Two of our favorite psychological terms are Accommodation and Adaptation. These are terms that are related to thinking about something, feeling about something, and doing something that is challenging. Accommodation and adaptation represent different ways of facing and adjusting to challenging situations.  

Challenges

Challenges are difficult: they are difficult to face, to feel, and to finish. Challenges come in many forms. Very often we have a challenging or difficult situation in our lives having to do with work, school, property, physical/medical matters, and relationships. For instance:

• You might have a difficult person in your life, whether the “difficulty” is that s/he doesn’t understand you or you don’t understand the person. If I am not understood by an important person in my life, and if I don’t understand that person, this is challenging
• You might have a challenging situation at work, which might have to do with the actual work you do, the people you work with, or learning a new skill
• You have an old house that seems to be in a constant state of repair
• You have a daughter, whom you dearly love, but can’t seem to find her way in life
• You have some kind of undiagnosed stomach distress that is with you all the time
• You have an opportunity to change jobs, but this would mean moving away from your extended family
• You have some kind of unresolved feeling about something in your past but can’t quite think it through.

When people have challenges in life, they tend to do one of two things: They accommodate or they adapt. We want to discuss how each of these can be helpful and when each of them might not be helpful.

Accommodation

Accommodation is a temporary adjustment to a challenging situation. Ideally, accommodation is time-limited, i.e., accommodation can be a good thing for a while, perhaps while you examine the landscape of the situation and find a more permanent solution.

When you accommodate to a situation, you should have the feeling, “OK, I don’t really like living with this situation and living with my accommodation but I can do it for a season until the situation changes or I find a better way of dealing with it.” Good accommodation prevents shoot-from-the hip immediate change or possibly making a life-altering change in your life that might be premature. In other words, accommodation is a conscious temporary solution to a difficulty. Accommodation is not the same as tolerating or “just putting up” with something. Tolerating is more of a defense mechanism, a sense of helplessness and not a conscious choice. We might say that, in the best of circumstances, you can live with something you don’t like until a better way evolves in your life.

For instance:

• You realize that your brother-in-law is going to be in your life, like it or not, so you treat him kindly but keep your distance
• You really don’t like your boss, but the pay is good, so you recognize your feelings and continue to work until something better is found
• You love your house despite its age and challenges, and simply go about keeping it up the best you can

While accommodation can be good, and maybe absolutely necessary, there are two dangers of accommodation: resentment and loss of safety. If I accommodate for too long, I will begin to resent the thing or the person to which I am accommodating. And, if I continue to accommodate for too long, I will actually overuse my capacity to be reasonable, respectful to others, and responsible to myself. I will slowly deteriorate psychologically, physically, and relationally. More seriously, accommodation can lead to feeling helpless, which then can lead to some kind of further deterioration in your life.

In short, accommodation should first be faced and felt, recognizing the dislike of it and second, accepted as a temporary situation until a better one can be negotiated. Accommodation may lead to an even better way of coping with challenges and difficulties: adaptation.

Adaptation

Distinct from accommodation, adaptation is sometimes a long-term adjustment or possibly a permanent shift to a challenging situation. Adaptation is a marvelous tool that is based on an internal recognition that something is worth my own redirection for the long haul. While accommodation can lead to tolerating a situation and ultimately resenting someone and giving up on enjoying life, adaption is carefully choosing to redirect myself with the understating this is a life time shift for my own benefit, and hopefully a benefit to my environment. Adaptation is a conscious behavior that finds a way to fit in with the situation at hand without changing who you are or demanding that the situation change. Contrary to when you accommodate, where you feel the need to endure a situation for a while, when you adapt, you see that your adjustment to the situation is good for you and good for others around you even though it may indeed be difficult and not have been your choice. Adaptation often brings charity and calmness. Adaptation is a form of acceptance, both to yourself and to the people around you. It makes you a better person with better positive influence on yourself and others.

Examples of adaptation could include:

• You recognize that your body has done you well over your decades and that it is now time now to slow down and accept more gentle recreational activities
• You have loved your profession but it no longer holds the charm it once did and that you can choose a different route
• Your spouse’s diagnosis means a lot of changes in both his living style and consequently yours. You face this shift and begin to discover new ways of doing old things.
• You find a way to love your daughter’s partner without necessarily liking her or trusting her. Without lying to yourself you recognize that your daughter’s choices are her own and you can accept them without liking them.
• You carefully study your feelings and intuition about the new job possibly including talking to your wife or a good friend. You come to an intuition that is “go” or “no go” and trust it knowing that it will bring many changes.

As with accommodation, adaptation, in short, should also be faced and felt knowing that challenging all situations are…challenging, which means difficult. The attitude of adaptation then should lead us into a gradual merging of the situation into our daily lives until the changes becomes a familiar and natural part of our lives, not just a chore to tolerate.

