15 Apr Radical Self Acceptance: How to Break Your Heart Wide Open

Tana Howell is a participant in one of the extended practice groups that have grown out of my P4 Yearlong Program. During the past month, she and her fellow group members were exploring the theme of Radical Self Acceptance.

The theme of Radical Self Acceptance is so vital because 1) There’s a lot of talk about it that obscures what it really means, and 2) We’re bombarded in personal growth spiritual circles with the idea that we can have everything we ever want as long as we adopt the correct beliefs.

Tana wrote a courageous group post about Radical Self Acceptance that gets to the heart of the matter in a stunningly personal way. I asked her if I could share the post with you, and she agreed. Here it is below. If you would like to contact Tana for any reason after reading it, please reply to this email and I’ll put you in touch.

 Tana’s Post

I have been wondering if Radical Self Acceptance is even possible for me. I have become aware that at some point I created for myself a standard for what is “acceptable” and what is not. It seems mostly to conform to cultural standards, so maybe someone else created it for me.

Being sick- not acceptable, (especially chronically sick, unable to heal myself).

Being fearful, having panic attacks – not acceptable. Unable to work, earn a living – unacceptable.

Aging – not acceptable (good luck with that one!).

Not able to keep my house clean and tidy (because of being sick)- not acceptable.

Having limited and rapidly dwindling resources and no plan for taking care of myself in the future – completely unacceptable.

Depression – not acceptable.

The list goes painfully on.

I have never quite looked at the way I have lived from this perspective before. I knew I was harsh and critical with myself. I never have quite understood until now that I simply have been in extreme resistance to, unaccepting of, the reality of my life. There has been little kindness to myself. My energy has not been focused on compassion. My energy has been pretty much completely focused on changing, fixing, surmounting, overcoming, transforming,etc, what was unacceptable.

What has been happening inside of me, since I became so impossibly ill with such an impossible disease, has been a continuous post traumatic stress. 25 years of it. Triggered first by illness, then by a string of devastating losses that left me quivering, alone, shocked and spent, the pain of my past overwhelming me, terrified, desperate and driven to fix myself and my life. I have relentlessly and pretty much unceasingly enlisted every bit of my will and my mind in an unabated quest to find a cure, find an answer, and somehow to become worthy enough to get well.

Because of course, underneath it all I believed I had done something wrong, and got sick. And I needed simply to right that wrong. And then I would get well. And/or maybe I was being spiritually tested, and I somehow needed to become enlightened and then I would get well. I needed to “raise my frequency” .

Basically this was all a recreation of my childhood, where I was innocent and abused, totally convinced of my guilt and wrongness, always trying to figure out how to fix myself and be good and be loved and not hurt anymore. I persevered then and I have persevered as an adult with trauma and illness to heal.

I have endeavored. I have read hundreds and hundreds of books, listened to 1000’s of hours of talks on tape and Internet, seen countless healers and spiritual teachers, ingested about a zillion herbs, potions, and supplements. Meditated, medicated, affirmed, visualized, fasted, cleansed. Done yoga, chi gong, tai chi, chanting,retreats, classes,workshops. Decades of psycho-therapy.

Surely if I only tried hard enough (not healed? Try harder – harder – HARDER!!) I would emerge triumphant, heroic, healthy, and happy. Heroine of my story. Anything less was” … unacceptable.

Isn’t that what everyone says?? I read it every day. You can accomplish anything you really set your mind to- anything you set an intention for and work your ass off for and devote yourself to.

Well I did all that for over 20 years and I am here to say NOT TRUE. Or at least not necessarily true. I do believe there is something else at work, call it God, or Life, or Destiny. We are guided to what is the truest life for us. We may not like it, but I do believe I had something else to discover about myself and truth and true love and this life, that I couldn’t have learned if I had been healed from my illness.

And hey, I still haven’t learned it – but I am still here, I think I am still up for something new, and I believe I may be finally strong enough to really go to the core of my being, and face what I have been running from, what has been needing me all these years. The part of me that had no one, that had to dissociate to live. We need each other. What I have been terrified of is actually what I am yearning for, the part of me I have kept far far out of my heart. I am finally able to begin to see that what I have been pushing away is what I need to be whole.

Now, in this present, I am virtually unable to read, watch or listen to anything remotely resembling any advice about healing. I burnt myself out on healing advice. I can’t fight or try any more. I am weary and worn out. I see now that Radical Self Acceptance involves courage. Courage to turn and finally face all the pain and past trauma I have been unable to feel before now, even with all the therapy and teachers and books and bodywork. Why has it taken me 25 years to finally be at the edge of really stopping, really facing, really feeling? I guess it takes how long it takes is all I can say. I have done my best. I did what I knew to do.

