To “accept” is more than simply to “acknowledge” or “admit.” It is to experience, stand in the presence of, contemplate the reality of, absorb into my consciousness. I need to open myself to and fully experience unwanted emotions, not just perfunctorily recognize them. For example, suppose my wife asks me, “How are you feeling?” and I answer in a tense, distracted manner, “Rotten.” Then she says sympathetically, “I see that you are really feeling depressed today.” Then I sigh, the tension begins to flow out of my body, and in an altogether different tone of voice—the voice of someone who is now real to himself—I say, “Yes, I am feeling miserable, really miserable,” and then I begin to talk about what is bothering me. When, with my body tensed to resist the experience of my feelings, I had answered “Rotten,” I was denying my emotion at the same time that I was acknowledging it. My wife’s sympathetic response helped me to experience it, which cleared the way for me to begin to deal with it. Experiencing our feelings has direct healing power.
I can acknowledge some fact and move on with such speed that I only imagine I am practicing self-acceptance; I am really practicing denial and self-deception. Suppose my supervisor is trying to explain why something I have done on the job was a mistake. She speaks benevolently and without recriminations, and yet I am irritable, impatient, and wish she would stop talking and go away. While she is talking, I am obliged to stay with the reality of having made an error. When she is gone I can banish the reality from my consciousness—I admitted my mistake, isn’t that enough?—which increases the likelihood that I will make the error, or one like it, again.
Self-acceptance is the precondition of change and growth. Thus, if I am confronted with a mistake I have made, in accepting that it is mine I am free to learn from it and to do better in the future. I cannot learn from a mistake I cannot accept having made.
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I cannot forgive myself for an action I will not acknowledge having taken.
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If I refuse to accept that often I live unconsciously, how will I learn to live more consciously? If I refuse to accept that often I live irresponsibly, how will I learn to live more responsibly? If I refuse to accept that often I live passively, how will I learn to live more actively?
I cannot overcome a fear whose reality I deny. I cannot correct a problem in the way I deal with my associates if I will not admit it exists. I cannot change traits I insist I do not have. I cannot forgive myself for an action I will not acknowledge having taken.
A client once became angry with me when I attempted to explain these ideas to her. “How do you expect me to accept my abysmally low level of self-esteem?” she demanded indignantly. “If you do not accept the reality of where you are now,” I answered, “how do you imagine you can begin to change?” To understand this point, we must remind ourselves that “accepting” does not necessarily mean “liking,” “enjoying,” or “condoning.” I can accept what is—and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.
I cannot be truly for myself, cannot build self-esteem, if I cannot accept myself.
The Third Level
Self-acceptance entails the idea of compassion, of being a friend to myself.
Suppose I have done something that I regret, or of which I am ashamed, and for which I reproach myself. Self-acceptance does not deny reality, does not argue that what is wrong is really all right, but it inquires into the context in which the action was taken. It wants to understand the why. It wants to know why something that is wrong or inappropriate felt desirable or appropriate or even necessary at the time.
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Accepting, compassionate interest does not encourage undesired behavior but reduces the likelihood of it recurring.
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We do not understand another human being when we know only that what he or she did is wrong, unkind, destructive, or whatever. We need to know the internal considerations that prompted the behavior. There is always some context in which the most offensive actions can have their own kind of sense. This does not mean they are justified, only that they can be understandable.
I can condemn some action I have taken and still have compassionate interest in the motives that prompted it. I can still be a friend to myself. This has nothing to do with alibiing, rationalizing, or avoiding responsibility. After I take responsibility for what I have done, I can go deeper—into the context. A good friend might say to me, “This was unworthy of you. Now tell me, What made it feel like a good idea, or at least a defensible one?” This is what I can say to myself.
I have found, with my clients and with myself, that this kind of accepting, compassionate interest does not encourage undesired behavior but reduces the likelihood of it recurring.
Just as when we need to reproach or correct others, we should wish to do so in ways that do not damage self-esteem—since future behavior will be shaped by self-concept—so we should bring this same benevolence to ourselves. This is the virtue of self-acceptance.
An Exercise
By way of introducing clients to the idea of self-acceptance, I often like to begin with a simple exercise. It can offer a profound learning experience.
Stand in front of a full-length mirror and look at your face and body. Notice your feelings as you do so. I am asking you to focus not on your clothes or your makeup but on you. Notice if this is difficult or makes you uncomfortable. It is good to do this exercise naked.
You will probably like some parts of what you see more than others. If you are like most people, you will find some parts difficult to look at for long because they agitate or displease you. In your eyes there may be a pain you do not want to confront. Perhaps you are too fat or too thin. Perhaps there is some aspect of your body you so dislike that you can hardly bear to keep looking at it. Perhaps you see signs of age and cannot bear to stay connected with the thoughts and emotions these signs evoke. So the impulse is to escape, to flee from awareness, to reject, deny, disown aspects of your self.
