When even acceptance quietly becomes a wish to change
Many people try to accept their feelings — and notice that it does not get easier all the same.
Fear is there, sadness stays, inner tension hardly changes.
The impression arises that you are not yet doing something properly.
Many do notice at some point that fighting their own feelings achieves little.
They begin not to push fear away. Not to want to change sadness straight away.
That really is a different way of dealing with it.
Calmer. Less turned against yourself.
And yet something often shows itself that is barely noticeable at first.
In the attempt to accept a feeling, a quiet orientation frequently remains:
that something is meant to change through it.
A feeling is there. And at the same time the question runs along in the background of whether it is getting less.
Is it easing yet?
With that the focus shifts.
It is no longer only about the feeling.
It is about whether I am accepting it “properly” — and whether it lets up as a result.
“Accepting” turns into something that is supposed to work.
Into something that can succeed or fail.
You can see it, for example, when someone sits still and tries to allow a feeling —
while inwardly checking again and again whether it is getting less.
Or in a quiet doubt creeping in:
am I doing this right?
The feeling then no longer simply stands on its own.
It becomes the object of an examination.
Here the same movement as before shows itself:
that unpleasant experience is, in the end, still meant to be changed.
Only open resistance moves into the background.
A quieter form takes its place:
No longer “this must not be here” —
but “it should change if I deal with it properly”.
Not because “accepting” would be wrong.
But because something carries on in it unnoticed:
the attempt to change it.
And exactly that can become visible in a moment.
Not as something you consciously decided on, but as something that has been running along the whole time.
And in the moment it is seen, it is no longer quite the same.
It is no longer unnoticed.
The feeling is still there.
And at the same time it becomes clear what is going on in the background.
And this additional demand loses some of its weight for a moment.