Acceptance vs. Appreciation

  A lot has been written and spoken about the “acceptance of the reality after brain injury.”  This is acceptance of what has occurred and accepting the person you, as a survivor, have become.  It’s said that one of the goals of rehabilitation should be acceptance of who you are.

        I disagree.  Acceptance should not be a goal but a stop in the road that you visit while traversing the more complete path of recovery.  A person must be comfortable accepting him or herself after TBI, granted, but setting it as a goal doesn’t go far enough.  Saying “all you have to do is accept yourself” is like setting yourself the goal of running a marathon, but then dropping out after five kilometers with the thought, “Well, at least I tried.  I guess I just have to admit I’m just not able to do the whole thing.”  For the marathon of recovery, the goal needs to be that a survivor appreciates the person he or she has become, for by appreciating rather than merely accepting, it gives that survivor the power of choice in the journey that the future will take.

Acceptance is passive.  It is recognizing that the world is happening and believing that there is nothing more that can be done.  Acceptance of a situation is taking one’s hands off the wheel of life, leaning back and saying, “Hey, not my fault — let life drive itself — I’ll just let it do its thing.”  Acceptance might not imply actively a destructive action or encouraging negative thoughts, but it does imply inaction, and if you’re not doing any actions you can’t go anywhere.

 

So be active.  Don’t merely accept what has happened, but appreciate what the injury has allowed you to become.  Note, this does NOT mean appreciating the trauma.  The event that happened is horrific and has caused damage that will resonate in you and your world for all your life.  Tragedy should not be celebrated, but it can teach, and a survivor can learn.  Do the work to find the lessons in a tragedy, and you can discover how to grow.  It is the growth that comes from this learning that a survivor can appreciate.

Appreciating is active, making choices to recognize how to learn and how to grow. Accepting is static.  Appreciating is exciting — it’s being on a quest to discover unexpected gems of understanding buried beneath the mounds of muck created by hardship.  Accepting is boring, and lets the world pass with minimal engagement.  Appreciating is difficult, sifting through the pain and loss in an attempt to find the seeds of growth.  Accepting is also difficult, but can give the appearance of seeming easier, and it almost never offers rewards.

Appreciating is joyful.  Acceptance is blasé.

I contrast these choices here because too often I read and hear discussions about “Accepting who I am after brain injury,” and I find this attitude defeatist, depressing and simply unproductive.  Furthermore, “accepting who I am...” suggests that you are a different person, which is just false.  Brain injury forces adaptations and changes in some ways of living, but the identity of the person is constant — just now he or she is informed by the experience of being a survivor and navigating recovery.  A survivor has not changed, but can grow.

In the next entry I’m going to share some of my experience making the choice to appreciate my self rather than just accept what happened in my own brain injury experience, so check back soon.