Still, as an experiment, I ask you to stay focused on your image in the mirror a few moments longer, and say to yourself, “Whatever my defects or imperfections, I accept myself unreservedly and completely.” Stay focused, breathe deeply, and say this over and over again for a minute or two without rushing the process. Allow yourself to experience fully the meaning of your words.
You may find yourself protesting, “But I don’t like certain things about my body, so how can I accept them unreservedly and completely?” But remember: “Accepting” does not necessarily mean “liking.” “Accepting” does not mean we cannot imagine or wish for changes or improvements. It means experiencing, without denial or avoidance, that a fact is a fact. In this case, it means accepting that the face and body in the mirror are your face and body and that they are what they are.
If you persist, if you surrender to the reality of what is, if you surrender to awareness (which is what “accepting” ultimately means), you may notice that you have begun to relax a bit and perhaps feel more comfortable with yourself, and more real.
Even though you may not like or enjoy everything you see when you look in the mirror, you are still able to say, “Right now, that’s me. And I don’t deny the fact. I accept it.” That is respect for reality.
When clients commit to do this exercise for two minutes every morning and again every night for two weeks, they soon begin to experience the relationship between self-acceptance and self-esteem: a mind that honors sight honors itself. But more than that: How can self-esteem not suffer if we are in a rejecting relationship to our own physical being? Is it realistic to imagine we can love ourselves while despising what we see in the mirror?
They make another important discovery. Not only do they enter a more harmonious relationship with themselves, not only do they begin to grow in self-efficacy and self-respect, but if aspects of the self they do not like are within their power to change, they are more motivated to make the changes once they have accepted the facts
as they are now.
We are not moved to change those things whose reality we deny.
And for those things we cannot change, when we accept them we grow stronger and more centered; when we curse and protest them, we disempower ourselves.
Listening to Feelings
Both accepting and disowning are implemented through a combination of mental and physical processes.
The act of experiencing and accepting our emotions is implemented through (1) focusing on the feeling or emotion, (2) breathing gently and deeply, allowing muscles to relax, allowing the feeling to be felt, and (3) making real that this is my feeling (which we call owning it).
In contrast, we deny and disown our emotions when we (1) avoid awareness of their reality, (2) constrict our breathing and tighten our muscles to cut off or numb feeling, and (3) disassociate ourselves from our own experience (in which state we are often unable to recognize our feelings).
When we allow ourselves to experience our emotions and accept them, sometimes this allows us to move to a deeper level of awareness where important information presents itself.
One day a client began reproaching herself for feeling anger at her husband over the fact that he was leaving on a two-week business trip. She called herself irrational, she called herself stupid, she told herself it was ridiculous to feel that way, but the anger persisted. No one has ever talked herself (or anyone else) out of an unwanted emotion by hurling insults or delivering a moral lecture.
I asked her to describe her feeling of anger, to describe where in her body she experienced it and how exactly it felt to her. My goal was to have her enter the feeling more deeply. Annoyed and irritated by my request, she demanded, “What good would that do? I don’t want to feel the anger, I want to get rid of it!” I persisted, and gradually she began to describe feelings of tension in her chest and a tight knot in her stomach. Then she exclaimed, “I feel indignant, I feel outraged, I feel: How can he do this to me?” Then, to her astonishment, the anger began to dissolve and another emotion emerged in its place—anxiety. I asked her to enter the anxiety and describe it, and again her first response was to protest and ask what good it would do. I guided her to experience the anxiety, to immerse herself in it, while being a witness to it, describing everything she could notice, and to discover if, perhaps, it would speak to her. “My God!” she cried. “I’m afraid of being left alone!” Again she began to rebuke herself. “What am I, a child? Can’t I be on my own for two weeks?” I asked her to go more deeply into the fear of being alone. She said suddenly, “I’m afraid of what I might do when he’s gone. You know—other men. I might get involved with another man. I don’t trust myself.”
By now, the anger was gone, the anxiety had dissolved, the fear of loneliness had faded away. To be sure, a problem remained that had to be dealt with, but now, since it was admitted into conscious awareness, it was capable of being dealt with.
A Personal Example
As a teenager, I understood very little about the art of handling unwanted emotions except by “conquering” them. Often I identified the ability to deny and disown with “strength.”
I recall my sometimes acutely painful feelings of loneliness and of longing for someone with whom I could share thoughts, interests, and feelings. By sixteen I had accepted the idea that loneliness was a weakness and longing for human intimacy represented a failure of independence. I did not hold this view consistently, but I held it some of the time, and when I did, I had no answer to the pain except to tense my body against it, contract my breathing, reproach myself, and look for a distraction. I tried to convince myself I did not care. In effect, I clung to alienation as a virtue.
I did not give people much of a chance. I felt different from everyone and I saw the difference as an abyss between us. I told myself that I had my thoughts and my books and that that was enough—or should be, if I were properly self-reliant.
