Parenting always brings the dilemma: is it time to push my child more, or is it time to leave things be and let them figure it out? Is it time to push, or time to glide? My son was born with multiple disabilities and high support needs, so my version of this question often came down more like: Do I need to push him harder, or will that just end up punishing him for his disabilities? My journey through parenting often makes issues like this more plain, but the same issue is there for all of us whether we’re parenting children or relating to our selves. There is a point for all of us where we will reach our limits, so it it a life long journey to figure out how to push for growth without expecting the impossible and punishing for it.
Self Acceptance is the Marrow that governs your emotional health. Whatever therapy, support groups, education, or somatic practices you choose to help support your emotional health will only yield positive results if it is anchored in self acceptance. Emotions are part of the gig when you’re a human being, but there are ways to accept them, process them, and not be bound by them which will radically improve your relationships and quality of life.
There is a ton of research on self acceptance, and here’s one definition I particularly liked:
“Self-acceptance … is defined as an individual’s acceptance of all of his/her attributes, positive or negative. Self-acceptance enables an individual to appropriately evaluate his/her efficient and inefficient features and accept any negative aspects as parts of their personality.” (Morgado et al, 2014)
Self Acceptance is crucial to being able to make lasting, sustainable behavior change in your life. This may seem illogical – the only way to change is to accept how you are? – but it’s true. I call this the Self Acceptance Paradox.
You can’t fix something if you’re trying to solve the wrong problem. If you get hung up on “should’s”- how you ‘should’ eat or how your body ‘should’ look – you can miss what is actually happening. Some diet plan can swear it is the cleanest bestest diet plan, but if you eat it and feel bloated and tired, it’s not the diet plan FOR YOU. If it takes time you don’t have and money you can’t afford, it’s not the plan that will solve your set of problems. Self Acceptance allows you to solve the problems you actually have, and not the problems someone tells you you’re allowed to have.
Accepting yourself also means you can stop being ashamed of yourself. Which will make you feel much better overall, but will also make it easier to find the solutions you need. Avoiding shame keeps you out of the trauma responses or behavior patterns that have created these problems, and instead accessing the rational part of your brain that can find solutions and make change.
It’s a lifelong process of discernment. It takes learning how to be honest with yourself and see things as they are, even when that means admitting some hard truths. It takes holding yourself accountable and acknowledging how you’ve contributed to things. And it takes courage to look it all in the eye and strive forward.
As I’ve worked on my own discernment process, I’ve learned that it helps me to ask a few questions. Is this a barrier or an excuse? What do I have control over? How can I use my agency? What does healthy look like for me?
Is this a barrier or an excuse? As a kid I would often get in trouble for using excuses when in actuality it was legitimately something I wasn’t capable of. Some things we just aren’t going to be able to do until a barrier is removed. More education, more development, more support, are all ways of addressing those barriers. When I was a kid and couldn’t do the school project, maybe I needed to learn how, maybe the expectations weren’t in line with my development, or maybe I needed an adult to help me. But also, kids are just jerks sometimes. Sometimes I got in trouble because I was making excuses and I just needed to buckle down and get to work. Now I ask, is there a barrier I need to remove, or am I making excuses and there’s something else going on here.
What do I have control over? Most of our body functions happen autonomically. They are just running their own programs and we are barely aware of them. That also means we don’t have control over them. We cannot willpower an injured spine away. We can’t mindset a genetic condition into disappearing. We can’t choose how our body metabolizes or where it stores fat or how regularly our heart beats. Anything I try to do that rests on being able to control the uncontrollable is doomed to fail.
How can I use my agency? Just because I don’t have control doesn’t mean that I am powerless. The health choices I make will impact how each of my autonomic systems can function. The food I choose, the movement I take, the rest I get, those are all things that I am in charge of, so those are the things I should put my energy into. I can’t control outcomes – two people can eat the very same food and get very different results – but I use my agency to get the best results that my body has to offer.
What does healthy look like for me? Healthy is different for everyone based on their circumstances. What is ‘healthy’ in one for one person at one time in their life, won’t be healthy for even that same person at a different time in their life. My medical needs change, my food needs change, the type of movement that works for me has changed. What is most important is determining what my body needs and finding a way to meet that.
Because the truth is that ‘healthy’ might include sacrificing some status. Society grants status to us when we behave in certain ways. Diet talk is one of the fastest ways to bond, and for some of us it is required before we are treated like human beings. Fat people who says that weight loss is not their priority are mercilessly attacked, even when they are recovering from eating disorders. Really busy people are seen as more important, even when we know the harm stress causes to our bodies. Prioritizing health also means prioritizing your needs when they go against the norm.
Asking myself these questions helps me to be mindful about my choices. It is challenging and nuanced stuff to be compassionate and accountable at the same time. But to make lasting and sustainable change, we have to learn to navigate the hopes we have for ourselves with the reality of our body needs. We do that through self acceptance.