ACCEPTANCE: How radical is it to love yourself?
How society’s idea - an idea I adopted (!) - of self-worth has become really screwed up?
When I wrote The 7 A's of Healing: When Does The Body Say 'No'?, I knew it felt incomplete because there was so much to say,
I accepted that.
I published it.
I welcomed revisiting it when it felt right.
It felt right to talk about Acceptance in this present moment:
How radical is it to love yourself?
How radical is it to accept yourself?
This year marks the first year when I radically accepted my body at a beach full of beautiful souls and bodies, brand-new bathing suits and completely ‘aesthetic’ visual representations.
Or so I thought.
I mean I did accept my body, more on that a little further down this line of words, but I started feeling anger because I kept referring to it as “radical self-acceptance”.
What the hell is radical self-acceptance?
I won’t lie, it sounded cool to me to be practising radical self-acceptance.
What it basically means is that I accepted myself - the parts I like, the parts I don’t like, and even the parts I am still figuring out.
What that means is that I said “yes, this is me!” without trying to cover up or fix anything (apart from my vision, I wear contact lenses every single second I am awake.)
Apart from my terrible vision, I owned every part of myself - every single roll my not-flawless belly has.
Why the hell is this radical?
Why do we have to slap the word “radical” in front of self-acceptance like it is some kind of a badass, one-of-a-kind, rebellious act?
On one hand, it is exactly because it is a rebellious act! Being on social media means that I am, and I expect you are in the same boat, bombarded with messages telling us we are not good enough or, okay, subtly hinting at it. You and I both have to be thinner, richer, smarter, with fewer stretchmarks and more hydrated.
It feels radical to flip off society’s expectations and say “screw you!” to all those voices telling you that you need to be someone else to be worthy.
On the other hand, as my anger was boiling, I questioned myself:
Why does accepting my body, my flaws, and my quirks, have to be some kind of revolutionary statement?
Doesn’t that reflect how society’s idea - an idea I adopted (!) - of self-worth has become really screwed up?
So there I was, an angry, flawed body, standing on a beach full of what seemed like an Instagram feed come to life - perfect bodies, bright smiles, swimmers here and there.
And yes, I accepted myself.
It wasn’t just about my body, although it started there, fair.
It was about reclaiming my right to exist without constantly appologizing for it.
It was about throwing all judgements in the bin - both the ones others throw at me and the ones I throw at myself.
Radical self-acceptance isn’t a one-and-done deal, though, it is a daily choice to decide to love myself a little bit more every single day, to tell those inner critics to take a hike and to stand firm in the belief that I am enough as I am.
MORE THAN ENOUGH. Radical enough now?
Making self-acceptance the new normal.
Today, I stop treating self-acceptance as a radical concept.
Today, I make it the new normal for myself.
Today I share this with you - Make self-acceptance the new normal!
HOW IT BEGAN: The 4 steps to loving my Body.
I tuned in.
I got out of my head and into my body because, let’s face it, I know that my head can be a chatterbox.
I did a quick scan from head to toe. I noticed the tension. I noticed all the off feelings.
I reminded myself that my body is not just an ornament, a decoration of sorts. It is my vehicle through life.
I took a deep breath, right there on the beach, and gave these parts attention, not judgement.
I tried to fix nothing, I tried to observe everything.
I observed the negative remarks I was making to my Body.
Then it came to dealing with the chatterbox.
The best part is that half of the stuff this chatterbox had to say about my body was total nonsense, so that was easy to deal with.
The worst part is that, as any self-healer knows, I had to ask:
“Where the hell did you get that from?”
As the pile of “where it actually came from” increased, I felt so much more confident in saying “so I do love my body, although X notion doesn’t!”.
The more confident I was getting, the easier it got to flip the negative remarks.
I challenged each negative remark.
I have to say that I needed to be away from distractions for this because once I opened this box, it just kept spilling.
I flipped every single thought.
The “I hate the way my belly looks when I sit” became “My stomach is part of me, and I am going to treat it with respect because I remember a time when we were heavily disconnected and I was in so much pain.”
Granted, it might feel cheesy, but that is because I was not used to it.
