This is the question I get more than almost any other.
“I get it, Jort. I understand the concept. Just allow it, right? Let it be there. Don’t fight it. But when I’m actually in it (heart going crazy, chest tight, brain screaming) what am I actually supposed to DO? What does allowing it look like?”
Fair question. And honestly, most explanations of acceptance do a terrible job of answering it.
So let’s talk a little about that today.
You Need to Understand Why First
Most people try to do acceptance without understanding why it works.
And then they do it “wrong”, or they do it for a few days and quit, or they do it with the wrong intention and wonder why nothing is changing.
It’s like watching people in the gym.
If you’ve never worked out before in your life, and you’re watching people lift heavy things and get sweaty and tired and genuinely suffer through it, would you voluntarily sign up for that?
Probably not. It looks miserable. It looks pointless.
But the moment someone explains that when you stress a muscle fiber, it breaks down slightly and then rebuilds stronger, that the discomfort isn’t a side effect of working out, it IS working out, suddenly it makes total sense.
You do it differently when you understand what’s actually happening.
Same thing here. Without the why, acceptance just sounds like someone telling you to sit there and suffer for no reason. With the why, it becomes the most logical thing in the world.
So let me explain the why first.
What’s Actually Happening in Your Nervous System
Your nervous system is not broken. It has learned, through your own responses, to stay on high alert.
Think about it from your nervous system’s perspective. Every time anxiety showed up, you treated it like a genuine threat.
You fought it, fled from it, analyzed it, monitored it, or froze and waited for it to pass. And from your nervous system’s point of view, that behavior confirms one thing: this must be dangerous. Otherwise, why would you be reacting this way?
So it stays on guard. It keeps sending the alarm. Because every time it did, you responded as if the alarm was justified.
The only way to change that is through your behavior. Not your thoughts. Your behavior.
When you stop reacting to anxiety as if it’s a threat, when you keep going about your life while the alarm is blaring, you send a completely different message. =
“Oh. I guess this isn’t actually dangerous. I guess we can stand down.”
And over time, with enough repetition, the nervous system starts to believe it. The alarm threshold rises. The sensitivity drops.
The symptoms fade because you stopped fueling them, not because you fought them off.
The body wants to heal. The nervous system wants to desensitize and regulate. The only thing we need to do is get out of the way and let it do its thing.
That’s not a technique. That’s a relationship change. And it takes time and repetition, just like any other skill.
What Acceptance Is Not
Before we get to what acceptance actually looks like, let’s clear up what it isn’t. Because most people are doing a version of it that isn’t quite it.
It’s not white-knuckling through a situation.
Going to the grocery store while secretly hoping nothing happens, scanning for exits, breathing carefully, tensing up every time a sensation shows up… that’s not acceptance. That’s endurance.
It’s not distracting yourself. Using a podcast, a TV show, or a conversation to take your mind off anxiety. Distraction comes from the same place as fighting. It’s trying to get away from the feeling. Same intention, different method.
And here’s the one that trips most people up. It’s not “sitting with it” while you wait for it to pass either.
Because when you do that, what’s actually happening? You’ve frozen. Anxiety is the main event.
You’ve put your whole life on hold until this thing either gets better or goes away. And that still tells your nervous system exactly what fighting does: this sensation is important enough to stop everything for. That’s still resistance. Just quieter resistance.
Focus on anxiety is resistance too. Every time you watch it, check whether it’s getting worse, or monitor whether the acceptance is working, you’re confirming its importance.
You’re basically pointing a spotlight at it and going “I see you, you matter, I’m keeping my eye on you.” And your nervous system takes notes.
Same thing if you would be scanning the bushes for tigers all the time. You wouldn’t do that if all was good and safe – without tigers around.
And the intention. God, the intention matters so much!
If you’re allowing anxiety to be there IN ORDER to make it go away faster, that’s still resistance dressed up as acceptance.
Your nervous system doesn’t listen to what you’re thinking. It watches what you’re doing and why.
What Acceptance Actually Is
Acceptance is not a feeling. It’s a decision.
A decision you make every single time you catch yourself fighting, fleeing, or freezing and choose to correct your response instead.
You don’t wait until you feel accepting.
You decide to be accepting, and then you act from that decision. Every time. Including when it’s hard. Including when the sensation is strong. Including when everything in you wants to do something else.
