Walk On Podcast Episode 67 : Radical Self-Acceptance
The amount of people I have talked to who think it is impossible to feel good about themselves, who take pride in their self-hatred, or who deeply identify with their most self-abusive thoughts really takes my breath away. So many people I have seen so much beauty in cannot see how brightly they shine. Compliments just bounce off them. They have rejected me because they think something must be deeply wrong with someone who loves them. Every time someone I love calls themselves a “piece of shit” I recoil from the truth that inside of them is a wounded child who bears the brunt of that verbal venom, who’s probably been called that their whole lives. It isn’t ok.
Whether it’s weight loss and diet culture, or self-improvement, or chasing perfectionism, or fucking capitalism, people seem to have this really bleak view of humanity that without at least a little self-flagellation and abuse, nobody would make the right choice. That is so incredibly toxic. It is not possible to shame or abuse someone, into healing. It is not possible.
I think losing touch with our inner child causes a lot of these problems. When you grow up not being loved correctly, you figure there must be something wrong with you. You know your caregivers are supposed to love you, so if they don’t, you reason, you must not be worthy of it. This internalization festers. As we grow and hurt more, as we experience more situations that remind us of, and further validate, those first experiences, we take that as proof of our original realization. “I am unworthy of love, unworthy of kindness, unworthy of forgiveness, I am deeply broken. Safety, feeling good about myself, and secure attachment are not available to me.” Often, these thoughts and feelings are not conscious, they live beneath the surface. To realize them would mean touching the tenderest parts of that wounded inner child and enduring a tidal wave of grief. Most of us live in fear of exactly that. Some people cover it up with avoidance, some try to numb it away, some cling onto others, making it their partners’ and friends’ responsibility to fill the void—or worse, their children’s. Being out of alignment with the child inside of us that holds our wounds, sometimes can cause resentment at the reminders our own children bring us—sometimes this can cause us to reject our own children the way we were rejected. Thus, the cycle continues.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is wonderful because it gives us a safe space to externally express and explore these terrible inner thoughts. For some reason expressing them to someone else helps take the sting out of them. A therapist can see them objectively and point out their flawed logic, and then share some tools and strategies for correcting these thoughts into more self-loving ones. Then, the healing begins.
With healing comes a bitter-sweet clarity. When you start becoming aware of what the kind and compassionate choice is, once you start learning boundaries and how to communicate, once you understand how unconscious you once were, it hurts to see the mistakes you made, the pain you caused in glaring high definition. This is where radical self-acceptance comes in. This is where you practice self-forgiveness. This is where you speak to yourself as you would a child who made a mistake.
“I’’s ok to mess up. It’s ok to make a mistake. Nobody is perfect. But we should talk about why you did what you did. What were you feeling? How did you handle that? Was that the right choice? What would have been a better choice? What choice are you going to make now that you know better? You don’t have to beat yourself up. Just try to do better next time. You are safe to make mistakes. It’s ok. You’re ok.”
Correcting ourselves and others can be as gentle, as patient, and as loving as we want it to be, it just takes practice. It just takes patience, It' just takes forgiveness. It just takes a little Radical Self-Acceptance. Listen here.
