Acceptance: Get Over It & Get Into Your Life

Dr. Jennifer Paweleck‑Bellingrodt — known to thousands as “Dr. Jen” — brings two decades of clinical experience, military discipline, and no‑nonsense truth to the conversation on acceptance. A former Army psychologist turned private‑practice powerhouse, Dr. Jen has spent over 20 years helping people confront the stories, excuses, and self‑limiting beliefs that keep them stuck.

She breaks down why mindset and attitude are the foundation for everything in life, and why acceptance isn’t passive — it’s a decision. A choice. A turning point. Drawing from her work in therapy, consultation, lecturing, coaching, and her own lived experience, she explains how people can stop repeating the same painful patterns and finally “get over themselves” enough to move forward.

Dr. Jen also shares insights from her bestselling books — Fix Your Freaking Marriage, You’re Not Crazy: The Perimenopause Survival Guide, and Get Over It — and gives a preview of her upcoming work on indecision and the seven self‑limiting beliefs that block success.

This talk is bold, direct, and transformational — exactly what you expect from Dr. Jen.
Acceptance isn’t about giving up.
It’s about getting real… so you can finally get free.

#DrJen #MindsetMatters #Acceptance #GetOverIt #MentalHealthPodcast #TraumaHealing #SelfLimitingBeliefs #YouAreNotAlone #MrTraumaTalks #RahSpeaks #EmotionalResilience #HealingJourney #ArmyPsychologist #WomenInMentalHealth #MotivationDaily #InnerStrength