“Whatever! Do whatever you need to. I’m not going to stay focused on you. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Or think of it this way. Say you’re anxious and you want some ice cream.
You could spend the afternoon fighting the anxiety, trying to make it go away before you feel good enough to go out.
Or you could just feel anxious (however scary and unpleasant) and go get the ice cream anyway.
And here’s the paradox. Feeling anxious and going to get the ice cream is actually the fastest way to stop feeling anxious.
Because you stopped making the anxiety the main event and started living your life as if it’s not a problem. And it stops being a problem.
Same principle. Same result.
What It Actually Looks Like in the Moment
This is the part nobody explains properly. So let me try.
Something shows up. A sensation, a thought, a wave of dread. You notice it.
You name it. “This is anxiety. My nervous system is doing its thing. Trying to keep me safe.“
And then you don’t argue with it. You don’t analyze it. You don’t try to make it smaller or figure out why it’s there or check whether it’s getting worse.
You let it be there in the background, like a song you don’t like playing in another room, and you turn your attention back to whatever you were doing.
That’s it.
You’re not ignoring it. You’re not pretending it isn’t there. You’re just not making it the main event.
It can be there while you make your coffee, while you drive, while you’re in the meeting, while you’re with your kids. It doesn’t need your full attention. It doesn’t need to be resolved before you’re allowed to live.
And here’s the thing that surprises most people. It feels like you’re doing nothing. The brain screams “do something, fix this, react”… and you don’t.
That dissonance feels deeply wrong. Like you’re giving up. Like you’re failing.
You’re not. That’s exactly right. The less you engage with it, the less fuel it gets. As someone in our program once put it: “the less I gave a fuck, the faster it went.”
The Most Common Mistake
Checking.
You’ve been allowing anxiety for ten minutes, and then a little voice goes: “Is it working? Is it getting better? Is it lower than before?”
And you turn your attention back to it to find out.
That’s the moment you fell back in. Because you just made it important again.
Checking is resistance in disguise. It looks like you’re doing the right thing… you’re just monitoring your progress, right?
But monitoring anxiety is focusing on anxiety. And focusing on anxiety confirms to your nervous system that this thing is worth keeping tabs on.
The answer to “is it working?” is to stop asking the question. Recovery isn’t measured by whether anxiety showed up or how intense it was. It’s measured by how you responded when it did.
And look, initially you will be checking in. That’s habitual. Your nervous system wants you to scan for tigers. That’s not going away immediately.
BUT, you decide how to respond when you catch yourself scanning.
And you can remind yourself that that’s no longer needed.
“Oh, I don’t need to do this anymore. Great. Let’s focus on something else.”
What I Was Actually Doing on That Train
I’ve talked about the train a lot. One of the things I had been avoiding the longest, that I eventually started doing to practice my response. And it changed everything. But I don’t often talk about what was happening internally.
I was on the train, the panic came, and I didn’t run. But I also wasn’t sitting there with a smile on my face. I was genuinely uncomfortable.
My heart was going, I was sweating, part of my brain was still telling me to get off at the next stop.
What I did (and this is the specific part) was decide not to act on it.
I didn’t fight the sensation.
I didn’t try to calm myself down.
I didn’t breathe in any special way.
I just kept sitting there, let the discomfort be there, and turned my attention to the outside.
The view through the window. The people around me. The simple fact that I was on a train and the train was moving and nothing was actually happening.
I wasn’t waiting for the panic to pass. I was just living, with the panic also present.
And somewhere in there, without me noticing it, it did pass. Not because I managed it. Because I got out of its way.
And I remember feeling free, for the first time in 6 years.
I still get the chills while I think about it. I felt like the world was opening up for me again – and it was.
That’s the relationship change. Not forcing anxiety out. Just stopping the confirmation that it belongs in the driver’s seat.
One More Thing
You can have a bad moment of anxiety and let it color your whole day. Or you can feel it, label it, let it be there, and do what you were going to do anyway. And let it fade on its own.
That’s a choice. I promise it’s a choice.
Acceptance doesn’t remove anxiety. It removes anxiety’s power. And those are very different things.
It’s the only way out. Healing does come from feeling.
Some cliches are true, my friends.
Hope this week’s blog post was helpful. If you need help on your journey and want to do it practical, structured and – most importantly – with people who’ve done it and helped hundreds of others, book a free discovery call with a member of my team.
