Self-acceptance in psychology, how to fall in love with yourself and improve your standard of living
Self-acceptance in psychology teaches that if we were born into this world, then we are needed here exactly as we came into it.
Having learned to accept himself as a person was born, he acquires a unique opportunity to achieve any goals in life. I discovered for myself the secret of this secret knowledge and now there are no closed doors or peaks for me that I cannot climb. Would you like me to share it with you?
One of the parables of the great Osho tells about the dying royal garden. Each of the plants in it withered. When the king asked the oak tree what was the matter, it replied that it could not grow as tall as a pine tree. At the same time, the pine tree was dissatisfied with itself, because it did not bear fruit like a grapevine, but it wanted to bloom like a garden rose.
And only one flower bloomed its buds in full force. When the king asked how he did this, he replied that since the king planted it in his garden, it meant that he wanted to see it, and not a rose or an oak tree.
Acceptance without fanaticism
Loving yourself is simply necessary. Remember that almost every psychologist begins with advice to love yourself, to allow yourself to be yourself and no one else. However, a positive self-regard does not mean unconditional and absolute self-approval.
The criterion of a sane and wise person will always be a degree of criticism towards himself and an adequate assessment of his own actions. It is absolutely normal to be ashamed of some of your actions or words, to regret what you once did or perhaps did not do. This is the only way a person can grow and develop.
How to learn to accept yourself? And what does self-acceptance mean?
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Self-acceptance is a buzzword that has become quite vague and has lost its meaning to some extent. It seems that everyone knows that you need to accept yourself, but what exactly this means and what needs to be done is not always clear. So what does self-acceptance mean?
Self-acceptance means accepting yourself completely and completely. Accept your feelings, emotions, fantasies, mistakes, luck, achievements and everything else that our life consists of. By the way, including our body and physical condition.
Accepting is not just knowing
We know a lot of things about ourselves, but we don’t let them pass through them. It’s as if we are creating some kind of double to whom it all belongs, but it doesn’t seem to be us. If we don’t accept something, we refuse to process the problem, simply putting it in a bag. But everything that happens to us does not go away, but remains with us and manifests itself at the most inopportune moment. For example, in the form of various crises. By the way, age-related crises that regularly happen in a person’s life are an excellent reason for our psyche to bring to the surface all this unprocessed material and present us with a fait accompli, forcing us to decide right here and now.
Acceptance means something different for every situation. For example, you can immerse yourself in the experience of what happened, you can talk to a loved one, talk to the one who caused the problem.
What do we not accept?
It’s interesting that we can refuse to accept completely different manifestations in ourselves, and not necessarily something unpleasant. Usually, of course, we try not to notice character traits, emotions, actions and other manifestations that do not correspond to our ideas about the “right” person. For example, anger, anger, weakness, tears, deception, betrayal, and other manifestations of “wrong” behavior. We try to brush it off and forget.
What’s interesting is that people often do not accept or deny something good in their lives. For example, they hush up their good deeds, and are terribly embarrassed when someone says that they are great. Perhaps parents or other important people argued that good people do not shout about their good deeds.
Why is healthy selfishness a normal phenomenon?
What happens if we accept ourselves?
Self-acceptance is the ability to record an event, feeling, action, acknowledge its existence and recognize it as part of oneself. Acceptance implies the fact that we can now change, gain more freedom, move forward. If we don’t accept something, then next time, in a similar situation, we will repeat the same thing, act according to the old scenario. The more we reject in our acceptance, the less likely it is that we will be able to change something in our lives, develop new behavioral mechanisms, and reduce the consequences of our actions and feelings. For example, if you feel guilty, you can try to experience this situation by immersing yourself in it and making it part of you. It is well known that such experiences reduce pain. And, it will be easier for us to get rid of acute experiences. And, as you know, deliverance gives a feeling of freedom. By making the experience your part, you gain the ability to control it.
You know, the mystery of the name occupies a significant place in human history. Usually, this refers to various magical creatures, creatures, once you know their name, you can control them. This is very close to the idea of self-acceptance. By recognizing our problems, we essentially give them names, giving us the opportunity to “deal with” them.
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At the same time, self-acceptance, giving us the opportunity to decide something, quite obviously, assigns us responsibility for how we handle the facts of our life. In general, this is one of the practices of returning responsibility for your life.