I didn’t know where this would lead me, but I am sure as hell proud of following the intuitive inner guide that brought me to the inner peace I am yielding and writing about now.
I talked to myself as I would to a friend, really.
If my best friend would tell me all these narratives I was telling myself, I would do my darndest to show her how beautiful she is.
I would say “It is all in your head”, and that is how I knew it was all in my personal chatterbox.
If you take nothing but one thing from this newsletter, let that be it:
In any moment of you being a butthole to yourself, hit pause and ask yourself:
If my friends said this about themselves, what would I say?
Then say it to yourself.
I reconnected to my Body’s purpose.
Dear friend,
Your body is not just for looking at in the mirror.
Your body gets you out of bed to another day, gets you to work, lets you hug the people you care about, and gets you through life.
Your body can be the best compass, the best intuitive guru, the best friend you will ever have,
if you listen to it.
Your mind is beautiful but sometimes it is a tired partner who has seen too much, been through too much and has too much to say.
Show your mind the better way through your body.
Dearest friend, focus on what your body does instead of what your body looks like.
Beyond the Body: The Art of Letting Go.
Self-acceptance is not just a pep talk in the mirror.
Self-acceptance is transforming how you engage with your entire being - mind, body and soul.
It is all interconnected, truly - what you think, feel and believe doesn’t just float around in your head.
It has real, tangible effects on your body and your life.
You have to abandon every single judgement that exists in your mind.
Letting go of the External Judgement means letting go of “WHAT WILL OTHERS THINK OF THIS?”
Note: ‘OTHERS’ can be anyone - family, friends, colleagues, the people from school who follow you on social media, anyone who follows you for that matter.
‘THIS’ can be your personal choices of anything and everything under the sun: your career, your looks, your interests, your gender and how you express it, your gender and what that means for your life choices, your words and self-assertation, your actions against the normalised (if you have been following my work so far, I truly hope that I managed to show you that the normalised does not need to be normal).
Why do you need to let go?
Constantly worrying about what others think isn’t just a mental hang-up, it drains our entire system and, it is NOT an exaggeration to say that it could ruin our lives.
It is stress that can manifest in your body (back to square one!) as anxiety, tension and physical internal discomfort, sometimes illness.
It is stress that you endure and if I can ask, what for?
And as I am writing this, I have to say, “I will do this for X person, just this once!” is never just this once.
The biggest pill to swallow is that your choices are not isolated actions, but expressions of yourself.
When you let go of the need for that damn external validation, you start making choices that align with your authentic self.
This is when real healing begins.
This is when you feel it.
Letting go of the Internal Judgement means letting go of REACTING TO THE PAST NOT THE PRESENT.
Personally, I would pick a fight with the external judgement any day than deal with my internal judgements.
The nasty voices in our heads take what feels like forever to master and have tons of layers: we have hurt children inside of us, we have normalised, accidentally, toxic traits, behaviours and narratives that we project onto ourselves and others, we have been conditioned, we have written self-defeating beliefs, we have attachment styles, we have inner saboteurs, and it finally feels unauthentic, uncomfortable and unsafe (or we finally acknowledge it).
The truth is that the little voices in our heads come from the root of our deepest issues.
Another truth is that they are the old programs running in the background, shaped by past experiences and trauma.
No better fix than to stop reacting to your past and live in the present, am I right?
Every time I am frustrated, I ask myself:
“Am I reacting to the present situation or to what happened in the past?”
It feels horribly hard to focus my efforts on not exploding but thinking about my reaction.
Sometimes it still doesn’t work, but making this a question that I keep in my back pocket helps me consciously determine where the past and the present lay today.
It helps recognise that the hurt Kid Katrin still drives the bus sometimes.
It helps to recognise that the triggers I thought I healed from will always keep a little spot for themselves, but they won’t be running the show.
It helps to recognise that to truly heal, you need to bring the good, the bad and the ugly to light, acknowledge them and then gently let them go.
Let go of what no longer serves you.
Let in the parts that need love.
And then one day, we will be able to walk on a beach - literal or not - completely unapologetic about who we are.
Unapologetically thriving,
Katrin