I used to think “self-acceptance” was a skill. Later I realized it’s actually an anti-skill: self-acceptance is always there—but self-rejection covers it up. So self-acceptance can’t be learned. It’s the default. What has been learned is self-rejection.
So, what we usually call “learning self-acceptance” is actually the process of unlearning self-rejection. Each and every instance thereof.
For example, I used to be fairly emotionally numb and dismissive of my own feelings. At the same time, if you had asked me if I wanted to feel more of my feelings, even to feel all of my feelings, I’d definitely have said yes. I just couldn’t get myself to. For situations like these, the common wisdom was to just “pay more attention to your feelings.” So I tried that for the next five months. But the effect was only wasting five months.
When I realized this wasn’t working, I thought, “I’ve been avoiding my feelings for YEARS. What if this isn’t random and accidental… what if it’s strategic? Is my emotional numbness is motivated by incentives?” If true, it’d make sense why brute forcing attention didn’t work: the incentives didn’t get addressed.
So what might the incentives be? Consciously, I had no idea. So I worked with a few practitioners to investigate. After much wrangling—both the practitioners and my own nervous system—I discovered hidden concerns such as:
“Being aware of my feelings will make me less productive.”
“Expressing negative emotions will make others mad at me.”
“Negative emotions are just bad and will cause suffering.” …
Each seemed true and made sense in my context. I respected them. Awareness of feelings…
Distracted me while I was working, making me short-term less productive.
Caused me to express more negative emotions, making people around me at the time more likely to get triggered.
Created suffering because, separately, I was resisting negative emotions pretty hard. …
Increased awareness of my feelings had negative effects. Numbing my feelings was locally optimal.
Fortunately, it wasn’t globally optimal: it would be possible to feel my feelings without negative effects. After integrating the incentives through long work with even more practitioners, the following mindsets appeared:
Perceiving feelings not as distractions, but as pointers to what grabs my attention — and is therefore most meaningful to me.
If I find myself wanting to withhold emotions around others, well then I should either move or get better at defending myself.
Negative emotions can be cool and interesting as sensations.
The subsecond-flinch of rejecting and numbing my feelings stopped (at least in these situations). I feel a lot more now.
So I wasn’t bottlenecked on ‘learning how to feel’, I was bottlenecked on unlearning (noticing, integrating, and untangling the incentives for) not feeling.
Self-rejection dissolved, self-love returned.