Perhaps most of all, Radical Self-Acceptance involves Presence. With a capital P. Without Presence, I am simply identified with my pain. I identify with it and believe in it, and the compulsion, the pattern, the mechanism to turn and run from it, is just too great.

With Presence, I can be with it. Not completely yet, but little by little. I am astonished at how strong the impulse is to run is. It’s often irresistible. Often, I do still run. Even though I understand conceptually that feeling the pain won’t kill me, it feels as if it will. I believe in it still. This is about 65 years of a deep deep ingrained pattern.

This work is NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. But I am getting a sense of how to be present with this pain, getting the hang of it. And I understand that it will be a practice. I have to keep coming back to me, again and again and again and again. It’s not going to happen easily and quickly. I am accepting that.

The last thing I see Radical Self Acceptance involves is commitment. Because without deep resolute courageous commitment self acceptance is not going to happen for me. I guess the important thing here is to define Radical Self Acceptance as the ability to really be with whatever is going on with me. Outside and inside. Allow it. With a quality of kindness. To accept, finally, that this is what my life is. Right here, right now. This work.

Not another life where I am healthy and working and earning money and not terrified more than half the time. See and allow that I haven’t been able, after all these years and all this work, either to heal myself or to stop running from my pain. See that without judgment. With compassion. (Hard! almost not possible – keyword ”˜almost’). And” if I do start judging, see and allow that. RADICAL!

I certainly could tell some stories about regret of lost years, and what was/is wrong with me that I couldn’t do all this years ago. What I see now is that I have a choice, I can hear all the harsh, critical, frightened, internal voices and give them their say but I don’t have to believe them. I allow them their life, I allow them to be as they are.

I am good. I always was. I am not a mistake. I am not a problem to be solved. I am fulfilling my potential. My purpose. I AM DOING WHAT I CAME TO DO. You know what? That actually and literally and viscerally feels like the truth! And that brings tears to my eyes.

What would it be like to stop trying to heal? Stop striving to fix myself? Who would I be? I know who I have been – a person trying really hard to heal, because who I am and what my life is, I have deemed unacceptable. It has felt worthy, heroic even, to keep striving. What would happen if somehow I just accepted it all, just as it is? Would I feel lost and afraid? Pain? Probably. (Actually, I feel all those things already.) But maybe there might be something good. Maybe I would feel relief. Maybe I would feel stillness. Maybe I might be able to rest. I’m about ready it seems, to give it a try.

About 2 weeks ago, I realized that after months of fairly severe depression, I had sunk into a hopelessness unlike anything I have felt before. After a while it came to me I might be feeling old hopelessness – the hopelessness I locked away, that I couldn’t have allowed myself to feel as a child.

From all my reading on childhood abuse and survival and from my own intuition, I know I couldn’t have felt the trauma and pain and hopelessness – I would have become insane or died. So I dissociated and stored it. But that can only go on so long. The bill comes due.

Recently, within the last month, I began to eat compulsively for the first time in my life. It is shocking and a bit scary. It is a feeling of being out of control. And actually, it makes sense. Feelings I have held back for so so long are starting to be felt. I feel so hungry, crazy hungry. I can eat and be full and still feel so hungry. Some part of me perhaps needs comfort and nourishment desperately, because she never got it. Maybe I can feel her and not eat, I know I must sit with her and this raging hunger. I feel the compulsion, more clearly than ever, to run from this pain underneath the hunger, to not feel. Food helps with that, but only for a little while. Not a sustainable strategy. The time has come; I can’t run any more. The strategy of suppression is no longer working. The bill is way overdue. They’re shutting off the utilities. Foreclosure looms.

I understand eating disorder now, and it is a miracle really that I never had one before. It is common in abuse survivors. As is drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, cutting, sex addiction, suicide, and more. I am grateful and fortunate. I am somehow by grace, one of the lucky ones. I indeed tried my best to work with my trauma in all my years in therapy. I actually felt a lot, intense bouts of emotional release for years. I just wasn’t able to feel it all. We are all different and unique, and no timetable fits all. I believe now that if I had felt more, I would have gone into some kind of addiction or more probably, simply have given up and taken my life. Now seems to be the time.

I believe that now I am accepting the unacceptable by feeling it. I am practicing Radical Self Acceptance by feeling what I have been unable to feel. I do feel, at this moment, some hope, some optimism that I am on the path, on track. It seems pretty clear this is my life’s work. I am beginning to commit to, deeply and fully, accepting what I previously deemed unacceptable. To being kind and compassionate and patient. I will say it is a challenge.

I will close with part of a poem I love by Galway Kinnell:

“Everything flowers from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing it’s loveliness.”

Perhaps I can learn that, if I am patient and open-hearted. Perhaps it is possible to believe in my innate loveliness.