How self-acceptance can promote positive mental health and fuel your emotional wellbeing

What is self-acceptance?

Self-acceptance means acknowledging that you are a complex, imperfect human being capable of making mistakes as well as significant accomplishments. You possess a realistic awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. You accept yourself in spite of your imperfections and because of your uniqueness. You refrain from self-criticism, avoiding rating your self-worth based on other people thinking negatively of what you do, the way you look, or when you perceive you do not live up to your own expectations.

(Source: Self-Acceptance: The Foundation of Mental Health and Wellbeing)

Why is self-acceptance important? 

Self-acceptance can be challenging but it is a key component for good mental health and emotional wellbeing and it can help us manage anxiety and depression. 

We often talk about preferred versions of ourselves, saying or thinking things like, ‘I want to be a certain clothing size’, ‘I wish I was taller’, ‘I wish I could go to the gym every day’. The desire to improve yourself is completely natural, but often we become obsessed with altering things that we cannot change, often wishing we could be like someone else. This way of thinking allows discontentment at best, and self-loathing at worst, to creep into our thinking patterns and negatively impact our mental wellbeing. 

Your psychological wellbeing can suffer without self-acceptance and beneficial interventions like CBT and mindfulness practices can become less effective.

When we learn to accept ourselves for who we are, we often find we are happier and more content, freed from the constant strive to be something or someone we are not. It is a very empowering thing to aim to better yourself in your education, fitness, and skillsets, but make sure you celebrate the small wins and are not too hard on yourself. Let’s try to be kinder to ourselves, cheering ourselves on the way a loved one would. We should never give up learning to love ourselves for who we are.

Self-acceptance can sound like a luxury that is out of reach, however, it is achievable with practice! But firstly, let’s recognize the reasons behind why many of us find self-acceptance so hard…

Accepting ourselves entirely as we are is definitely easier said than done! Especially when we are constantly exposed to media representations of the ‘perfect’ body type, career goal or financial status. These narratives and representations of unobtainable figures and lifestyles have been dominant for a long time, however, in recent times, lots of celebrities and public figures have come forward to criticize the status quo and open up about their own mental health, struggles and insecurities.

The curtain is coming down in many ways and we are beginning to see that the lives behind these images are just as flawed as ours and that reality is often very different from the filtered version we see online. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of that when the unhelpful voices in our heads tell us that we won’t be happy until we become exactly like those unreal images.

Accepting our ‘flaws’ can feel like we are insulting ourselves.  However, the alternative is to always strive to do everything right and be perfect all the time, which isn’t possible and could become very draining. Many of us have high levels of ‘perfectionism’ which is often viewed as positive in a career or sports environment, but can also have negative effects and is sometimes linked to certain mental health conditions. Not only could it inhibit self-acceptance, but people with perfectionism have been more likely to suffer from sleep problems and IBS, as well as shown to be more prone to anxiety and depression. 

Perfectionism also leads to self-criticism and those pesky intrusive thoughts that tell us that we should be doing better. Practising self-acceptance could start with recognising that what we see as ‘flaws’ are simply the things that make us human. For example, needing time alone after a hard day at work rather than socialising with friends, needing more time to adjust to motherhood before you try to ‘get your body back’, letting your dirty clothes pile up because you have been too busy with work, taking time off of social media because it negatively affects you, or distancing yourself from others who do not encourage or uplift you. These are all normal responses to our busy lives and it is OK to accept that we can’t be perfect, productive humans all the time!

If you are beating yourself up over a minor error, it can chip away at your sense of self-worth. We all deserve better than this. We are entitled to our happiness; it is not something that we need to earn. Do not let your inner bully put yourself down for every little thing and steal your joy from life.

  

Tips for practising self-acceptance 

Thankfully, self-acceptance is something we can learn and it can also help develop our emotional resilience and strategies for coping with life’s challenges. 

Here are some tips for helping you on your self-acceptance journey: 

• Listen to yourself. We are often our own worst critics. Pay attention to how you internally talk to yourself and notice what kind of language you use. More often than not we are harsher to ourselves than we would be with others, or how we would expect others to treat us. If you wouldn’t talk to a loved one that way, don’t talk to yourself that way either! Noticing your harsh inner voice is the first step to starting to change it.

 

• Practising mindfulness can help us become more aware of ourselves, and can create habits of self-compassion. These exercises and meditations have been proven to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and increase heart rate variability, which is your body’s physiological ability to deal with stressful situations. Mindfulness can help you deal with unhelpful thoughts and allow you to be kinder to yourself and practise self-acceptance.

 

• Think of yourself as a work in progress. Our performance at work, school, or the gym, does not define us and we must accept that part of being human is having good days and bad days. Self-acceptance begins when you learn to see yourself beyond your actions - one bad performance doesn’t make you a failure. Focus on progress over perfection! 

 

• From time to time, take a break from social media, gossip magazines and all other outlets that show unrealistic views of the world. These are not real! 

 

• Be proud of who you are! Reflect on your positive characteristics and relationships and celebrate your achievements! 

 

Find ways to self-acceptance that work for you. Not all of these methods work for everyone as we are all unique. It is important for you to find what works for you in your personal journey, and explore the benefits of self-acceptance in your life. 

 

Seeking acceptance in yourself 

As we approach Pride season here in Northern Ireland, it is important that we recognise the importance of mental health and wellbeing within the LGBTQIA+ community. 

People in the LGBTQIA+ community are more likely to suffer from mental ill-health in comparison to the rest of the population. Some of the causes behind this include discrimination, homophobia or transphobia, social isolation, rejection, and difficult experiences of coming out. Recent studies from Stonewall suggest that half of LGBTIQ+ people had experienced depression and three in five had experienced anxiety. 

With all of these external factors that could become the root of poor mental health within the community, we do not need to be our own worst enemy as well. The journey to self-acceptance can be challenging, but it is an important journey for those of us who struggle with our sexuality and/or gender identity especially. We are all different, and it is much healthier to accept who we are than to keep striving to be like someone else.

If you would like to seek support from us, please contact us at https://aware-ni.org/lets-talk to attend one of our support groups or to talk to one of our support officers. 

For more information on support available within the LGBTQIA+ community, visit https://www.rainbow-project.org/