Quotes About Self-acceptance

It isn't a matter of getting the body you want, it's a matter of doing the most you can with the body you have.

In school, the other girls formed alliances which always excluded me. They called me names; I will not repeat them here. They made fun of my unshapely body, my pale skin, my untamed hair. I do not know why I was born this way.

I could not heal my being with my doing. To be who I am is all that matters.

Unfortunately, accomplishments do not reduce internalized shame. In fact, the more one achieves, the more one has to achieve. Toxic shame is about being; no amount of doing will ever change it.

Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self.

The Bible suggests that the origin of human bondage (original sin) is the desire to be other than who we are .

Self-acceptance overcomes the self-rupture of toxic shame. Self-acceptance is the way to gain our personal power. When we accept ourselves, we are unified; all our energy is centered and flows outward.

We heal our toxic shame when we grasp that our "adult child" issues are about what happened to us, and not about who we really are!

Script messages tell us the way we are or what role we are supposed to play in life. They shame who we authentically are and create self-rupture.

What I couldn't grasp is that there is no way to change your being by your doing. The shame-based core cries out, "You're flawed and defective! There's something wrong with you!" All the doing in the world won't change that.

True love is unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard allows us to be whole and accept all the parts of ourselves. To be whole we must reunite all the shamed and split-off aspects of ourselves.

When we are loved unconditionally, i.e., accepted just as we are, we can then accept ourselves just as we are. Self-acceptance overcomes the self-rupture of toxic shame. Self-acceptance is the way to gain our personal power. When we accept ourselves, we are unified; all our energy is centered and flows outward.

Remember that toxic shame is the root of all addiction. Twelve Step groups literally were born out of the courage of two people risking coming out of hiding. One alcoholic person (Bill W.) turned to another alcoholic person (Dr. Bob) and they told each other how bad they really felt about themselves.

Shame is the master emotion because it binds all the other emotions. Freely expressing our feelings is like thawing out. As shame binds all our feelings, we become psychologically numb.

Most gays carry an excessive amount of shame, as there is particularly strong and widespread shaming of boys who don't display the traditional masculine traits and behaviors. If you are a gay man or woman, your wounded inner preschooler needs to hear that it is perfectly okay to be who you are.

Laing spent his life exposing the destructive identity confusion that results when we become acceptable to others only by denying our own truth. He called this identity confusion mystification.

If we are essentially a mistake, flawed and defective, then there's nothing we can do about it.

Our healthy shame is nourishing in that it moves us to seek new information and learn new things. Inferiority can be experienced as a healthy limit to our abilities.

Refusing to accept our "real selves," we try to create more powerful false selves, or we give up and become less than human. This results in a lifetime of cover-up and secrecy. This secrecy and hiding is the basic cause of human suffering.

If you're willing to love and accept yourself unconditionally, you will allow yourself time to just be. You will set aside times when there's nothing you have to do and nowhere you have to go. You will allow yourself solitude, a nourishing time of aloneness. You will take time for hygiene and exercise. You will take time for fun and entertainment. You will take vacations. You will take time to work at your sex life.

Toxic shame is soul murder. Because of it we become other-ated human doings, without an inner life and without inner peace. Shame-based people long for true inner serenity and peace. The spiritual life is an inner life. It cannot be attained on the outside. The spiritual life is its own reward and seeks nothing beyond itself. Once we achieve inner peace and conscious contact, we want to overflow.

Work Through Your Insecurities:

I remember looking at myself in the mirror one morning and thinking, I am not a handsome guy. What am I going to do with a face like this? Then I smiled. And I thought, That helps.

Psychologist and New York Times best-selling author Phil McGraw states, "I always say that the most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself. You've got to be your own best friend first." How can you be "best friends" with someone you don't know or don't like? You can't. That's why it's so important to find out who you are and work to become someone you like and respect.