Episode #42- Radical Self Acceptance

The concept of radical self acceptance is that in order to truly change yourself, you must accept yourself just as you are.

 

We usually think if we are kind to ourselves, then we will never change.   So we hold ourselves to unreal perfectionistic standards and then beat ourselves up when we don't achieve them.

But what if the way to change is not to be hard on yourself?

"It wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to change."  -Carl Rogers

 

Radical self acceptance relates to chronic pain and disease in two ways 

1-accepting all emotions we have is what John Sarno teaches.  Pen-vent or journal to get those repressed emotions out, and then bathe them in self compassion

2-radically accept the sensation of the pain.  Go into the body and describe the sensation.  Do not fight it or dissociate away from it.  React as neutrally as possible and send slow breath to and from that area.  React to your body with compassion, not hate or fear.

 

Accept the sensation of pain, and send the message back to the nervous system that it can relax.

 

The best way to change ourself, including our perception of pain, is to fully accept all parts of ourself.

Radical!!!

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 42, Radical Self-Acceptance. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my friends, welcome. Today, I'm gonna start off with the drawing.
Do you remember there was a drawing for $100 Amazon gift card? Well, that is being done right now. If you wanna watch on Instagram or YouTube and see me actually drawing the name, you can find me there at Body and Mind Life Coach.
And if you're listening, here's the rustle of the papers as I pick one. So the winner is Kelsey Gorkoski. So I'll be contacting you, Kelsey.
Congratulations. That was a drawing for people who gave my podcast a rating or review. And if you haven't yet, even though there's no drawing involved, please take the time.
It helps this podcast be found by more people so that this information can be shared. So today we're talking about radical self-acceptance. And this concept is based on a book by Tara Brock called Radical Self-Acceptance, a Buddhist guide to freeing yourself from shame.
The main concept with radical self-acceptance is that we all struggle with feelings of unworthiness, feelings of shame, feelings of not being good enough. And freedom doesn't come from trying to be more perfect. Peace comes when we learn to be accepting and loving of ourselves.
Once we can embrace the humanity and the struggles and the imperfections that we all have, then we can begin to create meaningful change. The feeling of unworthiness or not feeling good enough is quite universal. Brooke Castillo said that if you boil all of the problems she coaches on down to one thing, it comes down to self-worth.
And that means that just because your brain tells you you're not good enough, it doesn't mean that it's true. And it means that you're not alone. Most everyone struggles with some form of questioning their self-worth.
Now, most of us address the problem of not feeling good enough by beating ourselves up relentlessly. When we make a mistake, we think you're so stupid. Why do you always screw everything up?
You'll never succeed. You're too weak. We think that if we're harsh on ourselves, then we'll change.
There's fear that if we love ourselves when we do something wrong, then it will get worse. And we know from the model that you can never have a positive result from a negative emotion. So if the emotion we have about something is shame, embarrassment or guilt, then the actions we're most likely to take would be to beat ourselves up verbally, to hide, to not connect with others, and probably to buffer whatever it is that makes you feel good, like eating, drinking, shopping, gambling, being on Facebook too much.
Then the result is that we usually feel even worse about ourselves because we're thinking things that make us feel negatively, and then we buffer to get away from those feelings, which ends up sabotaging ourselves and making ourselves feel even worse. Our brain likes to prove itself true, even if it hurts us. So often, instead of being willing to change, we're stuck in a negative cycle of unworthiness and then buffering, which proves how weak and bad and unworthy we are.
Now notice if there are any areas of your life that you desperately wish were different. Maybe it's a body obsession or an addictive behavior or even the health of your body or chronic pain or disease. The fundamental way to change these things we don't like about ourselves is to accept ourselves, to radically and fully accept ourselves.
Carl Rogers said, it wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to change. So if I hate that I yell at my kids, the best way to change that is not to get really mad and frustrated with myself every time I yell at my kids. The best way for me to really be able to change that behavior I don't like is to fully accept that I am a person that sometimes yells at my kids.
I'm an imperfect human, and it's okay that I'm not perfect all of the time. I could even have compassion for myself, that when I get angry, I may yell, but that's just something that humans do sometimes. It's not an indication that I'm bad or worthless or unfit.
It just means that I have a human emotion, and in the future, I might want to react differently. Now, when you have compassion for yourself, you're not trying to change from a place of scarcity or a place of lack. You're accepting yourself.
You're knowing that you're worthy of love. You're not changing to get away from being bad, but you are wanting to change from a place of already being okay. Whatever we can't embrace with love imprisons us.
The truth is that we hold ourselves to a higher standard of perfection than what we expect from others. But if you think about it, most of us would rather be hanging around with someone that does have some imperfections. It's unnerving to be around someone who is perfect with the perfect hair and the perfect house and the perfect parents to their children, and their children always behave.
