It seems that nearly every week, a story pops up about someone who was wrongly convicted of a horrible crime and ended up in prison for decades as a result. The person is exonerated and then released to somehow build a normal life again. This, for many of us, would be one of our worst nightmares. How on earth can someone get through this type of situation with her or his sanity intact? I think it is very likely that these folks are practicing a skill that, in DBT, we call radical acceptance, even if they don’t know it. Radical acceptance involves being open to and facing the reality of the situation that we are in. To do this, we often have to give up denial, refusal to accept the situation we are in, rumination about how horrible it is, etc. It would be bad enough to be stuck in prison for no reason; imagine how much worse it would be if you were stuck in prison for no reason and spent your whole time refusing to accept it, ruminating about it, or pretending it wasn’t true. The same is true of other life events that are hard to accept. Having chronic pain, for example, is already painful and upsetting enough without constantly thinking about the pain or wishing it was over. Even minor inconveniences, such as being late, become incredibly hard to tolerate when we refuse to accept them. Something to remember about acceptance in DBT is that acceptance does not mean giving up. For example, often when stories about wrongful convictions come out, it’s clear that the individual has spent years appealing the conviction, often to no avail. You can accept the reality of your current situation while you continue to work on changing it. If you struggle with chronic pain, for example, you can accept that you feel chronic pain but continue looking for a pain specialist or treatment that might help alleviate your suffering. You can accept without giving up hope. More on this in a future blog. – Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.,