Do you accept my flaws? Why So Hard Self-Acceptance: Why So Hard? And How Do We Make It Easier?

 

Become Addicted to constant and never-ending self-Improvement.

Why So Hard Self-Acceptance: Why So Hard?

And How Do We Make It Easier?

Self-Personal self Development, Self-Acceptance Personal Care Self-improvement wellbeing

"Accept yourself for who actually you are - flaws included"

 

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this phrase - and I haven't understood it for the longest time!

 

                Do you accept my flaws?

 Why should I admit the things I hate the most about myself?

 

Should I not fight my flaws to beat them?

 

And that was exactly my problem - I was treating self-healing like a war, and I was constantly fighting myself in my attempt to win. Why Fighting Your Flaws Not Working?

The language is strong. If we say we hate ourselves, it sticks.

 

Many people make the mistake of focusing on a 'flaw' thinking they can keep 'self-hate' under control - essentially, using self-loathing as a weapon to 'crush' that part of ourselves.

 

However, this urge to 'fix ourselves' tends to be obsessive. And when we obsess over our flaws, they grow bigger in our minds until we feel they define us.

 

We look at ourselves and we can no longer see the good things, so they dwarf our flaws with our own perceptions.

 

And suddenly that hatred we thought we were in control took on.

 

At some level, we no longer want to see the good in ourselves, in case it distracts us from our 'mission'. We fear that if we are too gentle with ourselves, we will lose control over our flaws and get worse.

 

So, we nurture our own hatred, believing that we need it to 'heal'. We label ourselves with cruel words like 'lazy' 'stupid' and 'possible'. In fact, we become our own abusers.

                 Our inner saboteur enlightens us. 

 

Our inner saboteur enlightens us. They don't allow us to rely on any confidence or feeling of pride. They convince us that these feelings are a trick, an illusion that will prevent us from moving forward.

 

Our inner saboteur won't let us trust anyone who loves us. We doubt them, deny their compliments, and question their reasons.

 

The inner a saboteur seeks evidence to validate our negative self-perception. We are suddenly consumed by negative memories of ourselves, and the inner saboteur convinces us that these memories are what defines us. On the contrary, nothing anyone says can be trusted.

 

This kind of paranoid thinking makes us feel more isolated, which pushes us further into a spiral of hate.

 

The sad irony of the situation is that we can feel better about ourselves for the reason we want to 'heal' in the first place.

                         Why Motivation Matters?

Ok - now we know that using self-hate as a tool when trying to feel good… is inefficient.

 

But - I think we already knew that, right?

 

So how did we convince ourselves otherwise?

 

It has a lot to do with motivation.

 

We've all had times when a voice in our head said 'you're not good enough'. And naturally, we want that voice to go.

 

At this point, we basically have two options.

 

Option A: This voice is not to help us, but to sabotage us, and until you disagree firmly with that voice and say, 'No, actually I'm good enough.'

 

Option B. We can believe the voice and ask what it would like us to do. It will tell us that we need to change XYZ about ourselves in order to be 'good enough'. Then we start to get obsessed with XYZ and… well, we've already covered what happens next.

 

If our goal is to really feel good about ourselves, it's clear that option A is the right choice.

 

The problem, however, is that although most people want to feel good about themselves, many simply don't rely on option A. They don't trust that they have the power to change their own perceptions.

 

They believe they have to earn this in order to feel self-worth.

 

And this motivation is what makes them more likely to lean on option B and convince themselves that they can (somehow!) Work for them.

 

Motivation matters - and there's a subtle but important difference between 'I want to feel good about myself' and 'I want to earn the right to feel good about myself'.

 

When we motivate us to say 'I want to earn the right to feel good about myself', we tell ourselves that we don't have this right yet.

 

Imagine someone in your life turning to you and 'you don't have the right to feel good about yourself'. - There are no other words for this, this is abuse.

 

Stop Viewing Yourself Through Other People's Eyes

Wait, when did anybody else get here?

 

In fact, our perception of how other people see us (or rather, how other people see us) is almost always at the root of our problem of accepting ourselves.

 

Because at At the end of the day there are many people who don't accept us for who we are. And some of us are unlucky enough to have these people in our families.

 

So accepting ourselves while in the habit of trusting the approval of others is SUPER CONSTANT.

 

Again, this basically leaves us with two options:

 

Option A: Stop relying on the validation of others and instead discover this magic of affirmation to ourselves.

 

Option B: Do everything we can to obtain this verification from other people (assuming that the 'you are not good enough' voice disappears when we feel 'we are verified enough').

 

And once again, even though option A is the obvious choice, people don't trust it and go for option B.

 

And - you guessed it, they never feel sufficiently validated.

 

Why? As we discussed, our inner saboteur has convinced us that if we let ourselves feel so good we'll lose control - and then our flaws will come back! And then everyone will know that we are a fraud! And all this verification will disappear! And then we will have nothing!

 

(Our inner saboteur has a spiral habit)

 

Now, many people say, 'I don't care what other people think, I do it for me'. - but they don't mean that. They fool themselves because they don't want to admit that all this exhausting self-hatred they put themselves in is actually at the service of other people.

 

When we say 'I'm doing this for myself' - we have to make sure we're doing it for our true selves, not a version of ourselves that we've built in our heads.

 

This study shows that when we perceive our 'future self' (for example, when making a new year's decision), we perceive them differently from our current self. Basically, the part of our brain that lights up is the part that thinks about other people.

 

We create an idealized version of ourselves and try to 'be' them. When we say “I will go for a run 3 days a week”, we imagine ourselves as a different person who finds it easy to run 3 times a week. We imagine our 'future self' as someone who does not match our current barriers and challenges.

 

And when we wake up and magically realize that we are not that person, we get disappointed and take it out ourselves.

             So when we decide to 'improve'.

So when we decide to 'improve' - we can fall into the trap of creating this idealized 'future self' in our heads and letting them run the show.

 

If we don't comply with your standards, we'll punish us. We tell ourselves this is good. It's okay if this idealized self bullies us because they're better than us, that's why we deserve it. If we do what they say, we can be them, and then everything will be better! Right???

 

"I'm not doing this for other people - I'm doing it for myself."

 

It sounds nice on the surface, but if by "myself" we actually mean "an idealized version of myself that I want to be" - then sadly, it's the same as doing it for someone else - ultimately fruitless.

 Next part:https://umme-aiman.blogspot.com/2020/09/re-frame-your-mistakes-and-flaws-into.html