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

You know, in life in life we say so many different things as we live and we learn, right? But when you really hear the stories of others and you hear how they have overcome, and you know as a person who doesn't don't give up and just keep moving further and further, with all the challenges as it comes, you connect with that person. I once learned that if you dip a huge bucket of water from the ocean and you bring it on to the seashore and you pour it out into little buckets, you pour that water out into smaller buckets. The only thing that separates the whole, that whole amount of water that you brought up from the ocean is those little vessels, and we are all connected. I see it like this we're all connected as one. The only thing that separates us is this body that we live in. We all will think similar, but think differently at the same time. Always remember that. So no two are alike, but we are all unique in our own ways. So let's go on with this next amazing speaker, none other than Dr. Jen. She brings lived experience and clinical insight. Dr. Jen blends her personal journey with professional expertise to explore mindset, emotional honesty, and the path to healing. She brings the grounded, retallible presence that helps people understand themselves more and deeply. And I personally calls her the BPD Queen. I love her, Dr. Jen.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Jennifer Bellingrad, and I'm coming to you from Arizona today. I'm a psychologist of over 20 years, and I specialize in the treatment of borderline personality disorder or BPD and relationship issues. I'm so excited to be here with you, and I'm looking forward to sharing my acceptance journey and also giving you some practical tools to embark on your own, as well as showing you what you can do when acceptance isn't the answer, but change is. All right, let's get to it. So, to put it mildly, acceptance has been a challenge for me. I'm a stubborn Texan through and through. I also spent four years on active duty in the military as an army psychologist. And in that environment, you're conditioned to believe that every problem has a tactical solution. So if something is broken, you fix it. If a path is blocked, you clear it. Your entire world is oriented toward the mission. And the mission is almost always about force of will, strategy, and creating a measurable change in the environment. But when I transitioned into my career as a civilian psychologist, I realized that the fix-it toolkit I relied on in the army was actually working against me in the civilian world. Not to mention the fact that I couldn't make people do push-ups anymore. I really missed that. It was really quite comical. An important realization for me. So I've spent two decades sitting in rooms with people facing the kind of betrayal and trauma that doesn't just hurt, it shatters your sense of reality. I've seen people spend years, decades, even some of them, trying to fix a past that cannot be unbroken. And I had to look at my own stuck points and realize I was doing the same thing. I was treating my history like a problem to be solved rather than a reality to be integrated. I was fighting the past as if I could go back and edit the script somehow. We don't have a time machine. So, quite frankly, doing this is a form of self-delusion, but it serves a purpose at a certain time until you learn how to do better, how to do differently. So for me, that's when I realized that we're all standing at a fork in the road every single day. So one path is change and the other is acceptance. The struggle, that true sort of deep exhaustion that we feel, starts when we try to use the change tool on things that require acceptance. So today I want to show you how to identify which path you're on and how to walk it. So to understand this, we have to look at the work of Marcia Linehan. She's the creator of dialectical behavior therapy or DBT. She talks of a concept that changed my clinical practice and quite frankly, my personal life. It's called the dialectic. So a dialectic is essentially an uncomfortable truth that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same exact time. So for many of you listening, that truth looks like this. I'm doing the best I can right now, and I need to learn new ways to move forward. So if you only believe that first part that you're doing your best, you might stay stuck in patterns that don't serve you. And if you only believe the second part that you need to do better, you'll live in a state of constant self-judgment and shame. So you need both. Now I learned this the hard way early in my career. Here's what happened. So in my mid-20s, I had a supervisor look me in the face and tell me that she didn't like the answer I gave in a seminar earlier that day, and that she thought, with reasonable conviction, that I was just getting by on my looks. We all know that was not meant to be a compliment. So in that moment, my army fix it brain wanted to go to war. Honestly, I wanted to argue, I wanted to prove her wrong, I wanted to change her mind, all these futile efforts, right? But I couldn't change her bias or her projection of whatever deep-seated issues she had going on that led to her saying that to me. Instead, I had to sit with the reality that this was her perception, like it or not. The dialectic was this I'm a highly competent doctor, and this woman believes that I'm a fraud. Once I accepted that her opinion was a fact of my current reality that I couldn't control, I stopped wasting energy trying to win her over and started focusing on the work that actually mattered. Now, that situation could have gone either way for me. I could have decided she was right and given up my psychology career right then and there. And I wouldn't be a published author, hosting my own podcast, helping thousands of people in my lifetime or even talking to you right now. So that story is important. And as I said, it could have gone either way. Fortunately, I'm stubborn as hell. So I dug deep into my conviction about who God created me to be and cultivated enough sort of cognitive dissonance between my beliefs and her thoughts that I was able to say to her in my mind, hold my beer. But let's be clear, hold my beer isn't just an attitude, it's a psychological boundary. To get to that place, I had to practice what we call cognitive diffusion. So I had to realize that just because a thought or someone else's opinion exists in the room, it doesn't mean it's a fact. You don't have to buy what others are selling. Please remember that. We often treat our thoughts and other people's criticisms like they're the windshield we're sort of looking through in life. We see the world through them, through those criticisms. And I had to take that supervisor's comment and move it from the windshield down to the dashboard. So it was still in the car, I could still see it, but I wasn't looking through it anymore. I didn't let it define my perception. I was looking past it at the road ahead of me. That distance is where your power lives. So if you're fused with the betrayal or the criticism, you can't steer. You have to put the comment on the dashboard so you can keep your hands on the wheel. Now, let's talk about that A-word, acceptance. So in the trauma community, acceptance is often a dirty word. People hear it and they think it means approval. They think that they're being asked to accept that what happened to them was okay or fair. It's none of those things, I assure you. Acceptance is simply acknowledging the facts of reality without the but at the end. So it's the difference between standing in a downpour screaming that it should be sunny and simply saying, it's raining. The rain doesn't care about your shoulds. Your anger doesn't make the sun come out. But once you accept that it is raining, you finally have the presence of mind to go find an umbrella. So acceptance is the prerequisite for effective action. Why does this matter? Because when we use the wrong tool, we create a specific kind of suffering. So if you try to change things you should accept, like a past betrayal, a loss, or a physical limitation, you create resentment and bitterness. You're essentially trying to rewrite history with a pen that has no ink. And let's talk about what that does to your body. So when you're in that, it shouldn't be this way loop, your nervous system is stuck in a chronic state of threat. You're redlined. You aren't just mentally stuck. You're physically exhausting your adrenals, your sleep is trashed, and your focus is gone. I see so many people who say, but I can't accept what they did until I understand why they did it. Well, I'm here to tell you that why is a trap. Why is a finish line that keeps moving? You don't need a reason to accept reality. You just need the reality. So I had to accept that my supervisor was a biased jerk without understanding why she felt that way. Waiting for the why is like giving your keys to the person who hurt you and asking them for permission to drive away. Stop waiting for the explanation and start choosing the exit. All of this is exactly why I wrote my third book. It's called Get Over It: The No Nonsense Guide to Transforming Betrayal Pain into Lasting Power. I saw so many people, and I experienced this myself, who were stuck in that why of betrayal. They were trying to change the fact that they were hurt. They were trying to change the person who hurt them and they were burning out. Breaking through betrayal isn't about getting the other person to apologize. They may not know or care that they owe you an apology. In fact, they might even be dead. So instead, it's about the breakthrough you have when you realize that your healing is not dependent on changing what happened. Instead, it's dependent on accepting the reality of the wound so you can finally apply the right medicine. So ask yourself this: Is the thing keeping me up at night something that I can influence right now? If the answer is yes, you're on the path of change. If the answer is no, because it's in the past or someone else's head, like my supervisor, you're on that path of acceptance. So let's get tactical here. How do we actually do the work? So for the path of change, we use what's called opposite action. You see, the problem is that our emotions often push us toward behaviors that do nothing but keep us stuck. So if you feel depressed, your emotion tells you to isolate or stay in bed. Opposite action says this: if the emotion doesn't fit the facts of your goals, do the exact opposite. If you feel like hiding, you show up. If you feel like attacking, you walk away. Now, where I see a lot of people challenged with this, especially since I specialize in BPD, is that people really struggle to do this if they're redlined emotionally. So if that's you, I want to I want you to use the stop skill to get grounded before proceeding. So that's S T O P. So S stands for stop, don't move a muscle freeze. P stands for take a breath, just pause for a beat. O stands for observe. So ask yourself, what am I feeling? What is happening around me? And then P stands for proceed mindfully. Ask yourself what action will actually get me closer to the person I want to be. That's crucial. Who do you want to be after this situation or circumstance or event that's in front of you? Now, on the other hand, for the path of acceptance, we use what's called turning the mind. So acceptance isn't a one-time event, it's a repetitive choice, like forgiveness. Think of it like a GPS that keeps trying to send you down a road that's permanently closed. You see the road closed sign, but your brain keeps saying, But I want to go that way. So turning the mind is the act of manually grabbing the steering wheel and turning it back toward the path of reality. So you tell yourself, this happened. I don't like it. But fighting the fact that it happened is only making me miserable. It's really a confrontation with reality here. You can also use a physical skill called willing hands. So when we fight reality, we clinch our fists, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. By simply turning your palms open and relaxing your hands, you send a signal to your nervous system that you're no longer in fight mode. You're becoming willing to experience reality as it is. So wherever you are right now, I want you to try this with me. Clench your fists really tight. Do you feel that tension in your forearms? That's the physical manifestation of no. Now turn your palms up and just let your fingers relax. You can actually feel the blood flow return. That's the physical manifestation of yes to reality. So as I start to wrap up, I want to leave you with this. We exhaust ourselves when we continue to fight a war against reality that ended a long time ago. The moment I accepted my own story was the moment I finally had the energy to build the life I actually wanted. So I stopped using my energy to argue with the past and started using it to build my future. So if you're struggling with that transition, if you're caught in that cycle of betrayal and you don't know how to move from why did this happen to what do I do now, I do want you to check out my book, Get Over It, on Amazon. It's a roadmap for exactly what we've talked about today, transforming that pain into power by knowing when to fight and when to let go. In my work, I always tell patients, you have to go through it to undo it. You can't go through a door if you're still standing in the hallway shouting that the door shouldn't be there. We think that by standing in the hallway and screaming, we're being strong somehow. Maybe we think we're protesting an injustice, but the only person being punished in that hallway is you. The person who betrayed you isn't in that hallway. The person who lied to you isn't there. Again, they don't know or care necessarily that they've hurt you. They might even be gone. It's just you alone, screaming and getting hoarse. Ain't nobody got time for that, y'all. Okay? Acceptance is the act of quiet strength instead that allows you to finally turn the handle and walk into the next room of your life. So stop fighting the hill. Acknowledge the hill is there. Look at it, respect it. It's a reality, it's a fact. And then decide if you're going to try to climb it or find a path around it. I'm Dr. Jen and I want to thank Mr. Traumatox for this space. I so appreciate you and the work that you do, friend. Let's stop arguing with what was so we can finally start creating what will be. And if I can help you on your journey, please reach out. This is my greatest joy in life. You can find me on TikTok at shrink.think or on Instagram at the psychwitha mic. And remember, acceptance isn't giving up, it's giving into the truth so you can finally stop fighting the past and start building the future. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 16:21

