Fighting Back Effectively Requires Acceptance
Let me explain
I’ll preface this for those who might claim I have no skin in this fight because I’m Canadian. Every nation is affected by what happens in the United States. Every person within those nations is affected. The poison that is the far right in America is present in every other country and that poison is emboldened everywhere by the raging narcissistic sociopath who currently occupies the White House.
I’ve been watching investors freaking out over market volatility since Trump launched his insane tariff war last week. Billionaires clutching their pearls, completely caught off guard by his betrayal of them. Who could have predicted it would happen to them? After all, they bought him fair and square, right?
I don’t feel sorry for the billionaires. They’re as crooked and self-serving as Trump is. But the rest of us, those in America, Europe, Mexico, Canada (my home), and the rest of the world who have been and will continue to be harmed, not only by this financial disaster, but also by Trump’s assault on democracy and the stability of international relations around the world? I’m deeply concerned for us.
I’ve also watched the protests in the U.S., here in Canada, and around the world. And it’s making a difference, at least in the American Senate and in mobilizing Democratic lawmakers to finally act. Because people are angry. We are fighting back. And we’re not taking no for an answer.
But we could be doing more, in less visible ways, perhaps, but also in ways that can increase this groundswell of resistance. It all starts with three principles I used to teach my patients when I worked as a physician psychotherapist: Acceptance, Allowing, and Wanting What You Want. Let me explain.
Acceptance
In order to effectively deal with any situation, you first have to first fully accept it. This doesn’t mean what you probably think it does unless you’re familiar with mindfulness. Acceptance of something doesn’t mean allowing it (which I’ll come to in a minute). It means fully acknowledging exactly what that thing is. To not blind yourself to any aspect of it because it’s uncomfortable to look at, or because it keeps you from having what you want. (I’ll get to that in a bit too.)
In counseling terms, that might mean not ignoring red flags that are warning you that your partner is abusive and that the abuse is escalating because they are a good financial provider, or they always apologize profusely and there’s a honeymoon period after each instance of abuse. Or even that they abused their last partner, even if they’re being kind to you right now.
In terms of the billionaires, it would have meant not being stupid enough to ignore the track record of a narcissistic sociopath (To be fair, plenty of them are narcissistic and either sociopaths or psychopaths.) who has lied to and cheated business partners, tradespeople, wives, and everyone else he has ever had dealings with. A man who uses everyone, praising them when they do his bidding, then turns on them the moment they oppose his will, or he no longer has a use for them.
It would have meant paying attention to his constant harping about tariffs, not just this election cycle, but for decades. It would have meant acknowledging that he doesn’t understand finance, markets, negotiation, or anything else that goes into governing a nation and maintaining the stability necessary for prosperity. This is a man who went bankrupt six times. This is a man who bankrupted casinos!
This would have required acceptance of what was right before their eyes. And they didn’t want to accept it because they were caught up in their own greed and their belief that they would be an exception to Donald Trump’s utter contempt for the needs of anyone but himself.
Allowing
Allowing is what most people think of when they hear the word “acceptance.” Allowing can be an important tool. It can also be capitulation.
I’ll give you an example from my own life. I’ve lived with chronic pain for thirty-five years. It’s something I’ve had to learn to accept. It’s not going to go away. It’s part of my everyday reality. As a physician, I dealt with many patients who struggled with that acceptance in their own lives. They would chase relief, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Opioids are useful for acute pain. They’re used after surgery, and, as long as they’re tapered within a few days, pose few risks for most patients. When used longer than this, they lead to addiction. The human body builds tolerance to the pain-relieving effects of these medications and to get relief, higher and higher doses are needed. Ultimately, people end up addicted and still in pain. When patients would join my practice looking for an increase in dose (from another physician), I would explain this to them and tell them I’d help them come off the drugs but not increase their dose.
In my own case, I never took them. (I in recent years found out after surgery, that I don’t tolerate them, even in low doses, which is another story.) I chose to allow the pain. What does that mean?
The pain was there whether or not I “allowed” it to be. When we don’t allow pain, we tense against it. Our muscles tighten, and we make the pain worse. If we allow it, there are things we can do to learn to relax our muscles and to be more in tune with our bodies. This actually naturally reduces the pain and makes us more functional.
In the case of the billionaires, they allowed Trump to mislead them and to run amok, handing him millions of dollars, believing that he would never turn on their interests. They allowed him to harm others, as long as they were getting theirs. And now? Well, see above for the pearl-clutching. They’re reaping a harvest they chose not to see they had sown.
Wanting what you want
Wanting what you want is what fuels non acceptance and unhealthy allowing. The billionaires wanted free reign to abuse workers and consumers to further enrich themselves. They wanted free markets in which they could make a killing. They wanted it to be true that Trump would enable them to do so.
The patients who came to me asking for ever larger prescriptions of opioids wanted pain relief that it wasn’t possible to provide long term., and, unfortunately, to feed their addictions. The patients in abusive relationships wanted to be loved. They wanted to believe that their partners, parents, siblings, “friends” who were abusing them would be better, kinder, truly love them. They all wanted what they wanted.
When you want what you want, you close your eyes to what you don’t want to see. You don’t accept reality. Or you only accept the pieces of it that you think will let you get it. You see only what fits with your desires. You live in a fantasy world of your own making. You allow things you know aren’t right. You put up with things you’d never suggest your friend allow. You probably even lie to others about what’s happening—because deep down you know how wrong it is.
How all of this helps in the fight against fascism
The more people involved in the fight against the fascists in power in Washington (and those who would like to be in power in Canada and every currently democratic country around the world), the stronger we are. We need as many people in our tent as possible. It means inviting back in people who voted for Trump or who didn’t vote at all.
I get it. You’re angry. So am I. You want to nurse that anger and self-righteously beat them back, yelling that they’re to blame for where we are now. To some extent, I feel that too. But that’s wanting what you want. It’s wanting to be right more than you want to save democracy. If that’s where you are right now, it’s also keeping you from acceptance and allowing the fascists to keep us divided.
Kamala Harris was right. We are stronger together. And we (most of us) have more in common than that which separates us. I’m not talking about the fascists and the racists who voted out of hate. I’m not talking about the truly indoctrinated MAGA who would watch their children starve before they would turn away from Trump. They’ve truly drunk the Kool-Aid.
I’m talking about the low-information voters who, yes, should have made the effort to be better informed. I’m talking about the disillusioned voters who stayed home and the single-issue voters who somehow thought Trump would better address those issues than Harris. I’m talking about those voters who want back into the tent but are afraid of the backlash from those of us who are angry with them. They need to feel welcomed, not judged.
Instead of wanting what we want, we need to accept that these people are more like us than they are different. We need to accept that they matter too. That they have something to offer the resistance. We need to not allow our anger or Trump’s lies to continue to separate us. We must allow them into the resistance tent. We need to welcome them back.
A caveat to this is that we also have to accept the reality that there are those we can’t reach. If someone is truly deep red MAGA, we are wasting our energy trying to make them see reality. Don’t keep wanting what you want. If this describes one of your family members or friends, spend your energy where it will make a difference.
And if you’re someone who has only recently woken up to the dangers the entire world is facing at the hands of the fascists in the U.S. and your own home country, welcome to the tent.