Self acceptance

My summer goal is to get to know and accept myself. My rocks are to celebrate myself daily (not just success or progress), spend time connecting with my emotions and sensations in my body and to self-coach, particularly on ‘need to fix me’ thoughts.

When my pain and fatigue levels are tolerable, I’m having some genuine moments where my thoughts are more accepting towards myself. I think things like “you can care for yourself without needing to fix anything”. I get fleeting moments of feeling this acceptance in my body, like a grounded heavy feeling, which is delightful 😊

When my pain and fatigue levels are higher, I get into this internal argument in my head. I try laddering thoughts like “you are learning to accept yourself and this is a part of you” and my extremely quick reply says “No-one wants pain like this, how on earth can you accept this?”, followed by “well it is reality and you’re getting yourself nowhere by refusing to accept it”, followed by “you need to fix this, there must be something you haven’t tried”, followed by “thinking like this is only activating your nervous system and making the pain worse” followed by “your giving up on yourself if you stop trying”. It goes on and on.

I see, writing this out, how much self-criticism and judgement is there. And fear. My pain is chronic, I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I struggle to accept this and there is a part of me that hangs onto it being something else so I can find a way to stop the symptoms. I know there is space in which I can explore ways of caring for myself, potentially reducing my symptoms, from a place of acceptance.

How do I get out of wishing things were different, and into acceptance of reality?

Many thanks

 

 

Answer:

Accept this reality. The part where you criticize and judge yourself. The part where you are afraid of the pain and how you’ll handle this potentially the rest of your life. The part where you are trying so hard to thought work your way to acceptance. The part where it’s easier on good days to have a good attitude and harder on hard days. That seems pretty understandable.

Of course your brain wants to fix the pain.  Physical pain is a sign that something is going wrong. It’s a red alert to pull your hand from a hot stovetop, but you can’t. You can make peace with the voice in your head that is fighting everything you are trying to do. Any time we make a change there will be resistance. When we accept it, it loses its power.

Let’s redefine what acceptance looks like. Write down what you think it should be. Let out all the beliefs you have about how you should be handling this challenge. Give yourself some love.

Now write down a new version of acceptance where you let yourself be a human experiencing chronic pain. See what comes up as you are very open to all possibilities. See what comes up and bring it back for more coaching.