Can I help without Radical Acceptance?

To be honest, this will be extraordinarily difficult to be supportive in a meaningful way. If your loved one is struggling with self-destructive behaviors that you cannot accept, you will be fighting with reality. You flounder into ill-advised change strategies when you fight reality. Deciding to start on any kind of journey with a map is likely to fail if you do not know where you currently located.   This can lead to controlling behaviors where your child/loved one then feels more shame and hides more of what is going wrong for them. It can lead to even more dangerous behaviors, distance and confusion.

It is fundamentally important to recognize that no change can happen without acceptance. Validation plays an important example here as an acceptance strategy. It expresses to others that you see where they are and that it is okay where they are. From knowing and accepting where someone is makes it possible to change. As discussed in our behaviorism episode, shaping in behaviorism is already rife with difficulties, even when we have a good idea where a client is.

In dysregulated families, the parents and children tend to both be fighting with their own realities in a sort of emotional, behavioral fog of confusion. Someone needs to accept the reality of what is occurring with the assumption that it needs to be an adult. It is the classic trope of putting your oxygen mask on first before attending others. The team would recommend setting aside goals for your loved one and focusing on how to apply DBT to your own experience. Parenting emotionally reactive children does raise the bar for the skills needed to have effective interactions.  It will require familiarity and comfort with acceptance strategies, which is why our family program starts with reality acceptance, mindfulness and validation prior to discussing strategies from the change end of the acceptance change dialect.

All Therapists are Jerks, and . . .: Ep 4. Radical Acceptance (libsyn.com)

All Therapists are Jerks, and . . .: Ep 5. Turning the Mind (libsyn.com)

All Therapists are Jerks, and . . .: Ep 6. Half Smile Willing Hands (libsyn.com)

All Therapists are Jerks, and . . .: Ep 13. Validation (libsyn.com)