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Without accepting something, we essentially resign ourselves to it; by accepting, we change and correct it.
Self-acceptance is not always love
Self-acceptance may seem like something akin to love, but it doesn't have to be. Context matters. The idea of unconditional self-love is very popular now. With the right basis, it lost some of its meaning, transforming into unconditional love, akin to the maternal idea “I love you in any way, even if you are the last scoundrel.” Self-acceptance is not the case. It involves conclusions and actions. Now, if you acted meanly towards someone and it gnaws at you, you should try to correct the situation, if possible. For example, having accepted that today you yelled at a colleague and behaved ugly, you need to apologize and solve the problem, and not push it inside. In the same way, if it is not possible to go through the entire chain of occurrence of the situation, you can draw conclusions for the future on what should be done so as not to feel bad later.
Seven ways to stay optimistic
How to evaluate?
An interesting question, of course, is how exactly we will assess the situation. Obviously, there are different voices through which we do this: “Don’t give a damn”, “It’s okay, we’ll get through it”, “How can you be so pathetic!”, “Well, what happened is what happened, let’s see if it can be fixed and What can be done about this?” Obviously, we must strive to discuss problems with ourselves with the last voice or with similar ones in terms of goodwill and, at the same time, objectivity.
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Andrey Petrakov
Hello! This is a blog on psychology, in which significant attention is paid to the topics of psychological violence - abuse, narcissism, relationships, personal crises, taking responsibility for one's life, increasing self-esteem, existential problems. The cost of consulting a psychologist is 3000 rubles/hour, in person (Moscow, Maryina Roshcha metro station), or via Skype About us/Make an appointment
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Where does the reluctance to accept oneself come from?
A successful person should earn no less. The ideal female figure is 90-60-90. A real woman must be able to cook deliciously. A real man should be able to fix everything - from an electrical outlet to a starship. How many times have you heard statements like these?
The causes of low self-esteem are different, but often they are rooted in deep childhood, then developing into a real personality crisis.
All kinds of disapproval for misdeeds, reproaches and complaints, citing neighbors’ children and classmates as examples, overwhelming remarks that motivate the child to fail: “you’ll never succeed,” “you’re too clumsy,” “look at Masha - she did it all!” ", "A C for the test again, you're the stupidest person in the class!" All this becomes a mechanism that can form a negative perception of oneself and in the future raise an extremely unhappy person.
The meaning of self-acceptancePsychoanalysts Karen Horney and Erich Fromm are the authors of useful books for non-specialists, but I have my own scores to settle with them. They describe self-acceptance as self-love. “You must love yourself before you can love someone else,” they teach us. This task may not be possible for someone who begins to look inside himself and discovers a completely unpleasant picture there. In this way, you can generally scare a person away from the painful process of working with layers, when under the external feeling he discovers and experiences more and more new feelings that are dangerous for himself.
Seventeen years of self-therapy practice have helped me develop a different definition of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance means getting to know yourself, becoming more aware, and daring to experience whatever feelings arise. This means recognizing overly simplified, idealized images of oneself as absurd and accepting the complexity of one’s multi-layered personality with all its inherent contradictions. By accepting yourself, you allow yourself to experience archaic, hidden feelings, even if they embarrass you because they are inappropriate for your adult self. To accept yourself means to get used to the fact that it is your inner child who continues to feel childish, to learn new ways of acting in order to adapt to this child, to stop tormenting him. Remember the time I forgot about Bernie's lunch?[12] My inner child was wracked with guilt, even though Bernie got along just fine without the sandwich. I've trained myself to accept my irrational feelings about food: I know I can't afford to starve my own family.
Of course, everyone who engages in self-therapy (or any other form of psychotherapy) hopes that after a while his hidden irrational feelings will begin to subside, that more and more of the childish aspects of his personality will gradually mature and abandon the stupid, humiliating demands. However, he cannot predict to what extent or how soon this will happen. The wisest approach here is to embrace each newly revealed aspect of yourself. You don't have to love everything about yourself, you just have to be okay with what is. Of course, you can hope for change, but you cannot count on it. Assume for a while that there will be no changes, that this aspect of your inner child will continue to make its exorbitant demands. Then use the knowledge you gain, your new understanding of your own pattern, to change your behavior and free your inner child from suffering. Remember how I learned that my inner child craves special recognition from a father figure (chapter “Your Inner Child”)? It took a long time until the inner child gradually began to weaken these demands. Each time I remembered my pattern, I saved him from unnecessary suffering. Time and time again, I avoided pitfalls in situations where I had to get a father figure to reject me. I was saving my inner child from further deprivation and humiliation.