If I had accepted the naturalness of my desire for human contact, I would have looked for bridges of understanding between myself and other people. If I had allowed myself to feel fully the pain of my isolation, without self-reproach, I would have made friends with both sexes; I would have seen the interest and benevolence that was often extended to me. If I had given myself the freedom to pass through the normal stages of adolescent development and come out of the prison of my remoteness, I would not have set myself up for an unfortunate marriage. I would not have been so vulnerable to the first girl who seemed genuinely to share my interests.
My chief point here, however, is the effect of my disowning on my self-esteem. That there were “reasons” for my areas of non-self-acceptance is no doubt true, but that is not the focus now. What I felt was what I felt, whether I accepted it or not. Somewhere in my brain was the knowledge that I was condemning and repudiating a part of myself—the part that longed for human companionship. I was in an adversarial relationship to part of who I was. No matter what other areas of confidence and happiness I might enjoy, I was inflicting a wound on my self-esteem.
By the same logic, when I later learned to embrace the disowned parts of myself, I grew in self-esteem.
As a psychotherapist I see that nothing does as much for an individual’s self-esteem as becoming aware of and accepting disowned parts of the self. The, first steps of healing and growth are awareness and acceptance—consciousness and integration. They are the fountainhead of personal development.
An Experiment
I often find it useful to invite clients to do the following exercise, by way of deepening their understanding of self-acceptance.
Take a few minutes to contemplate some feeling or emotion of yours that is not easy for you to face—insecurity, pain, envy, rage, sorrow, humiliation, fear.
When you isolate the feeling, see if you can bring it into clearer focus, perhaps by thinking of or imagining whatever typically evokes it. Then breathe into the feeling, which means focus on the feeling while imagining you are directing the flow of air to it and then from it. Imagine what it would feel like not to resist this feeling but to accept it fully. Explore that experience. Take your time.
Practice saying to yourself, “I am now feeling such and such (whatever the feeling is) and I accept it fully.” At first, this may be difficult; you may find that you tense your body in protest. But persevere; concentrate on your breathing; think of giving your muscles permission to let go of their tension; remind yourself, “A fact is a fact; that which is, is; if the feeling exists, it exists.” Keep contemplating the feeling. Think of allowing the feeling to be there (rather than trying to wish or will it out of existence). You may find it useful, as I have, to tell yourself, “I am now exploring the world of fear or pain or envy or confusion (or whatever).”
Welcome to the practice of self-acceptance.
When Self-Acceptance Feels Impossible
Now let us consider the question: Suppose our negative reaction to some experience is so overwhelming that we feel we cannot practice self-acceptance with regard to it?
In this case, let us say, the feeling, thought, or memory is so distressing and agitating that acceptance feels out of the question. We feel powerless not to block and contract. The solution is not to try to resist our resistance. It is not useful to try to block a block. Instead, we need to do something more artful. If we cannot accept a feeling (or a thought or a memory), we should accept our resistance. In other words, start by accepting where we are. Be present to the now and experience it fully. If we stay with the resistance at a conscious level, it will usually begin to dissolve.
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When we fight a block it grows stronger. When we acknowledge, experience, and accept it, it begins to melt.
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If we can accept the fact that right now, at this moment, we refuse to accept that we feel envy, or anger, or pain, or longing, for example—or that we refuse to accept that we once did or believed such and such—if we acknowledge, experience, and accept our resistance—we discover a supremely important pa
radox: The resistance begins to collapse. When we fight a block it grows stronger. When we acknowledge, experience, and accept it, it begins to melt because its continued existence requires opposition.
Sometimes in therapy, when a person has difficulty accepting a feeling, I will ask if he or she is willing to accept the fact of refusing to accept the feeling. I asked this once of a client who was a clergyman and who had great difficulty in owning or experiencing his anger; just the same, he was a very angry man. My request disoriented him. “Will I accept that I won’t accept my anger?” he asked me. When I answered, “That’s right,” he thundered, “I refuse to accept my anger and I refuse to accept my refusal!” I asked, “Will you accept your refusal to accept your refusal? We’ve got to begin somewhere. Let’s begin there.”
I asked him to face the group and say “I’m angry” over and over again. Soon he was saying it very angrily indeed.
Then I had him say “I refuse to accept my anger,” which he shouted with escalating vigor.
Then I had him say “I refuse to accept my refusal to accept my anger,” which he plunged into ferociously.
Then I had him say “But I am willing to accept my refusal to accept my refusal,” and he kept repeating it until he broke down and joined in the laughter of the group.
“If you can’t accept the experience, accept the resistance,” he said, and I answered, “Right. And if you can’t accept the resistance, accept your resistance to accepting the resistance. Eventually you’ll arrive at a point you can accept. Then you can move forward from there…. So, are you angry?”
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem Page 12