We may feel awkward because we're internally comparing ourselves. We might be secretly pleased when we catch a glimpse of their family struggling, so that we know that they're just human like us. This happened to me before, actually once I was doing a yoga class and a student was observing.
And after class, he said that he liked watching me practice. And I asked him what specifically, I was getting ready for some compliments. And he said he liked when I fell out of one of the standing balance poses, because then he knew I was human and not a robot.
So those people that we think are just perfect on Instagram, yes, part of us might look up to them and admire them, but part of us kind of hates that they're so perfect. When people don't seem to struggle or have problems, they don't seem real to us. It's not the kind of person we would want to hang around.
Or one time my dad put it this way. If you were, you know, maybe a high school basketball player, you wouldn't feel really comfortable playing on a professional team. You wouldn't really want to play with them.
It wouldn't be fun for you, even if you got the chance. You wouldn't be at the same level as them. So when we look at people who seem perfect, part of us is repelled by that.
Brene Brown calls these perfect imperfections. She says we can love each other, not in spite of these imperfections, but because of them. We are the ones putting so much pressure on ourselves to show up perfectly every time.
Other people actually like us more when we show up humanly instead of acting perfect. The process of radical self-acceptance is three steps. The first step, as always, is to become mindful.
Name what is there. Recognize when you're thinking the thought, something's wrong with me. Then respond to yourself with kindness.
Say yes to it. Allow it. Don't recoil away from it or beat yourself up about it.
Allow your insecure or judgmental feelings. Then infuse yourself with a profound sense of compassion. Bathe yourself in compassion.
Forgive yourself. Love yourself. And that is how you'll be best able to change it.
Now, how can we apply the radical self acceptance to chronic pain and chronic disease? The first way I feel like radical self acceptance correlates with chronic pain and disease is with John Sarno's theory of why the brain manifests pain as a response to the repressed emotions that we don't want to deal with. With radical self acceptance, we're accepting all of ourselves, all of the parts that are undesirable or ugly or unwanted.
And that's the same thing that we need to do with our journey with healing our pain. It's to accept that there are some emotions that our thoughts have created that we didn't want to feel, but are there in our body. If we don't feel them, then we feel them in our body.
So I think with what John Sarno recommends, with journaling, doing the penvent as I call it, and getting all of those emotions out and just recognizing that they're there. So I feel like radical self-acceptance is exactly what we're trying to do when we're working on healing chronic pain and disease. Really just recognizing all of the emotions that are there and not running away from them and not pretending that they're not there and allowing them to be there and be curious about them and accept them and bathe them with compassion.
As well, think of the concept of pain as something that you could also radically accept. What if the best way to eliminate your pain is when you notice it, to react so neutrally to it, to say yes to it, to allow it, to bathe it in compassion. When we react with fear or strong emotion to our pain, it sends the signal back to our brain that this is important.
We need to pay attention to it. We need to focus on it. It's like the brain turns up the volume of the pain and the hypersensitivity to pain increases.
Because our brain thinks it's really important and it wants to make sure we feel every pain sensation in our body. But the more we can notice our pain with acceptance or even with boredom or neutrality, it sends a message back to the brain that that sensation is not important. The brain can turn down that volume of hypersensitivity to it.
Because we know that people can have the same structural injuries, like disc bulges, arthritis or meniscus tear, and have different perceptions of their sensation of pain. It has more to do with how hypersensitive our nervous system is than the structural abnormality in our body. Some people may even have pain where they can find no structural abnormalities or medical explanations for why there is pain.
So there's a lot of evidence showing that it's not structural changes that cause chronic pain, but a ramped up nervous system and a pattern of hypersensitivity to body sensations. If you are not able to ignore your pain or react neutrally to it, you can practice accepting your pain by going into it instead of pushing away from it. Notice how it feels in your body.
Describe the sensation neutrally. Is it sharp or dull? Is it moving or stuck?
Is it warm or cold? Does it have a shape or a color? You can calm your breathing.
You can send breath to that area. When you're not fighting the sensation, it's more likely to decrease or even go away. There are many times I help people focus on and describe their pain.
And as they focus on it, their pain lessens or changes or moves in their body. I talk about going into your body on episode number 39. And I take you through a meditation where you can do this in episode number 26, somatic tracking, a meditation for pain.
Just like accepting all parts of ourselves can be difficult, accepting the sensations we have in our body, like pain, can be extremely difficult. But neuroscience teaches us that the way we respond to sensations of pain when we have them determines if we'll keep wiring our brain for pain in the future. This is a tricky skill.
We are not taught this way. So be patient and compassionate with yourself as you practice. But know that the best way to change ourselves is to fully accept all parts of ourselves first, and then we can be free to change.
All right, my friends, have a good week. Bye.