Accepting Somebody Is Not the Same as Agreeing With Them

Say the word acceptance out loud in a room full of adults and watch what happens. Somebody will fold their arms. Because what most people hear is surrender — that you are being asked to nod along, to pretend the thing that bothers you doesn’t, to let someone off a hook they have earned.

That is not what the word means, and the distinction is the most useful thing on this whole page.

The part that trips everybody up

You can accept a person completely and still disagree with every opinion they hold. You can accept them and still tell them no. You can accept them and still decide they do not get to be in your house any more. What acceptance asks you to put down is not your judgement, your rights, or your boundaries. It is the fight — the low-grade, exhausting campaign to make somebody into a different person than the one standing in front of you.

Rick Hanson, a psychologist who writes about this for a living, is blunt about where the trouble starts. It is not in wishing people were different; that is ordinary and mostly harmless. It starts when wishing tips over into righteousness, fault-finding, badgering, and the sort of simmering resistance you can carry around for years without noticing the weight of it.

Read that list again, because it is uncomfortably specific. Righteousness. Fault-finding. Badgering. Most of us would not describe ourselves that way. Most of us are doing at least one of them before breakfast.

Why the fight is so appealing

Here is the honest reason we avoid accepting people, and it has almost nothing to do with them.

As long as you are busy being annoyed about somebody, you never have to sit with how you actually feel about them. The irritation is doing a job. It is standing in for grief that your father is not the father you wanted, or for the fear that your friend is not going to get better, or for the plain sadness that somebody you love has become a person you do not entirely recognise. Struggle is easier to hold than sorrow. It feels active. It feels like progress.

So when people say they cannot accept someone, what is often true is that they cannot yet tolerate what acceptance would leave them holding.

The practice, which takes about ninety seconds

Hanson’s version is deliberately plain. Pick one person — start with somebody who irritates you rather than somebody who has genuinely harmed you — and say, out loud or in your head:

I accept you completely. Countless causes, large and small, have led you to think, speak and act the way you do. You are who you are. I let it be.

Then get specific, because the general version is too easy. I accept that you leave every cabinet door open. I accept that you are still angry with me. I accept that you are not the teacher my child needed. I accept that you will fight me over this.

Notice what shows up. That is the whole exercise. Not the words — the noticing. Most people find something underneath the annoyance that they were not expecting, and it is usually softer than the annoyance was.

What it has to do with a dog

Baxter did this without being taught, which is either humbling or encouraging depending on the day.

He never once assessed anybody. He did not need to know where you stood before he decided how to greet you, because there was only ever one greeting. Four legs off the ground, no questions, no conditions, and no small print. He accepted every person who came through that door as a complete and finished fact, and then he was delighted about it.

He was not being tolerant. Tolerance is what you do while you wait for somebody to change. He simply had no category for the thing we spend so much energy on.

Acceptance is a gift that gives back

One more thing, and it is the part worth carrying around.

Think of a time you could tell — really tell — that another person accepted you entirely. Not approved of you. Not agreed with you. Accepted you, including the parts you are not proud of. It is one of the few genuinely rare experiences in adult life, and most people can remember every instance.

You are able to give that to someone this week. It costs nothing, it is invisible from the outside, and the person receiving it will usually not be able to name what changed. They will only notice that being around you got easier.

That is the trade. You put down a fight you were never going to win, and somebody gets to stop defending themselves in your company.

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Prompted by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., and worth reading in the original. We keep it in the library here: read the source. Their piece is at rickhanson.com.