A Female View of Self-Acceptance

Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT and knowledge, and by learning the lesson that are acculated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life! by Allan Rufus

From the second we are born, our brain and its nerves, build up a relationship with our body. This relationship is constantly oscillating between rejection, love, and acceptance. Every time we see ourselves, be it in the mirror in the mornings or in pictures, we see something different than the day before. For example, if we had a romantic night with a guy with whom we are smitten, we might see an alluring body. After a sleepless night the same mirror is barbarous – bags, sudden wrinkles and redness that indicate a bad skin appear, and predict the start to accomplish the mission to overcome this already bad day. Our relationship with our own reflection of the body is tormented with insecurities. Just one critical look can make us feel like an unattractive piece of blob, while a guy can easily put a smile on our face and generate a much worthier world. We seem to be attached to the importance of our appearance. But the fact always remains that we can never see ourselves as a whole. Our own vision is inescapably splintered. This is also the reason why we expose ourselves to barbarous inspections in which every body part is analyzed and examined to its very last detail. There is not and never will be a body that can simply be. Constant inspections on how we judge our bodies by external standards complicate our relationship with our body and combine it with fragmented dissatisfaction. Disguised as preoccupation, health and moral enterprise, everybody has rhetoric about managing to make the right decisions for their body. This reveals that the body as it is, is not suitable and indeed inappropriate and again leads to the focus aspiration, energy and acceptance. Our intolerance of what we perceive as imperfection is partially caused by setting the bar to high and therefore the risk of not accepting the way we are is even greater.

However this is just one side of multiple facets. For many people self-acceptance is a daily obstacle too overcome in good and bad days. It is like a tenuous glass that is about to crack in hundreds of splinters.

Many people fall into the category of self-criticism. It is a thick layer of bitterness, which is often mistaken for self-protection. In all of the cases the person concerned does not acknowledge their behavior dropping increasingly. They see themselves as “realistic” but in fact, pessimistic thoughts, as well as continuous lack of happiness and self-assurance appear. You are constantly busy proving yourself, getting approval from parents, teachers, friends, colleagues or strangers before you come up with your own approval.  Even then, there are hundreds of little faults that seem to be sticking out and disturbing the self-image. Basically people like that are overachievers, while they think of themselves as underachievers. They are disillusioned beyond belief, but never beyond hope. People with a missing or a stunted sense of self-acceptance usually are victims of childhood trauma. In this case, not necessarily physical abuse. At a certain point in their life, the feeling got conveyed that who they were was not capable or worthy enough for existence in this world, nor of receiving the love that they desperately needed and for which they longed. Most of the time this is the love of their mother or primary caregiver. Their rivals often damage teenagers during their developmental adolescent period when they perceive rejection. At that moment when the victim believes that who they are inside is futile, they devote a “false” persona with which to display to those who would deny them that they are worthy of love and admiration. The problem is that no matter what amount of love or praise the individual obtains for this projected self, it is inadequate due to their “true” self, which remains hidden and unloved. ​