Real people; real situations; real challenges

Let’s look at some real people who have real challenges in their lives:

• Frank: Frank is 73. He is retired from a rewarding and successful tenure teaching at a university. Frank did not take care of his finances during his working career leaving him in major debt at his mature age. After his retirement, he acquired a significant back pain. This condition has continued to bother him and dominate his life.
• Elizabeth: is in a long-term unhappy marriage. Now in her 60’s with her children and grandchildren settled in life, she is wondering if she could begin to have a life of joy and contentment being unmarried. She has come to be honest with how little she likes her husband and that has felt obligated to stay with him because as she says, “well, I have tolerated him this long, so what is the use?”
• Lance: Lance, 35, is a very bright guy and made a great deal of money in his own start-up business that he worked for 10 years or more. He came to love Abby several years ago but it has “never been right” and they are in constant conflict. Because he is in a comfortable financial place, he doesn’t want to disrupt it so he stays with Abby.
• Bill: Bill is approaching 50 and feeling he has not yet found his way in the world. He grew up in a home where his father was frequently drunk and crude and often lost his job as a result. Now, even though he created a very successful business, he is finding himself frequently over tired and irritable and unsure about his future.

Real people: Real accommodations

Note: the essence of what I call “accommodations” are things that people to do in order to stay in a difficult situation, things that may not always be helpful in the long run. But people in difficult situations often feel helpless in their lives and can’t see a way out and so there can be a mix of tolerating and accommodating.

• While Frank was teaching, he focused only on the joy of teaching. This was his primary form of accommodating to his ever-increasing debt load.  Once his position was terminated, he shifted his accommodation to a sedentary life, a form of avoidance which has migrated into his back pain.  In Frank’s case, his accommodation is not actually a conscious one which lead to more problems.
• Elizabeth tolerated her husband for decades for the “sake of the kids”. The kids are doing well but she is not. Her accommodating for so many years can be seen as a positive way of coping with an unhappy marriage by doing well as a mother and grandmother. Now, however, finds that she is becoming increasingly unhappy in life, which is not her basic nature.
• Lance is now in a situation that so many men have found themselves in. He has been successful and happy in work but not in his relationship and stays with her only because he doesn’t know what else to do. We might say that Lance is doing the right thing by staying with his wife, but we might ask, “Is this really the right thing for both his wife and him?”
• Bill did well in accommodating for the lack of a role model. Having witnessed his father’s frequent failures, Bill determined early in his life to forge a different path.  He accommodated by seeing the flaws of his father and has accommodated to his early life goal to be the successful man that his father wasn’t. Now, however, he is finding that his hard work and independence is less satisfying and that he working more than is good for him, becoming unduly and easily irritated, and by being less than a model for his stepson.

Real people: real adaptation

• After multiple medical examinations, Frank was told that there was “nothing wrong with his back.” With a great deal of soul searching, Frank realized that his back pain was related to his avoidance of facing his financial responsibilities. He has sought counsel with an old friend and confided to him about his debt load. His friend has encouraged him to find “a job” even though it won’t be teaching in a university. Frank felt though the loss of his profession and is beginning to discover a more viable financial lifestyle. He sold his home, rented an apartment and began a job that meets his amended life style. Facing his mistakes, and with encouragement from his friend, he is beginning to feel more peaceful and consequently more healthy.  
• Elizabeth: Elizabeth has come to grips with how she has tolerated her husband for many years. She is aware that it was the best option and that her focus solely on her children and grandchildren was a viable way to accommodate. She is ready now to leave her husband knowing that she will have to develop other skills to support herself.  She is seriously looking at herself, what she is by nature, and how she can use that nature to make a positive impact on the world and consequently find contentment.
• Interestingly, Lance’s girlfriend finally got fed up with him and was the one to end the relationship forcing Lance to look at what he wants to do in life and find ways of getting there. It is too bad that Lance didn’t trust his unhappiness and have the wisdom and courage to leave his girlfriend, but he acknowledges his mistake and now thinks he can learn from it. As he continues to examine his own lack of truth and courage, he can begin to adapt by being honest in future relationships.
• Bill: Bill has come to accept that he is not his father. He has faced the disappointments he experienced as a child. Finishing his emotional disappointments in childhood is a way of adapting so that he can do his chosen work for himself rather than proof that he isn’t like his father.   

Summary:

• Accommodation
  • Finding yourself in a difficult and challenging situation
  • Finding a temporary adjustment to the situation
  • Coping the best you know how with a difficult situation
  • A good thing, often necessary when immediate action is required
  • Allows the individual to look for a way to adapt or change the circumstances
  • Accommodation needs to be engaged with conscious awareness that the solution is temporary
  • Accommodation is easier to do than adaptation
  • Accommodation is temporary

• Adaptation
  • Finding yourself in a difficult and challenging situationBeing honest about the difficult situation
• • Evaluating how to effectively live with the situation, if possible
  • Making adjustments, if necessary:
    • Accepting the feelings of disappointment that come with adaptation—that you can’t have what you originally had or wanted
  • • Choosing to find value in a different situation
  • Having finished the feelings of disappointment, you continuing to live with situation without resentment

Adaptation is ultimately finding a good life

• Adaptation is helpful to both the individual adapting and the person and the person’s environment
  • Adaptation is an act of love:
    • Love of self
• • • Love of the situation (or person)
• • • Love of truth
  • Adaptation can be very hard to do; it usually requires a season of transition.

How you can adapt:

• Recognize your feelings, both your unhappiness and your happiness
  • Do not make an instant decision. Think about it for a while
• • Admit to yourself that you are unhappy with the situation
• • Recognize how you have coped and/or accommodated
• • Find the courage to find a way to adapt to the situation
  • Adaptation requires courage, patience, and wisdom

You may need some help from a friend or therapist to find a way to adapt