Self-acceptance: Hypnosis for acceptance and transformation

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’s important to accept both yourself and your partner unconditionally[2]. That acceptance can relieve a lot of tension and serve as a good starting point for accepting that things simply turned out the way they did. Or that you simply don’t possess certain personality 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 in more than just relationships. For example, when you receive feedback at work, the extent to which you accept yourself can determine how much—or how little—you take that feedback to heart.

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.

It was found that anxious people with low levels of self-acceptance were much less satisfied with positive feedback than with negative feedback. It was as if they found compliments difficult to accept.

Satisfaction for neutral or negative feedback was about the same.

People with depressive symptoms reported being very satisfied with neutral and negative feedback, but less so with positive feedback. Meanwhile, people with higher levels of self-acceptance and depression clearly valued negative feedback 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’ve experienced trauma , self-compassion can help you come to terms with it. The greater the trauma, the more self-compassion can help you cope[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. A study of 167 students shows that students who practiced more mindfulness were more likely to have higher self-confidence and a greater degree of 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 very first moment a certain feeling arose. For her, that was the feeling “I’m not allowed to enjoy myself.” That first moment was an incident involving her mother.

Next, you want to highlight the humanity of that moment. Because sometimes it may have been very small things in your life that led to limiting beliefs , and that can sometimes be hard to accept.

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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