The Road To Self Acceptance

Is your self acceptance affected by trying to do the right thing, not making waves, and being careful not to upset people?  Do you find that living this way leaves you feeling disconnected, and you don’t feel real?  You are not alone.

Self-acceptance can be a double-edged sword. You want to keep working on yourself, but the focus on being better, and working out the right thing to do can have a perfectionist undertow that reinforces you are unacceptable.

How do we change if we don’t strive to be better?

The Paradoxical Theory of Change has some answers. Goes something like this.

So often when you don’t feel good about yourself, it seems natural to want to be different. If I didn’t feel anxious, then I would feel better about myself, or if I were less sensitive other people wouldn’t get upset with me.

However, by saying that you should be better and change [____], you are giving yourself a message that you are not okay as you are.  There is a desire to be someone else; someone who you think others will like better; someone who you think would be more successful than you are, or just someone who does things better.

How we develop a lack of self acceptance

Emotions are messy, and you can interpret your suffering to mean you are broken or weak.  You might feel a need to hide and diminish these expressions in a misguided attempt to become ‘better.’  We develop what might look like an internal cheerleader, but is a critical voice.

This voice has incorporated all the critical and judgmental messages in your life as well as some of the positive cultural platitudes of our time.  However, no matter how you might spin it the meaning has a similar effect. Who you are is not acceptable. These critical parts of you are often your attempt to protect yourself from being hurt. So self-accepting involves understanding and embracing these parts as essential aspects of you.

Ironically, to be okay with yourself is the fundamental change you are wanting.  To feel free just to be.

Change and self acceptance

The paradoxical theory of change sees change as a process of allowing and embracing your experience. When we do this, we are fundamentally changing our relationship to ourselves as not good enough.  In that moment of being with your truth, you no longer criticize who you are and can develop self-compassion and self-acceptance.  The acidic pain of shame can dissolve and be released when we can pay attention to it, even though shame is so hard to experience.

When you embrace yourself, then you can move forward with clarity and desire.  Accepting yourself is the heart of this change.

To be with yourself requires you to inhabit your physical and energetic space, your emotional experience and desires, thoughts, and imagination. To be free to express yourself to the world from this connection means you accept all parts of yourself. Change happens when we turn our attention from the fears of what others want from us to what we want and feel. It comes from within not from without.

What if being myself (self acceptance)causes problems for others?

These fears are rooted in feelings of being rejected, judged, and not belonging. We are social beings. You naturally want to be connected to others.  You may fear that others will not connect with you if you don’t please them.  So it makes sense that you might feel apprehensive about letting go of trying to please others.

There is always a risk when you put yourself forward. There will be times when others will not like aspects of who you are whether you are happy or sad.  Either one can bring up reactions in others that cause them to pull away, but if you can stand in your experience, you will realize that their response has little to do with you. If you cross someone else’s boundary, you will have to sort that out with that person. All relationships have times that need repair, and you will not avoid disappointing others by altering yourself for someone else.

Shame is an interpersonal process that is used to mitigate conflict and diminish your presence.

So when you take courage and express all parts of yourself that you have held back or tried to suppress, then it will likely bring up the shame and fear attached to being that way.  It can be painful and terrifying to express oneself to others. The good news is that it gives the shame the opportunity to dissolve and create more freedom to be who you are.

Alternatively, your attempt to control the ‘unwanted’ and forbidden within you can reinforce this shame and fear and maintain a constricted way of life.

No matter who you are and how you express yourself other people will have their reactions to you.  We have no control over that.  So you may as well develop a relationship with yourself that is curious about what you are experiencing and desiring rather than forcing an ideal self that ends up feeling false and self-conscious.

All of our emotions, desires, actions, reactions, protections, and opinions are what make us human.  Through wholeness, we can learn everything is possible and fruitful.  We can come to forgive ourselves and our mistakes.  We learn that being vulnerable can open the hearts of others and that your anger can express your self-respect and need for justice.  That you are complicated and being human contains all of you.

Is my unhappiness depression?

We know what the experience of depression is.  When we are depressed our system shuts down. Our energy, our aliveness, our feelings, our motivation and creativity, and our will to truly live become muted and dampened.  We mostly shut down gradually and imperceptibly. There is a stuck feeling to being depressed.  Our feelings and thoughts come slowly and painfully.   Depression is numbing, deadening, aching agony.

Grief and unhappiness is different.

Grief can very much feel like depression but it usually eases over time.  The gut-wrenching sadness and anger come in waves that get smaller and smaller as we allow ourselves to express the pain.  Depression is thicker and constrained and tends to come with a deeper sense of powerlessness and self-criticism.  Sometimes when we find it difficult to process our grief it can turn into depression.

The question of a chemical imbalance.

Doctors focus on this aspect of the cause of depression.  The truth is no-one really knows.  That probably surprises many of you but this is just a theory.

