Accepting Yourself

Accepting Yourself — learning to accept and work with all of you is key to living a fulfilling life

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We think we have to reject ele­ments of our shad­ow side, and only acknowl­edge the “good stuff.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, who we are is “all of us.” Here are some ways to work with this.

Letters, we get letters!

Well, there’s an interesting question, if I do say so.

To work back­ward, I might quick­ly say, 

“I am the all of me — my body, my mind.
I am the total­i­ty of my expe­ri­ences and my under­stand­ings.
I am the com­plete con­tents of my inter­nal the­atre — the sto­ries I tell myself — who I remem­ber being, who I wish I was.
That said, as engage with the real world, I am that which I choose to accept, inte­grate, and express.”

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Acceptance is the beginning

One rea­son I keep writ­ing this blog is to help you devel­op tools to dis­cov­er who you are. 

Most­ly, there’s a war going on. “I’m this, not that!” And yet, “that” is what they end­less­ly do. 

To get any­where with this life, you have to see that you are no more than who you enact.

Don’t tell me — show me!

Most want the “bad stuff” to go away. It does­n’t. Our flaws and foibles are ours. 

So the ini­tial accep­tance is just that. I am all of me — what I think, my “shad­ow side,” and what I do.

Integration is about rigourous implementation

The eas­i­est thing in the world is to keep doing what does­n’t work. 

We hit upon some­thing, and repeat it despite nev­er get­ting the results we say we want. 

Rather than keep doing it, the key is find­ing some­thing else to do, and iden­ti­fy­ing that as “my new approach.”

Then! Expression means actually doing it

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Things that get in the way of this simple process

Most of us have a lim­it­ed range of “self,” and this is based upon denial and repression. 

Our upbring­ing — our social­iza­tion — led us to learn to block those aspects of our selves that oth­ers con­sid­ered to be unac­cept­able. As chil­dren with­out built-in “prin­ci­ples,” this is a vital par­ent­ing function.

Social­iza­tion is nec­es­sary, AND it also needs to end. Say at age 16–18. At that point, we need to learn to exam­ine what we have been taught for utility.

Many resist let­ting go, in var­i­ous ways. I hear excus­es like how hard it is to change, or how they first need to get approval, and then they’ll change.
Or, they remind me how enti­tled to spe­cial treat­ment they are — the rules do not apply to them.

And their lives spin out of control, as they cling on for dear life.

It takes great courage to dig into our beliefs — often, the stuff is hid­den beneath lay­ers of “sto­ries.” We fear this repressed mate­r­i­al, and fear unearthing those parts of our per­son­al­i­ties that oth­ers have helped us to repress.

The goal is not sim­ply iden­ti­fi­ca­tion - it’s the will­ing­ness to admit to who we are, to what we are doing, and own­ing what we are resist­ing / repressing. 

Then, it’s choos­ing to enact our­selves as adults — select­ing behav­iours that fly in the face of how we’ve been in the past.

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Take anger.

Anger is present in every­one. Anger is a sec­ondary emo­tion, often mask­ing a hurt. 

Our way of express­ing, deal­ing with or stuff­ing anger is learned behav­iour. Our par­ents taught us what was com­fort­able for them.

Body­work the­o­ry states that the repres­sion of emo­tion is a lead­ing cause of ill­ness and blocked life energy. 

The expres­sion of emo­tions leads to bet­ter health, and a shar­ing of this aspect of our selves. 

On the other hand, the mindless, undisciplined expression of anger has another name — violence.

Many have learned to deny their anger, and there­by go through life stuff­ing it. Oth­ers choose indi­rect anger (manip­u­la­tion, guilt­ing, etc.) Some have become “enti­tled,” and from this side of the equa­tion, fig­ure they have the right to dump their anger when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they choose.

Being an adult is this: 

Once we rec­og­nize that all of our emo­tions are a part of us, and that all that goes on inside of us is “who we real­ly are,” we choose not to set­tle for any­thing less than full expres­sion of who we know our­selves to be today.

HOWEVER, and here is the kicker, this expression (again, using anger as an example) needs to be in one of two ways:

1. I have the right to express my anger in pri­vate … by myself, (punch­ing a heavy bag, hit­ting a mat­tress with a ten­nis rac­quet, etc.)
2. I may choose to request time and space to release my anger, under con­trolled con­di­tions, in the pres­ence of others.

Notice that last one. I do not have the right to impose my anger (or any oth­er of my emo­tions or games) on oth­ers. If I do, if I storm around, scream­ing at some­one, yelling, blam­ing, what­ev­er, I am com­mit­ting violence.

One mark of matu­ri­ty is the abil­i­ty to ask for per­mis­sion. It is a let­ting go of child­ish enti­tle­ment. I learn that I am quite capa­ble of choos­ing how I will express who I am, and with whom. I do this to dig into my own depth.

As I own my anger, for exam­ple, I move from denial to accep­tance. As I own my brat­ty, enti­tled 6‑year-old, I also choose to express his needs direct­ly, instead of through whin­ing and misdirection. 

And, emphat­i­cal­ly, as I own my deep desire to do some­thing stu­pid — some­thing that I know will dam­age me and my rela­tion­ships, I can, at that moment, and the next, make bet­ter choices.

Being present is about being available.

Avail­abil­i­ty can also be described as “open, hon­est vulnerability.” 

It’s let­ting those we choose to be inti­mate with in on who we are — not the hol­low, san­i­tized ver­sion, but the “whole enchilada.” 

It’s tak­ing the risk to be yourself.

It’s not about giv­ing up on your iden­ti­ty, although, as you do this work, the “social mask” will fall away. Like­wise, it’s about tru­ly deal­ing with all aspects of yourself.

You dis­cov­er that you are not con­tent — all there is, is a repeat of past behav­iours and understandings. 

You real­ize that you are locked into a famil­iar place, and you fear leav­ing it. Yet, to be whole, leave it you must.

You leave it by entering into the fear and anxiety of being whole.

You thor­ough­ly dis­en­gage your ener­gy and sup­port from every­thing that does not lead you in a direc­tion you wish to go. 

You:

• find peo­ple to be com­plete­ly open and hon­est with. 
• do away with liv­ing in the past or fear­ing the future, and choose to embrace today.

Learning to know yourself is not done through brainpower. It is done through countless acts of self-revelation with a person or persons you trust. 

You are blind to what is hap­pen­ing, as we all are, left to our own devices. So, you make a pact with your prin­ci­pal part­ner, a few close friends, a ther­a­pist, a Bodyworker.

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