When you experience a hidden emotion that is obviously stupid and embarrassing, don't say to yourself, "I should never feel that way again." Instead, remind yourself that you will most likely be tempted to relive that feeling again and cover it up with the same pseudo-emotion, an external feeling that can trick you back into the failed behavior. Recognizing this pattern and understanding how to protect yourself from it in the future is the true meaning of self-acceptance. You accept the hidden feeling and avoid acting out the pattern by remembering it, avoiding stereotypical cover-ups and compulsive behavior. You take new actions based on knowledge and experience, not on the irrational desires of your inner child.
Self-acceptance also includes your attention to your body messages. What physical symptoms do you typically experience when you are threatened by a “dangerous” or forbidden feeling? Learn to recognize these symptoms and give them proper attention instead of mindlessly medicating or ignoring them.
For several months, I carefully recorded my migraine attacks during the periods when they became most frequent. (These notes in themselves were quite a progress for me, since in the past I always ignored headaches until they became unbearable.) From the very first moment I noticed the pain, I wrote down the date and exact time. Then I tried to remember what happened earlier that day, what could have been the beginning, what emotion I was trying to avoid. After some time, I was able to trace a certain sequence in the mechanism of headache occurrence. In each case I was threatened by conflicting feelings, one of which would exclude the other if I dared to feel it. For example: I’m visiting, I’m having fun, and suddenly some kind of trouble happens, but disappointment at the moment is unbearable, because it would ruin my mood. Or: I really like some person, I reveal my soul to him, but he commits an act that can arouse hatred in me if I pay my attention to it. Therefore, I harbor anger within myself so as not to spoil my bright feelings for him, etc.
One of the results of my habit of keeping these notes was a new ability to notice a headache immediately, rather than ignoring it in the vain hope that the attack would go away on its own. In doing so, you get a big benefit because you can immediately ask yourself: “What am I afraid of feeling?” In this case, by taking the risk of experiencing a “dangerous” emotion, you avoid aggravation.
But if your character is like mine, then you may have to come to terms with the fact that you are a person who sometimes makes the choice (unconsciously) in favor of a headache instead of a painful emotion. This knowledge is part of your self-acceptance. And if you nevertheless decide to avoid an emotion or thought and instead experience physical pain, you cannot ignore it. Instead, work on self-acceptance of body messages: allow yourself to feel the headache. (A detailed description of this approach can be found in Perls's book Gestalt Therapy.) A headache does not come out of nowhere, it does not appear out of the blue. You, and no one else, hurt your head, you tense your muscles to avoid some emotion. Focus on what is happening. By carefully observing pain at its very beginning, you can answer the question: “What am I afraid of feeling? What am I hiding behind this headache? This method allows me to get rid of many attacks before they become unbearable.
I have also noticed that even if I cannot answer my question and am unable to feel a “dangerous” or forbidden emotion, the headache often goes away simply by allowing myself to feel the physical pain and focus on it.
Remember that by exposing a hidden feeling through self-therapy, you may experience a few painful minutes, but they will quickly pass, while the false cover-feeling will live on and on. Similarly, it has been noted that if you ignore a headache, the attack drags on, but if you focus on it from the very beginning, if you are ready to pay the price of physical pain for an unlived emotion, the headache quickly passes.
An integral part of self-acceptance is the courage to suffer.
Notes:
1
The original text uses the word “emotion”, which is from English. “emotion” is translated, although later the author in the same context refers to feelings, attitudes, etc. - Approx. lane
12
Appendix II, How to Stop Playing Dangerous Games, p. 221.
Table of contents
How to overcome past mistakes?
Let's learn to overcome all these obstacles, throw off all the burdens that pull us to the bottom? They don't help us become better, they only make us sadder!
Living while feeling worse than others is very difficult. This feeling does not bring joy, which means your loved ones will also be unhappy.
A woman who is always dissatisfied with herself will somehow act suppressively on her husband, transfer her failures to her children, raising another generation of unhappy and sad people.