Wow, amazing, amazing beyond. You really do bring the energy. I told you this so many times, and we have coming up next is Shara Nichols. I want to put you, Shara Nichols, and Lindsay on a panel because you all run with some of the same energy and some of the same thoughts. I love it. Dr. Jen, you give so many amazing tips, and one of the things you said was about screaming in the hallway and nobody's gonna listen to you. And trust me, that hit because there were many times before in the past where I have done that, whereas you look back and you go back in 2015 or something, 2016, that really, really icked you inside before you learn just to move on and let go, as I told my story before, of loving yourself, and and those are things when you don't love yourself enough, you can't recognize some of those things, right? You don't know that something is wrong. If you don't go for therapy, you'll find out what is the source of it, you would never know. But I love all your little little little things that you put together, and thanks for what you do. It's amazing. I want everyone to follow you on Instagram. She's the psych with a mic. Don't forget. So let me do this at this time. Let's bring up everyone and let the I'm sure they have questions for you. Questions.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Dr. Jen, I loved when you were talking about wanting to know the why. That seems to be the downfall of so many people when you have somebody that doesn't give up on that. Like, what's your go-to? Like, how do you get them to like they're they're kindly saying why? Like, why'd you leave me? I don't understand. Why did this happen? I don't understand. Why would he like it's over and over and over? How do you get someone out of that mindset? Like, is it a quick way or is it does it take time for you?

