Thoughts to help increase self-acceptance

Anyone who has been here long enough knows how much I recommend REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy). It has helped me phenomenally, along with other things of course.

At the core of REBT (as I understand it) is Unconditional Self-Acceptance. This means not rating oneself at all. Accepting oneself unconditionally completely apart from what we do or do not do. Because we are complex, unique individuals, it is impossible to come up with an accurate method of rating ourselves (or rating others). We can rate our behaviour as good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, but we can not rate ourselves. We are ever-changing, unique.

If I do something stupid, for instance, I am tempted simply out of habit to berate myself: "I am such an idiot, such a buffoon, an imbecile, a loser, blah blah blah...!" When this happens, I stop myself. I recognize that what I am doing is rating myself, which is impossible to do accurately. I affirm that I am good, simply because I breathe. Every human being is equal in worth, none worth more or less than another. I remind myself of this, and then accept that what I have done is short of perfection. So what? I am not perfect; I am human.

I learn from my mistakes. I accept that I make them, and try my best not to make the same mistake again.

I could go on but I risk losing readers because of the length of my post.

I wanted to leave this with you all... below the cute photo below are some thoughts that are very useful in helping to achieve self-acceptance. I think this is key to recovery from AvPD.

Let's stop putting ourselves down!



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THOUGHTS TO HELP INCREASE SELF-ACCEPTANCE


1. I'm not a bad person when I act badly; I am a person who has acted badly.
2. I'm not a good person when I act well and accomplish things; I am a person who has acted well and accomplished things.
3. I can accept myself whether I win, lose, or draw.
4. I would better not define myself entirely by my behavior, by others' opinions, or by anything else under the sun.
5. I can be myself without trying to prove myself.
6. I am not a fool for acting foolishly. If I were a fool, I could never learn from my mistakes.
7. I am not an ass for acting asininely.
8. I have many faults and can work on correcting them without blaming, condemning, or damning myself for having them.
9. Correction, yes! Condemnation, no!
10. I can neither prove myself to be a good nor a bad person. The wisest thing I can do is simply to accept myself.
11. I am not a worm for acting wormily.
12. I cannot "prove" human worth or worthlessness; it's better that I not try to do the impossible.
13. Accepting myself as being human is better than trying to prove myself superhuman or rating myself as subhuman.
14. I can itemize my weaknesses, disadvantages, and failures without judging or defining myself by them.
15. Seeking self-esteem or self-worth leads to self-judgments and eventually to self-blame. Self- acceptance avoids these self-ratings.
16. I am not stupid for acting stupidly. Rather, I am a non-stupid person who sometimes produces stupid behavior.
17. I can reprimand my behavior without reprimanding myself.
18. I can praise my behavior without praising myself.
19. Get after your behavior! Don't get after yourself.
20. I can acknowledge my mistakes and hold myself accountable for making them -but without berating myself for creating them.
21. It's silly to favorably judge myself by how well I'm able to impress others, gain their approval, perform, or achieve.
22. It's equally silly to unfavorably judge myself by how well I'm able to impress others, gain their approval, perform, or achieve.
23. I am not an ignoramus for acting ignorantly.
24. When I foolishly put myself down, I don't have to put myself down for putting myself down.
25. I do not have to let my acceptance of myself be at the mercy of my circumstances.
26. I am not the plaything of others' reviews, and can accept myself apart from others' evaluations of me.
27. I may at times need to depend on others to do practical things for me, but I don't have to emotionally depend on anyone in order to accept myself. Practical dependence is a fact! Emotional dependence is a fiction!
28. I am beholden to nothing or no one in order to accept myself.
29. It may be better to succeed, but success does not make me a better person.
30. It may be worse to fail, but failure does not make me a worse person.

Amen!

I agree. This is what I was getting at in my "bitter or better" post in another thread. Though it was just some un-developed thought process and not methodically and well written like you (or someone?) have done.

Adopting this kind of thinking definitely helps with the avoidant problems I have noticed. Though now I express more schizoid qualities but I think those were always there and I was trying to suppress them.

Body image is important aswell. Do you see a perfectly normal or good looking person in the mirror? If so then why would you feel weak or inferior inside.

Iron Angel wrote:Though it was just some un-developed thought process and not methodically and well written like you (or someone?) have done.

I only wrote what comes before the monkey-child. Everything after the monkey-child I copied from Albert Ellis (REBT founder).

Avoidant Doormat wrote:Ted Bundy, and his childhood; has always struck me as an overly-sweet, caring, accommodating, and reticent person – that people just chose to dump on, and dump on, and dump on, and dump on.

That is not the best example of getting over this, but maybe Avoidants can finally get a set of balls after that one person makes the abuse too much, and start to take control of their own existences.

Ted Bundy was an 'insane' criminal. A murderer may appear compassionate and friendly and help others, but that is not what defines that person's personality. In the case of Bundy, I'd say he was a sadistic predator who used his charm solely to persuade his victims and cover his practices. His 'friendliness' was a necessity.

The 'abuse' you mention is relative. What we avoidants experience as abuse may be normal interaction for neurotypical people. As much as I hate such attitude towards me, I would never retaliate (and thus lower myself to the neurotypical standard). I would rather succumb to my own self-destructive behavior rather than alter it to the liking of others and become an insensitive clod.

The conversation has sort of changed from my original post, which is a little interesting, but I am curious if this has struck a chord with anyone here.

I'm on board with Iron Angel. I'd love to see more attention being paid to recovery tools, and to what has helped people overcome the negatives of this personality disorder.

It is so easy to get angry with and blame others who have hurt or neglected us, but as adults - and most of us are adults here, though there are some teens - I think the best route to recovery is to take responsibility for today, for our lives now. The past is in the past.

Please feel free to share as you would like, but I particularly welcome suggestions from those who are working at bettering their lives. Do you use any of the tools that I have mentioned, have they worked for you, and what is working for you?

I know when I came here, it felt good to know I wasn't alone and to see that this problem of mine is well-documented. But what I also really wanted and needed was some help, some tools to recover. To live a normal life.

Quite a fine list of suggestions.

And for those who are up to working on themselves but maybe find Dr. Albert Ellis (founder of REBT) a bit grating...

I really like Dr. David Burns' work (e.g., "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy"). Very human way of writing and good suggestions for doing some "Cognitive Therapy" on one's own.

LoveQuiet wrote:I really like Dr. David Burns' work (e.g., "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy"). Very human way of writing and good suggestions for doing some "Cognitive Therapy" on one's own.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to check that book out. Is it similar to REBT?

The principles are exactly the same... just a "kinder, gentler" style w/ Burns.

(Ellis has sort of a New Yawker 'edge' (no offense, Yankees))

And by the way, Burns' book has actually been RESEARCH-tested... meaning they just GAVE the book to people to use own their own - and then compared to a control group after weeks & months... and showed significant improvement from its readers.