Self-Acceptance

Last night, I cried myself to sleep. It was the first time I've ever actually cried until I just couldn't stay awake another instant. I'm not sharing this for the sympathy vote. I'd had a long day, which hadn't been all bad by any means, and it was nearly midnight when I got home, exhausted. I'd known I was close to a good hard cry all day, I'd felt it creeping up on my at all kinds of inappropriate moments, like on the train home, and so I wasn't surprised that it happened. Despite that, I was angry with myself. "What's the matter with you?" my inner monologue demanded. "You cried last night, why do you need to cry again tonight?" I had no answer for this. "Anyway, why are you still so upset about this, it's been almost two months! Man, you're weak."

And I realized - this past week I'd managed to forget one of the most important things I'd learned about the recovery process: self-acceptance.

If you're anything like me - and if you're NOT anything like me, you're likely wasting your time reading this blog! - this will all sound familiar. My inner monologue needs to be heavily policed - a fact that I only discovered last month, when I realized how badly I was treating myself. Generally, according to it's point of view, things in life fall in to two categories.

1. When Bad Things Happen. When bad things happen, they are always my fault. I didn't work hard enough. I didn't do it right. I didn't think it through. I said the wrong thing (I always say the wrong thing!). I shouldn't have done that. I'm such an idiot. I'm such a klutz. Last night, at a party, I managed to spill the contents of my purse on to the floor, and responded to questions if everything was okay by saying, "don't worry, it's a talent." Reverses that I suffer are ALWAYS attributed to my own failings, in my case usually to my inability to keep pushing and keep trying (I believe that I have enough ability to do anything I set my mind to; therefore, if I've failed, it's no because I didn't have enough ability, but because I didn't try hard enough. Obviously, different people will feel differently about this.) Other people don't cause the bad things in my life; I cause the bad things in my life, just like always.
2. When Good Things Happen. When good things happen, it's never because I did the right thing. I got lucky. I've had a lot of great opportunities in my life. It was easy. Even when other people come to me and say, "you worked so hard! You did great!" my answer is usually, "we all worked hard together!" or "I couldn't have done it without your help!" I say this sort of thing even when I know it's not true - I've told people whose dubious "help" I could much better have done without that I couldn't have done it without them! And it's not just a social nicety. I find I'm largely incapable of accepting the credit for my own achievements. Good things are accidents, that have little to do with my own expenditure of energy and time.

A book I read in January (Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman) talks about this issue, identifying this sort of attitude as pessimism, and suggesting that it can be combated by, essentially, positive thinking. An inner monologue that, instead of identify things as being due to unchangeable personal deficiencies, identifies things as being do to temporary external agency - and therefore changeable and surrmountable with renewed effort. There's something to that, I think, and I recommend the book - a friend loaned it to me, and it was very interesting and eye opening. However, there's more to it than that, I think.

Flash back to Summer, 2001. I can hardly believe it's been 10 and a half years since then. The summer after my freshman year of college, I came home at a difficult time. I had a blast that first year, but it had fallen apart near the end, and I came home leaving behind a new boyfriend about whom I felt very strongly and a group of friends who were already starting to ostracize me because of how I'd gone about getting that new boyfriend (pretty much stealing him from a friend, though of course things are never that simple!). I was ashamed and miserable, on the one hand, and very lonely, missing the significant other, missing my friends, on the other. I had a job for the first time, and three months before I'd be back at school. I sunk in to a very deep depression. From the depths of that, about half-way through the summer, I was walking to work on a sunny day when a thought suddenly crossed my mind. "It's all what you make it," was my realization. What does that mean? It means that if I sat there going, "ah, me, I'm so miserable, life is horrible, I'm so unhappy, I won't even get to see Jason for another two weeks, alas!" constantly, then of course I would be unhappy, and I'd continue to be unhappy. But suppose I tried a different tactic? "Hey, life isn't so bad, it's a gorgeous sunny day, I'm listening to great music, and I'll be seeing Jason in two weeks!" Suddenly, there was a spring in my step, and a smile on my face. All the problems were the same, but I'd put a new face on them, and it seemed...better. And this strategy has been one of my leading coping mechanisms ever since.

During the last two months, though, I've begun to think I've had it all wrong. Or, perhaps, not all wrong, but that I missed a very critical piece of this. Yes, I'm finally getting to self-acceptance.

In my exercise in positive thinking, recasting the situation for the best, there was always a tacit implication: I shouldn't feel sad, I shouldn't be low, I should be happy, there's something wrong with me for wallowing in the dark side when I could be smiling on the bright side. I'm a worse, weaker person because I can't appreciate all the good things that I have, only focus on the things I want and don't have. This is where I've been the past week - a constant refrain of, "why are you still so upset? what's the matter with you? any normal person would be over this by now!" This will never, ever work. It just creates a double sadness - there's the unhappiness already being felt from whatever cause (for me, it all relates to my break up), and then there's the additional unhappiness of self-recrimination. I'm sad because I've lost something that matters to me, and on top of that I'm a lousy person for feeling sad.

Last night, while I was crying, I finally remembered. This is all wrong. It's all well and nice to look on the bright side, but there's more to it than that. I used to drive that boyfriend from my freshman year of college (we ended up together for five years...) nuts with this - he'd come to me upset about something ("I was sick at work today!") and I'd invariable come back with something cheerful, like, "well, at least you're feeling better now." It's not that it's not okay to say something like that, but it's not the first step. The first step needs to be, "I'm sorry that you weren't feel well! What was the matter?" I've learned how to do that in my interactions with other people, but it's only recently that I've realized that I have to do this in my interactions with myself, too. Not, "stop feeling sad, there's so much to be happy about," but...

"I accept that I feel sad about this. Why do I feel sad about this?"

Once you've got the acceptance, once you've made yourself feel comfortable and safe, opened up a dialog where it's safe to say whatever it is that has made you unhappy, no matter how unreasonable those things may seem, then you're off to a good start. I would never look at someone I care about and tell them, "what's the matter with you, why are you so upset over something so nonsensical?" So why should I ever say that to myself? Why should any of us say it to ourselves?

I'm horrified that I forgot this critical lesson, but I'm glad I remember it now. Today, I feel very tired, and still quite sad, but I'm confronting that sadness with, "it's okay, you can feel sad," and for the first day in almost a week, I'm not going round and round thinking about what's upsetting me, and I don't feel like I'm one hard push from crying. I just wish I'd remembered it sooner - but enough of the self-recrimination, already! I accept that for whatever reason, I couldn't get my head to a place where this came back to me before.

So if something is troubling you, and you keep trying to box it up, push it away, denigrate yourself for feeling it, or what not, why not give it a try. "I accept that I feel sad." "I accept that I don't feel sad even though I think I should." "I accept that I'm angry." "I accept that today, I'm just too tired to face this." "I accept my own limitations." "I accept that I've earned my own achievements." Whatever it is...legitimize your own feelings, give yourself some of the credit you deserve - treat yourself the same way you would treat someone else.