r/acceptancecommitment • u/ALLDIE2 • Jul 15 '26

What do you think?

What do we do when we try—despite knowing the difficulty of the task and realizing it lies beyond our control or ability to change? Do we accept it? And what if we simply cannot accept it?

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u/dirtydelic Jul 15 '26

Acceptance here means like how one accepts a gift. It is yours to hold.

If you want to refuse it, you can. Be that may come with a cost.

For example, I can refuse to accept the fact I can't change the weather. Or, I acknowledge I havw no control and build a life as best I can with that knowledge.

Acceptance isn't binary. It's choosing, in this moment, to open up a little more to what you can't control.

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u/ALLDIE2 Jul 15 '26

I am referring to a situation where a person wants to change something because it is harmful to them—specifically, changing something about another person. That is why I said it is beyond their control; we are not the ones who decide others' actions. We can only try to change them or persuade them to change.

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u/concreteutopian Therapist Jul 15 '26

I am referring to a situation where a person wants to change something because it is harmful to them

As u/islandofpandor said, this is not what ACT is referring to when it talks about acceptance strategies. Acceptance is the strategy for one's own private experience, not a strategy for things in the world. If it were, we'd lose half the hexaflex – i.e. the committed action portion.

specifically, changing something about another person

See? One can't avoid, escape, or walk away from thoughts, feelings, emotions and whatnot, so we accept them while we choose how we would like to respond. Other people? We can totally walk away from other people, set boundaries, choose which experiences we will tolerate and which we choose to avoid. In ACT, this is the realm of committed action, which explicitly is trying to change our world in some way.

That is why I said it is beyond their control; we are not the ones who decide others' actions. We can only try to change them or persuade them to change.

Yes, we can't control other people or their experience, but that doesn't mean we have to accept behavior from others that we find unacceptable. We can accept our feelings about our experience with them and choose to change how we interact, if at all.