Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach is a book that teaches readers how to overcome habitual feelings of deficiency and better relate to their experience and emotions.
Through personal stories, case histories, and guided meditations, Brach provides readers with a toolkit that allows them to become a friend to their thoughts. The book draws on the wisdom of Buddhist teachings, illustrative stories, and the transformative power of meditation to guide readers in healing the shame and fear that bind their hearts.
The main themes of Radical Acceptance include mindfulness, compassion, and the power of acceptance to bring greater peace, connection, and agency into our lives, relationships, and communities. Brach examines these themes in detail, using stories about her life, anecdotes about the experiences of the patients she has helped in her clinical psychology practice, and various meditations.
Useful takeaways from Radical Acceptance include:
- Radical acceptance means clearly recognizing what we are feeling in the present moment and regarding that experience with compassion.
- The two parts of genuine acceptance—seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion—are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird.
- Radical acceptance is a distress tolerance skill that is designed to keep pain from turning into suffering.
- By accepting the facts of reality without responding by throwing a tantrum or with willful negligence, we can keep pain from becoming suffering.
- Radical acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead, it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships.
What I Liked
This book got quite a bit of buzz for a moment, so I picked it up. It’s very engaging and I can see how it could be helpful for a lot of people.
What I Did Not Like
For me, I didn’t really finish it. It did not resonate with the me and there were parts that were very heavy and honestly not that great to read…unless you had gone through those situations.