The truth is that there is no test that one takes to verify that you have a chemical imbalance and exercise or sleep deprivation is just as likely to create a change in your brain’s chemistry.  We are all made up of chemicals and lots of things affect the presence or depletion of chemicals in our body.  Food, exercise, touch, smell, laughter, stress, trauma, alcohol and drugs and yes, medications.  No-one has identified a cause to depression because emotional struggles are dependent on so many factors.  The brain/body systems and connectivity are complicated in ways we are only beginning to understand. This isn’t to say that medication doesn’t have an effect and if you have major depression it can be helpful.

Depression and unhappiness as a response. 

This idea makes more sense to me as a way of understanding depression and our experiences of unhappiness.  A response to the world that hurts and discriminates and weighs us down.  Oppressive forces of inequality and lack of opportunity leave a person feeling inadequate, and longing for what they can not have.  A slow painful resignation can take over.  A response to the responsibilities of living our own life when we have lost touch with what that means.  A response to the inability to regulate our emotions.  A response to the general pressures and disappointments of life.  These responses can continue to eat away at a person unless they find a way to develop resilience and joy within the life they have rather than wanting somebody else’s life.

In this fast-paced, results-oriented culture we are often left with little time for exercise, healthy eating and cultivating meaningful relationships.  When we get on this treadmill we can begin to feel controlled by our circumstances rather than making considered decisions about how we want to live.  Powerlessness is a consistent feeling for people who are depressed.

The reason a person is depressed is as varied as the complexities of each person’s life and how they respond to it. How they are equipped or not by their histories and the traumas they have faced.  What losses and disappointments they have faced.  What their lifestyle is like and whether they are living a healthy life all round.  The kinds of stress they face or pressures to support others’ desires.

So what causes depression?

Here’s what we know so far based on experience and some soft and hard science here and there.   We know that our brain/body is built to respond to the world and our experiences shape our brain.  This is particularly crucial early in our life but also throughout our life and can change with practice and integration of new experience.  If we are responding to an unsafe, insecure and threatening world then our brain and body learn to respond in certain ways and not others.   Trauma whether a single incident or ongoing experiences that dismiss, belittle and dis-empower us can cause us to shut down.  This dampening process is part of our nervous system’s response to being unable to fight back or leave a stressful and threatening situation.  When we shut down our energy it helps us to not be overwhelmed by this stress but also means we have less available to cope with life.  For the majority of people who are depressed, this is the cycle of depression.  No energy – can’t take action or deal with things – feel a failure and powerless – leads to less energy.

This depletion in the system overall has consequences to the brains chemistry and psychological systems such as motivation, attachment, consciousness, concentration.  Throwing some man-made chemicals at the system is going to have a limited effect because the person has to recover and heal the depleted areas.  For example; if a person feels powerless and stuck then it is going to be more effective to find ways that they can experience their empowerment which has an effect over time on creating new pathways in the brain that affect motivation,  connection, and meaning.

Being Depressed doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you.

It means that you are searching and struggling with hard questions about your life.  That you are poised on the brink of collapse, feeling the pull of giving up.  This is a hard struggle and one that you have every possibility of coming through stronger. We often learn early on to keep our feelings and experience to ourselves or need to because we are overwhelmed. We may be used to performing and pretending to be ok that one day it occurs to us that we don’t know our truth or what our desires are. Did we ever know what was real?  Were we ever taught how to be real? Many of us are constricted and oppressed into a powerless state that would defy anyone NOT to end up depressed.

One of the advantages of seeing depression as a chemical imbalance is that you have something to blame other than yourself.  We all know how easy it is for depressed people to blame themselves for everything.  I often think that this tendency to turn things inwards is a result of the powerlessness we feel.   When we are immobilized and unable to act it is easy to feel that there is something wrong with us.

This is not true.  The more you can see it as a call to make changes in your life,  to change your lifestyle, environment or work through the trauma’s you have experienced, the more you can start to come alive.   The many people I have known that have struggled through the effects of depression often have a depth to their life.

Depression in many ways forces us to stop and ask hard questions.  What is the meaning of my life? What is the point to the things that I do? How can I live with disappointment and betrayal? Am I ok as I am?  These questions can open up a much-needed reflection and find our way towards a life full of meaning and energy.

Books on treating depression without medication

Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic.

The Mindful Way Through Depression. 

The Importance of Emotional Connection

Do you feel uncomfortable around emotions, yours and other people’s? Do your emotions feel irrational, painful, or too vulnerable?  To suggest connecting to your emotions may be the last thing you want to do.  When I encourage people to focus on their emotions I typically hear two responses.

If I feel emotions I won’t stop

The fear of being swallowed up by emotion creates a need to avoid them.  Of course, it never actually happens that emotions don’t stop, but that doesn’t change the tidal wave you fear is ready to descend if you give your emotions any attention.  Emotions can be powerful and can flood your nervous system causing you to panic,  go into a rage,  and can lead to abuse and violence. If we have had this experience or witnessed it in others then avoidance can become a strategy to deal with them.

Fear alerts us to shut down emotional experiences as soon as they begin to happen.  Our emotions become taken over by anxiety and the activation of our nervous system. We tend to feel anxious instead of the emotion (sadness, anger, hurt, etc).

