In her wonderful, eponymous book, Tara Brach develops the concept of “radical acceptance.” She discusses the internal critic as ubiquitous. Beyond accepting ourselves though, those who have had their sense of self disrupted more seriously need to develop staunch and consistent self-championing.
Valuing ourselves is not just a nice idea. It is crucial, in order to turn away from those deeply grooved pathways of self-doubt, second-guessing, anticipating disaster, and despair. We cannot wait for circumstances to pop self-confidence over our heads like a new sweater. We must train our minds to see ourselves as valuable and precious.
Joy is not an externally induced event, which actually is a great relief. Our joy is not dependent on events or other people. Even if it feels as though we’re breaking taboos and the wrath of all the gods will pour down on our heads for doing so, we can choose to invest in a true, positive sense of ourselves.
Turning our focus toward our good qualities connects us with our true self. Really. When we do so, we can see that self-negation is not accurate at all. It’s been loaded heavily with the weight given to negative thoughts. When we see that those self-doubting voices are merely an attempt to keep us out of trouble by keeping us from taking risks, we can calm them down and begin to let our old self-image slip off our shoulders…
It’s a miracle of being human that the more conscious awareness we bring to any system or function, the more development occurs in that area, because awareness sparks energy, and more energy can build more structure. To help that old-view-of-us atrophy, we need to champion our healthy view of ourselves staunchly, even fiercely. Especially when we’re in the middle of some stressful event, it takes committed effort to combat old fault-finding thoughts.
Insist on seeing yourself as good and valuable by rehearsing affirming messages, even if they seem artificial at first. After a while, your self-perception will start to shift.