Integrate self-rejection, gain self-acceptance

Dec 21, 2023

I used to think that self-acceptance was an action. That there was an “accept myself” mental motion I could execute.

I had tried to “accept myself” many times, but it never seemed to do anything.

Nowadays, I think “self-acceptance” is a misnomer and mostly doesn’t exist. Instead, I think self-acceptance is really about integrating all rejection.

For example, I knew that I was somewhat emotionally numb, and in theory I wanted to “feel all of my feelings”. The common advice for this kind of thing is “just try to pay more attention to your feelings” and “just accept them!”

But these suggestions miss something crucial: if we’re not feeling our feelings for years, isn’t there probably a payoff to rejecting them? And, besides, I had already tried the “just accept them” thing and it never worked.

Here’s a sketch of the process I used instead:

1. I chose what I wanted: I wanted to be aware of all of my feelings in my body.

2. I found unconscious access to what I wanted: In this case, I looked for how what I wanted feels in my body, and fortunately I was able to feel this easily. (There are also other methods I could’ve used if I wasn’t able to do this. I will write about these in the future.)

Here I noticed a certain expansiveness in my chest.

3. I noticed unconscious blocks: I asked the expansive feeling I wanted, “What bad thing happens if we’re aware of our feelings?”

I heard:

"Being aware of my feelings will make us less productive"
"Expressing negative emotions will make others angry!"
"Negative feelings will be harmful!"

Oh!

These were (at least some of) the blocks holding me back from feeling as I wanted.

4. I chose how I wanted to address the blocks: Was there a way I could feel my feelings and get more of the benefits and less of the harms? In this case:

I wanted feeling my feelings to mean increasing my productivity and point me at what’s meaningful.
If my negative emotions were repelling others, I wanted to leave those situations.
I wanted negative feelings to be good not bad.

I also repeated the entire process as needed.

And ever since then, I feel a lot more.

I made a lot of progress on “accepting” my feelings by integrating their unconsciously incentivized rejection.

Thanks to Stag Lynn, Kaj Sotala, Damon Sasi, Epistea Residency, CFAR, Anna Salamon, Alex Zhu, and many others for mentorship and support.

Part 2: