Q&A + Meditation Recording N.2
A reader's question on acceptance
I've struggled with acceptance my whole life. Reading your last newsletter, I realized I can't fully accept myself because if I did I would have to face some hard realities about myself and my relationships. I feel a bit frozen. Can you help me understand how to open myself up to acceptance?
*Note: if you have a question/letter you'd want to share, you can send it to me anonymously here.
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Thank you for your question. Before I go into this in more detail, I want to say that the systems we live under as human beings are not conducive for us to feel self acceptance. In fact, they are conducive for us to feel the opposite of accepting. So, as always, when we look inside of ourselves it's important to put everything in context. The external factors need to be fully named and addressed when we are talking about our interior lives.
It’s not a simple task to experience ourselves and our lives as it is but it’s one worthy of exploring in a world that keeps telling us there’s something inherently wrong with us.
You've mentioned how you have a difficult time offering yourself some acceptance and that you've just realized that your difficulty might come from not being able to face some realities. So I'd start by perhaps reframing your view on acceptance. It's not that you struggle with acceptance. You are having a hard time feeling the discomfort of facing some challenging aspects of yourself and your relationships.
It’s particularly hard to integrate acceptance into our lives when we had to work really hard when we were little to hide certain parts of us. And/or when we didn’t feel fully welcomed at home expressing our emotions or we were somehow made to feel inferior and less than and when we have trauma around abandonment, rejection, worthiness etc. So there’s this deep level which is very related to our capacity to extend ourselves some acceptance and it’s essential to lean into it, through either therapy, somatic practices etc… to get the support and the space you need to process it.
To be accepting, despite what this sounds like, is not agreeing, it's not taking a passive stand. To be accepting is, in fact, broader. It means you are being open to look at everything around you and within you with the understanding that things are as they are and from this place of touching reality as it is without the wish for it to be different, you can make decisions, you can take action, you can put up boundaries, you can name what you need and want. Acceptance asks more of us than to be in this gap between what we are and what we wish we were.
The resistance or as you described a frozen feeling around acceptance might be an indicator that you are struggling to bring all parts of who you are to the table and trusting your capacity to lean into the discomfort this might bring up (to yourself and to your relationships). Often when we avoid turning to things as they are, there’s something we need to protect or there’s a fear of rejection we don’t want to feel.
In Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance she says, “Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”
Perhaps, a way to begin is by observing the ways in which you avoid facing certain parts of life and the coping mechanisms you’ve built around them. Get curious about this.
In a more embodied way, I invite you to practice with the meditation recording below which explores ways you want to cultivate acceptance and what’s on the way.
I hope your willingness to stay open and curious can continue to soften your resistance around acceptance and you can trust your capacity to be with what it is.
With love,
Mari
MEDITATION RECORDING
A few instructions:
Find yourself in a quiet place
Sit as you feel most comfortable, you can either use a couch, bed, chair or the ground. Find a posture that helps you stay awake but relaxed
Eyes can be fully closed or you can have your gaze pointed on a point near you on the ground
Take your time to transition back into your tasks
Can you explain why it’s so easy and effortless to give advice to others and help them draw up a clear picture, yet so difficult for us to take our own advise?