SPEAKER_02 18:18

I think generally, I mean, you know, people move at different paces in in therapy, um, and in life for that matter, but I think generally it's it takes more time than it doesn't. And especially because I specialize in BPD, I work with a lot of people who have extensive trauma histories. And so there are a lot of questions, there are a lot of whys. Why in the world did this happen have to happen to me? Um, not that they wish it on anyone else, right? But why did this have to happen to me? And I always say that it's very difficult to rewrite your personal narrative when you don't even understand how it was written in the first place. So, in the beginning, just for the conceptualization and the exploration, we do go back. I take people back, I do a deep dive into family of origin with a psychodynamic approach and really try to get people to see why you think the way you do. We can't explain why these things happened, but the reality is they did. But how do those things then help you think, feel, and behave the way you do? Because, you know, people with BPD and other mental health conditions, any mental health condition for that matter, they don't just go buy that off the shelf at the grocery store. Like that's not how this works, right? Nobody would be signing up for that. So these things happen for a reason. You've got to figure out what that is. And then once you know better, as Maya Angelou says, you can do better. So just giving people that awareness, it, it, it's huge. I mean, people are just they they they're living in this world where they don't really understand like how they got where they are, and just being able to explain that to them is such a healing start. That's what that's what I found really kind of moves people in the in the along the trajectory of getting better.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I love that. I loved your whole talk, but I was really uh and love the whole thing about the why because I feel like that. I hear that all the time. So thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_05 20:18

Amazing. Uh, we have Dr. Nimpu Kamapal in the comments. She wants you to come and speak to her nursing community in the upcoming International Nurses Week celebration. You are speaking life into so many of us who are struggling with burnout today. Dr. Jen, see what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Thank you. Yes, definitely reach out to me. Um, I'm happy to try to help. Absolutely. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 20:45

Then we have Angela saying, Dr. Jen, are there any promo codes to get your book today in Amazon?

SPEAKER_02 20:52

No promo codes anymore. The promotion has expired, but um, it is available on Amazon in um audiobook, I'm sorry, ebook, um, paperback, and hardcover. So you have some options there.

SPEAKER_05 21:06

And then we have Laurie, Dr. Jen literally made me feel like healing was actually possible for me, even when my mind, sorry, I'm oh mind told me otherwise, when my mind told me otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Thank you, Lori.

SPEAKER_05 21:22

All right, anybody else with questions? Keep it rolling.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

I I loved how your military background has helped you with structure and organization. And I was so curious when you were that military psychologist, could you actually order someone to do push ups? Yes. Therapy?

SPEAKER_02 21:47

In in I I don't think I ever did it in the therapy session, but I had a staff that I worked with. And so if they did, we we kind of really made a joke about it, but um, I would I would have them. Push-ups if they made a mistake or made an error. And the and the key was I always got down and did them with them. So it was like, hey, we're in this together, we're a team. But yeah, I don't think I ever actually did it in a therapy session. I'm curious how that would have gone over. They probably would have been shocked.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

Yeah, just the idea of I I was wondering if you incorporated the physical into your sessions in some way. I I just loved your presentation and all the you know allusions like to the car and driving the car and you know, putting that trauma down on the dashboard so you could keep going and not be deterred. Just beautiful writing, very powerful to listen to and eloquently spoken.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Thank you. Thank you. I find people really connect with stuff that they can sort of get their brain around, right? Like just making it, it's not, it's not just this sort of abstract idea, but a lot of people just really need that visual. And so if you can, you know, envision moving it down. So it's still part of you, but you don't have to look through it, you don't have to evaluate yourself through it. Those, those visual, maybe because I'm such a visual person, but I feel like those visual representations really help a lot of people put uh really conceptualize what's going on for them, and then they can always go back to the visuals and think about um, you know, reference that back whenever they're struggling. So thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 23:27

