WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ACCEPTANCE?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-07 22:18

I often hear phrases like, “all you need to do is accept yourself,” or “accept this,” “you need to accept yourself,” and this is all very cool. But there is one BUT, it is not at all clear how to accept yourself. Everyone talks a lot about it, but almost no one tells what it means. There are many explanations, beautiful, beautiful, sublime, philosophical, but this confuses even more.

Moreover, as a psychologist, it was only relatively recently that I myself was still able to define, differentiate from a thousand meanings, one that would be simple and understandable at once, without eloquent additions. Acceptance is such a thing that it does not immediately add up to words. In personal therapy, I felt, experienced acceptance, but I could not explain. While studying, I didn't really understand anything either, although Gestalt is a therapy of relationships, everything is based on acceptance, but it happens, I understand everything, but I can't say. Only thanks to personal practice, thanks to my clients, I was still able to find a definition, then structure everything, shorten it and make it as simple as possible, so that even the 5th child could be explained.

Richard Feyman once said, "If you are a scientist, a quantum physicist, and cannot explain in a nutshell to a five-year-old what you do, you are a charlatan."

I try to follow this principle in my articles, lectures and webinars.

So, what is acceptance and what is it eaten with?

Let's start with the definition:

Acceptance is a process of simultaneous stability and development

where, stability means being yourself, and development is knowing yourself and realizing your potential

Acceptance is a process, it is constant, you cannot take and accept yourself once forever. Acceptance is a choice we make every day, every minute, every moment.

Acceptance is about being yourself and growing at the same time. There is a certain conflict in the definition itself, it consists in the fact that stability and development are some kind of polarity. And in gestalt therapy they say that in order to accept yourself you need to go deep into the conflict, allow this conflict to be inside, be aware of it, observe it and explore it.

To better understand how acceptance can be born in conflict, we use Arnold Beisser's paradoxical theory of change. It sounds like this:

« Change occurs when a person becomes who he really is, not when he tries to become what he is not. Change does not happen through a deliberate attempt to change oneself or someone else, but occurs when a person tries to be who he really is - to be fully involved in the present. "

It turns out that in order to realize ourselves we need to be who we are

What else do you need to know about acceptance?

Acceptance is not a skill, it cannot be learned, it is an experience, it is a feeling, it must be lived through

That is why all the conversations on the topic “do it yourself” does not work, and it is also impossible to gain this experience in the training, because quickly only … well, you know what.

To accept yourself, you need someone else to accept you. This is how it works. According to the idea, ideally, we should have been accepted by our parents, but since they have no idea how it is, then we live in a neurotic society.

The mistake is to require parents to accept in adulthood, it’s silly, at least, if they could accept us - they would accept, but you have to figure it out on your own.

But we cannot do this ourselves, we need the Other. The other one who can accept himself and can give this experience to us. I am not saying that it must necessarily be a psychologist, but it must be a person. Simply a psychologist is a specially trained person for this, unless, of course, before starting his practice, he underwent personal therapy. And then anything happens to our psychologists.

Acceptance is often confused with love

I often see advice from psychologists on how to love yourself (and now I doubt that they have undergone personal therapy), you can love yourself, only this has nothing to do with acceptance.

Because love can be neurotic. People living in dependent and codependent relationships also believe that they are in love. Moreover, the whole culture is saturated with codependent love, almost all novels, plays, poems and poems, songs and films, glorify this raging passion and the inability to live without each other. This is all great for an action-packed novel, but bad for life.

It is precisely because love is too ambiguous that many psychotherapists do not connect it with acceptance. Because acceptance is about something else.

Acceptance is about respect

Respect comes from the right of every person to be, this is a basic feeling, this is the value of a person as such, confidence in his right to exist, no matter what.

In spite of everything, I have the right to be, I have my place in this world, and no one has the right to deprive me of this place.

I know myself, I know my qualities, I know my feelings, and I look at them adequately, I can make mistakes, and that's okay. I admit my mistakes, I can be different, experience different emotions and treat others as I see fit.

Then accepting others will mean respecting their right to be, respecting their freedom, their choice, this equality and interest in another

When we accept someone, this does not mean that we like him, absolutely not, we just understand that he is different, and he can be what he is.

That is why in the concept of “acceptance of the other” there is this respect in relation to the being of the other. We may not like a person, we may despise him, we may be hurt by who he is, or experience absolutely any other feelings, but we always leave the right to another person to be who he is

And this is difficult, because we cannot leave our loved ones alone, we want them to be different, the best, so that everything is great for them. But we cannot do anything with other people, we can hardly do anything with ourselves.

Acceptance is allowing something to be what it is

I was just hosting a webinar on this topic, and this article is a short version of it, at the end I gave such a structure of self-acceptance, and I want to show it to you too.

What does it mean to accept yourself:

1. Responsibility for yourself and your actions
2. Taking care of yourself (meeting needs, protecting your borders)
3. Respect for yourself (allowing yourself to be who you are)
4. Knowledge of myself (who I am, what are my feelings and desires, what I can, what brings me joy)
5. Realizing My Potential (How Do I Do What I Want)

Psychologist, Miroslava Miroshnik, miroslavamiroshnik.com