Self-acceptance can be an important solution to many problems in life. For example, when someone is struggling with relationships, whether romantically or in general, self-acceptance can be an important step in protecting yourself from rejection.
It is often something you use to close a chapter in your life, to move forward full of fresh courage, with a clear foundation.
For example, if you don't like yourself at all for a while, because you have lost friendships, your relationship or job, for example. Then self-acceptance can neutralize your feelings of low self-esteem. It then immediately improves your self-confidence[1], such as the confidence that everything will be all right again.
Self-acceptance is about accepting yourself, even if others do not accept you or even if you actually think you are not performing well. It is actually very similar to accepting others unconditionally. Then you also accept someone as they are and without worrying about how "good" they are at something.
Self-acceptance in relationships
In a romantic relationship, it is important to accept yourself as well as the other person, unconditionally[2]. That acceptance can relieve a lot of tension and be a good point for yourself to accept that something just happened the way it did. Or that you just don't have certain character traits.
For example, if you are a slob, self-acceptance can help you make the choice to invest in a cleaner after all. Instead of arguing endlessly about who never cleans up the mess or who doesn't clean or something.
Self-acceptance for anxiety, depression and stress
But self-acceptance plays a role not only in relationships. Even when you receive feedback at work, for example, the degree to which you accept yourself can determine the extent to which you care about the feedback or not.
In a study where students pretended to give a presentation, they were then given feedback. That feedback could be positive, neutral or negative.
The study found that students who had high levels of self-acceptance cared much less about feedback, both positive and negative, than those with low levels of self-acceptance.
Then there was testing on how it correlated with anxiety and depression.
Anxious people with low levels of self-acceptance found that they were much less satisfied with positive feedback than with negative feedback. As if they found compliments difficult to accept.
Satisfaction for neutral or negative feedback was about the same.
For people with depressive symptoms , they were very satisfied with neutral and negative feedback, but less so with positive feedback. While people with higher levels of self-acceptance and depression valued negative feedback significantly less.
So self-acceptance also provides protection from negative feedback, even if you have depressive symptoms.
People with depressive symptoms and high self-acceptance were also more satisfied with positive and neutral feedback, than negative feedback[3].
According to the researchers, this shows that total self-acceptance has a protective function for people who suffer from depression or anxiety during a stressful situation. In doing so, people with low levels of self-acceptance also suffered more anxiety and depression. Thus, this was deeper than in people with these symptoms who did accept themselves.
In doing so, even positive feedback creates anxiety if you have a low level of self-acceptance.
Therefore, the researchers also indicate that the event itself does not cause more or less anxiety, but the view a person has of the event.
Let that be exactly what you can influence with hypnotherapy.
Self-acceptance in trauma
Even if you have suffered from trauma , self-compassion can help you come to terms with this trauma. The greater the trauma, the more influence self-compassion has to help you[4].
Self-compassion also involves more than just being kind to yourself. It also requires mindfulness and an understanding of what is human.
To be kind to yourself is to be understanding and patient with yourself, especially during difficult times.
Humanity is also about how you are connected to other people, even if you have experienced something nasty. You are not alone and you can talk to other people about it.
Mindfulness allows you to view stressful or painful situations with greater distance, making you identify less with them. Also because with mindfulness, you view situations without forming judgments about them, including yourself[5].
This is also something you can practice with a hypnotherapist.
Self-acceptance to improve your self-esteem
Improving your self-confidence and self-esteem is something in which mindfulness and self-acceptance also play a major role. Research on 167 students shows that students who had more mindfulness were more likely to have higher self-confidence and self-acceptance.
So it all hangs together somewhere.
Hypnosis for greater self-acceptance
Hypnosis helps people make changes in their "view" of things. Thoughts and feelings about certain topics and situations can be changed with a combination of hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy. Among other things, this can be used for greater self-acceptance[6].
Self-acceptance can even be an important component in hypnotherapy to deal with other problems.
In the case of self-acceptance, this also often has to do with how you think something is "supposed" to be. For example, I once had a client who did not "allow" herself to enjoy good food, for example. Because of this, she found much food "gross" and usually took a ham and cheese sandwich.
Not helpful, but during hypnotherapy we found out that she didn't actually like things dirty, but didn't allow herself to.
Accepting this as a fact, a little self-acceptance, gave her the right starting point to change the way she dealt with food.
The mindfulness component, namely becoming aware of something, was important to her for self-acceptance. You create that mindfulness as a hypnotherapist by making people aware of certain influences in their lives.
With the regression technique , for example, you go back to the first moment when a particular feeling arose. So in her case, that was the feeling "I am not allowed to enjoy myself." This first moment was an incident with her mother.
Next, you want to show the humanity of that moment. Because sometimes it may have been very small things in your life that have created limiting beliefs , and that can sometimes be hard to swallow.
So what do you do? In that case, you can help someone by revisiting the situation with today's knowledge. After all, such a situation is usually a moment from childhood and then you just don't have all the insights you do now.
By empathizing with how you were then, and perhaps even your mother, you can also recognize the humanity of the moment, and that also helps you accept yourself.
Then, as a therapist, you can work to make the change needed.
Self-hypnosis for self-acceptance
In addition, people can be given homework to help them become aware of moments when they have difficulty accepting themselves. Moments of self-criticism, for example.
For example, self-hypnosis can be used to reduce anxiety and retain suggestions[7], such as post hypnotic suggestions.
For example, you can suggest:
"You're going to find yourself becoming more and more accepting and kind to yourself. If you find yourself in a situation you don't like, you can accept it and respond to signals from your environment. You can accept that you feel the way you feel without wanting to change it immediately. You can maintain composure by staying calm and relaxing."
This is just one example. Depending on a person's problems, you can also offer a different post-hypnotic suggestion.
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Sources:
[1] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjpsy1926/67/4/67_4_327/_article/-char/ja/
Ueda, T. (1996). [Self-acceptance as adaptively resigning the self to low self-evaluation]. Shinrigaku kenkyu : The Japanese journal of psychology, 67 4, 327-32 . https://doi.org/10.4992/jjpsy.67.327.
[2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-6806-6_12 Broder, M. (2013). Self-Acceptance and Successful Relationships. , 215-227. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6806-6_12.
[3] https://suvremena.nakladaslap.com/en/articles/abstract/?id=2016-19-1-6 Popov, S., Radanovic, J., & Biró, M. (2016). Unconditional self-acceptance and mental health in ego-provoking experimental context. Suvremena Psihologija, 19, 71-79. https://doi.org/10.21465/2016-SP-191-06.
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212144714000763?via%3Dihub Yadavaia, J. E., Hayes, S. C., & Vilardaga, R. (2014). Using acceptance and commitment therapy to increase self-compassion: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3(4), 248-257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2014.09.002
[5] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10942-007-0059-0 Thompson, B., & Waltz, J. (2008). Mindfulness, Self-Esteem, and Unconditional Self-Acceptance. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 26, 119-126. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10942-007-0059-0.
[6] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10942-010-0121-1 Milburn, M. (2011). Cognitive-Behavior Therapy and Change: Unconditional Self Acceptance and Hypnosis in CBT. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 29, 177-191. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10942-010-0121-1.
[7] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/ern.09.140 Gov, P., & Source, H. (2010). Hypnosis in the treatment of anxiety- and stress-related disorders. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 10, 263 - 273. https://doi.org/10.1586/ern.09.140.
