This is who I am

My relationships with my mother, father and sister have been a calamity for me. I love each of them, but having ongoing relationships with them has been difficult, as they have made/make me feel that no matter what I do, it will never be enough.

My psychologist asked me, after my last session to google and read about self-acceptance. In our sessions, she's also talked about self-compassion, two concepts that I struggle to understand.

One of my favourite quotes, has been "what matters most is how you see yourself", but somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the meaning of this saying and lost confidence in myself.

The saying is commonly seen with a cute kitten staring into a mirror, with a majestic lion staring back out. I stopped favouring the quote because my relationships (or lack thereof) with my mother, father and sister, my weight and certainly my experience with a past employer have made me feel inadequate: I know what I look like, but I don't know what my reflection is. The fact is, it's not even an empty mirror, it's a big black hole of nothingness.

What I'm learning through my work with my psychologist is that I've been conditioned to believe that I don't matter.

When we are children, our cues are taken from our parents, and this conditioning has an impact on how we are as adults: "we are only able to accept ourselves to the degree that we feel accepted by our parents".

My dad was absent, bitter with my mother (they separated while I was still a baby) and just didn't know how to be a good dad. My mum was/is hard to describe – concerned with appearances, a party girl with a revolving door of boyfriends/sometimes husbands; and my sister had mental health issues from a young age, causing disruption and angst on fairly a regular basis.

I had brief glimpses of stability and "normal", when my aunt and uncle took me for holidays when we lived in Victoria (until I was about 10); but my childhood anchors really were my mother's third (and fourth) husband, Syd and boarding school, which I attended between the ages of 12 and 17.

I do know that I've been resilient. I've achieved things that people with similar backgrounds haven't. I look at my sister and her issues and think that "there but for the grace of God go I". I've been hard on myself and worked hard to achieve what I have.

I value change and self-improvement – we can always do and be better, right? I'm pretty good at "beating myself up", "taking responsibility for my mistakes" and for "thinking I could have done this" to be better. If something happens in my life, my first response is always to think, I put myself in this situation…..

My answer to that has always to been to try harder, to give more of myself away and to make sacrifices against what I hold most precious – my family. In seeking approval from others, I've reinforced the feeling of inadequacy and of being little value. I've also been complacent – not defending myself, because of low self-worth.

What I'm coming to understand is that self-improvement is ego driven, and makes self-acceptance very conditional. For me, the two concepts conflict with each other.

In reading an article on self-acceptance (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/200809/the-path-unconditional-self-acceptance) a paragraph jumped out at me:

Only when we can better understand and pardon ourselves for things that earlier we assumed must be all our fault can we secure the relationship to self that till now has eluded us.

The article suggests that we should ask ourselves what it is we don't accept of ourselves, and as agents of our own healing, bring compassion and understanding to each aspect of self-rejection or self-denial.

It's hard to pinpoint what it is that I don't like about myself and why I see myself as not worthy. I do know what I like about myself:

• I'm resilient, and I'm good at bouncing back

• I've created a beautiful family with my husband and given my kids something that I never had, stability

• I've built a rock solid network of friends, who I know like me for me

• I have a strong work ethic and do my best for the people that I work for and with

• I value kindness, family, learning, effort and goals

• I love making a positive difference in people's lives > at work and in the community

• My intentions are always good – I'm not malicious, I don't wish for karma

I am not nearly as articulate when it comes to explaining why I am unworthy and inadequate, other than the fact that it is how I believe that others may perceive me (stupid right?!).

This brings me to another paragraph that jumped out at me from the same article:

To take ourselves off the hook and gradually evolve to a state of unconditional self-acceptance, it's crucial that we adopt an attitude of "self-pardon" for our transgressions (whether actual or perceived). In the end, we may even come to realise that there's nothing to forgive. For regardless of what we may have concluded earlier, we were, in a sense, always innocent--doing the best we could, given (1) what was innate (or hard-wired) in us, (2) how compelling our needs (and feelings) were at the time, and (3) what, back then, we believed about ourselves.

In researching the issue of self-acceptance, I went looking for quotes. There are plenty out there. But the two that resonated with me the most? The first said by Oprah:

I was once afraid of people saying ‘Who does she think she is?' Now I have the courage to stand and say ‘This is who I am.

And sung by Vanessa Amorosi:

Well it's alright to be myself

now I've learnt to stand

well it's ok to be just who I am

I spent years really hating me

longing to be friends, now I hope that you can understand

This is who I am

Learning to value myself and see myself differently is going to be a huge challenge, especially because I've tied so much of my self-acceptance to how others perceive me. I believe that it's going to start with an intention of "backing myself" but also of building a reflection for that mirror.

My reflection starts with a recent image of myself, not so much the image, but why I like it: I look happy. I was on my own, but content. I felt good about myself, my choices and my life.

This is who I am, and I am enough.

#ThisiswhoIam #selfacceptance #selfworth #resilience #selfcompassion #forgiveness