What does self-acceptance mean to you? A personal journey
In this blog post, I’m going to share my personal journey of self-acceptance and provide some helpful tips that might help you along yours!
Before…
Before I knew about my neurodivergence, I had an intangible sense I was always different. I couldn’t ever explain it, I just ‘knew’. I wasn’t diagnosed as a child, I put this mostly down to the apparently high academic potential I had, my gender and the lack of general awareness of neurodivergence at the time. I was the geeky, excitable, loud, bubbly, chatty ‘tomboy’ that usually exhausted the parents of the kids I was friends with. To make a complex story relatively short, I grew up with many narratives that made me feel like I was the problem, or that I was purposefully being problematic. Memories filled with phrases like:
“just be yourself…but not like that”
“you’re being too loud”
“you’re talking too much”
“can’t you just figure this out on your own, you’re intelligent enough”
“stop being so bossy”
“not everyone likes a know-it-all”
“stop being so impatient”
“that’s not very ladylike”
“Stop daydreaming”
“Can’t you just focus”
“Just sit still for once in your life”
Before anyone thinks I’m looking for sympathy, I’d like to clarify that I’m using these examples to frame some of the reasons that led to the self-abandonment I needed to navigate on my journey of self-acceptance.
You see, when you’re told things like this on a regular basis, you eventually infer that people don’t mean what they say with words like “just be yourself” when their reactions suggest the exact opposite. This led to a state of somewhat perpetual confusion, that no matter how hard I tried it would never be enough, and therefore I wasn’t enough.
Prior to an unplanned opportunity that I happened to ‘fall’ into around 2019, which would eventually go on to become the start of a hard journey towards an authentic version of myself, I had virtually no knowledge of neurodiversity and, naturally as a result, of myself.
Life before I knew myself was messy, difficult and felt almost impossible most of the time. Externally, I was a master masker before I even knew what masking was. I grew up in a home of undiagnosed neurodivergency, where boundaries and healthy communication styles weren’t really things that existed. As I went through academic years, I learnt to compensate for difficulties that I would later understand to be aspects of my wonderful uniqueness, but not before I’d internalised them as proof of my failings to be a ‘good’ human. On paper, I was mostly proficient. Over the years of desperately searching for the defining ‘difference’ I couldn’t describe, I got myself into a whole host of problematic situations. Disordered eating, toxic relationships (including with myself), permanent cycles of burnout and dysregulation, addictions, anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts and other eventually harmful attempts to self-soothe.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I feel it’s important to illuminate the harsh realities that thousands of people go through when they don’t have access to their true identities and appropriate support.
Because my story is sadly far from unique.
We still live in a world where shame will drive us to shirk away from situations that feel uncomfortable, yet in doing so we perpetuate some of the barriers against true connection and inclusion.
If you look online you’ll find a lot of stuff out there on the clinical features of conditions, but in my experience these are often reductive, medical summaries of things far more complex than is possible to fit into tiny tick boxes. The outcome of which rarely leaves people feeling truly seen, heard & validated. Without this, acceptance is but a distant mirage.
My entire world as I knew it shattered on a random Sunday when I was going through some clinical assessments with my consultant psychiatrist boss at the time and I made a passing comment about how interesting I found it to relate so much to the patients that were positively diagnosed with ADHD. To which he said, ‘that’s because you’re ADHD too’. And without me realizing it, my life would go on to be different forever.
Now I am not going to sugar coat how horrifically difficult it has been at times since then to redefine, undo and relearn everything. This journey has been a different kind of messy to the previous mess I used to know. Healing is not some kind of rainbow fuelled trek that we may be led to believe. However, I do honestly believe it’s saved my life and helped me find that missing piece I’ve spent a lifetime searching for.
So I’m going to summarise 5 key things I’ve learnt to be crucial from both my own personal journey, and those of hundreds of people I’ve supported since. Remember, this is not exhaustive, it’s the beginning of a challenging and fulfilling journey.
Learn to befriend yourself. Healthy relationships with the world around you start from within. It’s scary and unfamiliar if you’ve never done it before, but if you aren’t practising this, self-acceptance is virtually impossible.
Get curious. We have the most impressive and exciting capacity to learn, so reflect on what possible barriers might be getting in the way of you developing a growth mindset, find the solutions to overcome them and approach everything as a learning opportunity, with curiosity and compassion.
Reframe your perspectives. If you enter something with a specific perspective, it’s likely to influence the outcome. So, if the perspective doesn’t create space for the outcomes you are looking for- start with reframing. For example, I spent way too many years believing I am a failure. Unsurprisingly, the outcomes of my endeavours would then end up in me finding proof that I am indeed, a failure. It took a lot of patient work to reframe this and I can now say things like ‘I have failed in this way, so I know that doesn’t work for me, thats okay because I AM NOT the failure, I will try again and find the way that works’.
Find your spaces & people. I’m a firm believer in having a balance between self & co-regulation. Operating in extremities, even though ND’s can be particularly good at this, isn’t always sustainable. Let’s normalise being social creatures and work towards a balance of internal & external validation as a means to contribute towards self-acceptance. Making spaces where you can unmask to be your authentic self around people who will get that and validate you, will go a long way on your journey towards self-acceptance.
Learn to leverage your strengths. As an overfunctioning perfectionist, I used to think I needed to do everything myself perfectly all the time. If you haven’t already figured out this is a fast track to burn out city, take note! Everyone has a beautifully unique set of strengths, go identify yours, accept and embrace them and find ways to lean into these. Building a life around your strengths can be a really helpful step towards acceptance, rather than focusing on what you can’t do, it’s a really affirming step towards leveraging what you CAN do.
Language matters. Whether it’s the language we’re using towards others, about others, towards ourselves internally, it really matters. It’s also something that constantly evolves, continuously develops. You aren’t always going to get it ‘right’, and that’s not necessarily the point. Using inclusive, patient, kind & compassionate language towards yourself and others is absolutely essential on your journey towards self-acceptance. What works for one will not always work for another, and this is valid to accept for every single aspect of inclusive practice. Our brains are as unique as a fingerprint, so avoid making assumptions that you know language preferences/triggers. Use your curiosity skills to create safe spaces where you can work out what feels best for you, and others can share what works best for them. For example, words like ‘just’ and ‘simply’ are very triggering for me because they make me feel stupid if I can’t do the thing. It might be simple for you, but it may not be for me. Think about how you are using your language, use it intentionally and be considerate about the impact it may have on yourself others.
If any of this resonates with you and you’d like to explore more, get in touch for a free discovery call today!