If we have had traumatic experiences that we have not processed our emotions associated with them are one of the main aspects that we had to cut off from.  As soon as that well of emotion is touched the desire to shut it down or distract becomes a habit.  Sometimes it may catch you off guard like a lightning bolt coursing through your body, which just confirms that emotions are dangerous.

Emotions never solved anything

We can protect ourselves from emotion by learning to think your way through things or ignore difficulties as a way of dealing with what is upsetting.  Intellectual understanding can be a way of feeling in control and keeping distance from feelings. Many of us beleive we can think our way through anything.

But there is a cost to avoiding emotional connection

Avoiding our feelings may protect against experiencing pain and discomfort and give the illusion of control. However emotions are what makes us feel alive and connected to ourselves. Over time, you become empty and alienated.

The more we disconnect from emotions, the less information we have about our responses to the world and what is important to us.

We get stuck in a cycle

The cycle starts with not having space to feel emotion. If we don’t have this in childhood in particular, we come to feel shame and anxiety around emotions. We beleive they are not useful because we have no experience of them informing us.  We develop a tendancy to shut down and dissociate into our intellect or numbness. This leads to not being able to feel joy and excitement and our vitality is lost leading to a constricted life.

Fear – avoidance – temporary relief – restricted life.

How to break this cycle and connect with your vitality.

Become friends with your emotions.  Just like friends you build a relationship gradually, hang out with them, get to know them and approach with curiosity.  You don’t immediately invite them into your home and let them do what they want.  If we use this analogy it is the same with our emotional world. We build safety.

1. Firstly, we need to develop the skills of regulating emotional activation.
   To create resources that help us tolerate and calm our emotions when it gets too much.  To slow things down and notice from a distance.
2. Secondly, you can mindfully learn to pay attention to the urge to avoid discomfort.  When you slow down, you can resist the urge to immediately, without thinking try to get rid of sad, angry or frightened feelings. When you can see in-between the spaces, you can notice your urge to withdraw.  As you pause, you might see constriction happening in your body to protect yourself, or hold your breath as you tense up.  As you notice more, you can work backwards to the beginning of the sensation of emotion rather than only being aware when flooded.  When you experience sensation, it is a lot less scary and more manageable.
3. Thirdly, when you have these first two in place you can approach the discomfort/emotions and work through it.  It is then possible to experience manageable amounts and release stored and stuck emotional energy, and learn to flow with your emotions.

Are you paralyzed by self-doubt?

Self-doubt can become a habit that prevents us from making decisions, knowing our desires, or connecting with our experiences. This post addresses the impact of self-doubt and ways you can begin to reduce doubt around making decisions.

This seems to be a common struggle for so many people stifling their ability to make decisions and pursue goals in their lives.

Being uncertain or having doubts is normal and healthy.  Life is full of mystery and impermanence – it would be unrealistic to not have doubt.  Some would say that being certain about everything might reflect a defence against insecurity and fear of loss of control.   When we doubt ourselves, we keep questioning and examining our perceptions and assumptions.  This is a good thing as we strive to grow and improve our lives.

However, we can become paralyzed by self-doubt.  When we feel mired in questioning our actions, motivations, and belief that there is a ‘right’ action to take.  If only we could find out what it is.  However, we can’t seem to trust ourselves to commit to a conclusion.

We get ourselves into a double bind that can become a habit.

How this habit of self-doubt can take us over.

We want to know what to do or express an opinion, make a request, etc.  We question every possibility (don’t have enough information, don’t know whether it is right, acceptable, or guarantees a certain outcome).

The more we question the more we are unsure and nothing seems ‘right’.  We start to spiral obsessively searching for the ‘right’ answer, often becoming more confused the more we think about it or try and ‘rationalize’ our way out of it.

If I can’t trust myself, then it stands to reason that I need someone else to tell me what to do.  I ask friends and perceived experts for the direction I need.

How asking for opinions doesn’t help.

When we keep asking others for the ‘answers’ to make decisions and actions, this can increase our self-doubt. Especially if we get competing opinions. People have lots of different perspectives that are meaningful to them. It is easy to feel that this is not quite right because there may be a part of you that senses it doesn’t fit for you. However, rather than listen to what feels right for us our self-doubt will often question this.

More confusion and self-doubt!  And so goes the cycle of self-doubt.

So how do move out of the self-doubt cycle?

• If you need information. Limit yourself to a couple of expert sources.  Try to resist asking all your friends for opinions.
• Use friends you know you can trust to support you no matter what you choose, or what your opinion is. Use them to only tell you if they think you are way off base with something.  AND THAT IS ALL.
• Learn what your patterns are and how you keep in this cycle.  When we know what our habits are that keep us stuck we can start to learn different ones.
• Listen to your body.  It is the best indicator of what you are comfortable with or not.  Get to know those signals and sensations in response to what you like and don’t like.  The answers to what is right for us more often reside in our bodies, not in our minds.
• Understand there are no right answers.
• Take risks to make mistakes – they are great teachers.  I know it is scary!
• It takes practice, so practice breaking these habits.
• Work through this internal struggle with the support of a therapist