Let's go. Anybody else? Sorry, Michelle, Sharon, you guys are quiet. She uses the best analogies, so true. I'm telling you, I saw I was just scrolling through Instagram one day and and this video caught me, and I'm like, oh my god, who's this? Then I started going through our videos. It took a while. I was actually just looking through our emails from months ago, Dr. Jen, where I was like asking you to come on the show and you're so busy. So we're so grateful that you take this time to do this. Terry, do you want to add something? You're muted.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Dr. Jen, I really do appreciate the fact that you have outlined steps towards a healing process. And so, you know, what was it that led you to developing your modality in the way that you did? It's very approachable. And so I know I can see why the comments are coming in saying that healing looks possible with what you're saying. You know, what was it for you? I know you must also have your own healing journey that led you to a place to want to help others to get through their journeys. So, what was that experience for you that you had that said, I'd like to be able to outline some steps towards a healing for others?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

I think I like a good challenge. So, you know, when I was in um grad school and then residency and then early in practice, I a lot of people just thought that BPD borderline personality disorder was this sort of untreatable condition, and these people were condemned to a life of struggle and pain, and they couldn't get better. They again, a lot of people saw them as untreatable or not being able to make any change. And I just thought that was a bunch of crap, and so I just decided wait, these people are struggling so much. If someone can come along and just sprinkle a little bit of hope, or give them a different way to look at what happened and how they can use that to propel themselves forward, then it could be life-changing for them. So I started doing that, I started taking that approach like, hold on, hold the phone. You this is you are a survivor, not a victim. Victims die, survivors live. So you survived this, and there's a reason for that. So let's figure out what we can do with that. And then, you know, I did that with a few people, and then I started taking on more and more personality, more and more patients with personality disorders. It got out in my community that I would work with personality disorders because a lot of people refuse to. And so those patients just kept coming in, and over the past 20 years it's become a specialty and it's the work of my heart. I just love doing it. So I think just being able to see that even people who felt so desperate and so um hopeless, you could give them just a modicum of hope, and then they could build on that with, you know, success breeds confidence breeds success. So I think that was it. Is I like a good challenge, and then it's just been incredibly rewarding since then.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

Do you work by Zoom?

SPEAKER_02 26:51

That is one.

SPEAKER_04 26:53

I was just curious, do you work by Zoom or only face to face? How do you you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Thanks to COVID, uh, I have a completely virtual practice. Um, things got really tough back then for even for medical, especially for some medical providers, but um, I went to virtual sessions then and I've just stayed there. So now I walk down the hall to my office every morning, and um, yeah, it's completely virtual. So I can work, uh, I can see patients in most states across the United States. We have an agreement called SciPact, and so there's really just a handful of states left who are non-compliant, but it gives us the ability to see um patients across the United States. So that's been really cool. I have station uh patients all over the country. So that organization is SciPact, P-S Y P-A-C-T uh.gov, I believe. So that'll give you a list of the states where um we can practice, where we have reciprocity as psychologists.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

Yeah, I can I just say I'm glad you mentioned that about cross-state. I'm LCSW, so we don't have that same thing. So what I really so I can't tell you how appreciative I am that you will work with folks who um have identified with bipolar or I mean borderline, sorry, personality disorder, because in the field I've just seen so much just flat out nastiness around, oh yeah, the untreatable piece. So thank you for mentioning that and thank you for the work that you're doing. And Lena Hand's work is fabulous. It seems like you've really springboarded and taken it even further. So yay you. Very that's that's very exciting for me to hear this morning. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Absolutely, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

Yeah, I'd like to send someone to you. What's the way to contact you, Dr. Jen?

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Um, you can probably go through, um, just go through Instagram. If they have Instagram, um, just go to at the psych with a mic. Um, I'm on Facebook under my name, Jennifer Bellingrott. Um, I'm on TikTok, shrink.think. Um, couple of options. If nothing else, if none of those work or whatever, just reach out to Ra and he will know how to put people in touch.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Wonderful. Thanks. Thanks.

SPEAKER_05 29:11

We got you. We'll put everyone in touch with you.