of life that nothing is permanent.
6. We have very, very little control.
Most things that make us feel in control are somewhat surface-level illusions. We can learn to use this truth to make us feel at peace, and free to go with the tides, instead of letting it consistently cause anxiety and frustration because we can’t stop the waves, no matter what we do.
7. Almost nothing in life fits in a box. It is a world of “gray areas”.
People aren’t all good or all bad. Choices aren’t fully right or fully wrong. Diagnoses don’t look exactly the same in each person. People are never just one thing. We might simultaneously love someone with our whole heart and be consistently infuriated with their views and choices. We as humans are never completely happy or unhappy, satisfied or unsatisfied. Our brains like putting things in categories. It makes the world more digestible and less overwhelming. It can be hard to sit in the discomfort of a world of infinite contradictions. However, when we embrace more gray areas it makes space to feel many different things at once and to not feel as pressured to make the “right” choice. It stops us from making as many assumptions or placing as many labels on ourselves or others.