Over the years, we acquire a huge number of social and family ties: we have friends, colleagues, children, grandchildren, neighbors. But an old friend can move away, a child can grow up and move to another city, and a beloved boss can disappear from sight forever after a job change. As a result, it turns out that the only person with whom we have every day, from the first to the last minutes, to build relationships and conduct a dialogue, is ourselves.
The idea of accepting yourself, your talents, your strengths and weaknesses, your body is not just a fashion trend in recent years, but a necessary condition for gaining psychological comfort, emotional stability, adequate to your true needs for self-realization. Without recognizing your worth, it is very difficult to create a healthy, mutually respectful alliance with a partner, find a profession that will truly bring satisfaction, defend your interests in case of conflict and clearly delineate personal boundaries if they are violated.
Of course, acceptance is not an easy task, especially these days, when we see pictures of someone else's beautiful and successful life on social networks, but there are several important stages, without which it is completely impossible.
Recognize the right to any emotions, including negative ones
We have heard from childhood that it is bad to be upset, angry, irritated, despairing, jealous, or very anxious. All this supposedly prevents us from being happy. As a result, when we get angry with someone, we feel guilty: a “good” person, in accordance with an unspoken social contract, should not be angry. His task is to show generosity and forgive the offender, and himself remain a knight in shining armor.
Psychologists say that by trying to suppress negative emotions, we harm ourselves rather than benefit: anger is the basic defense mechanism, anxiety helps to notice danger in time, and expressed suffering - to survive grief. All these feelings are completely natural, they are originally embedded in the psyche of every person. If you are upset to tears by the canceled weekend trip out of town, the incorrect jokes of your friends make you angry, and going to the store at night is scary, do not be shy. Embracing our own negative emotions gives us the opportunity to work through trauma and understand ourselves better.
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Determine if you are in a codependent relationship
Initially, the concept of "codependency" was applied to couples in which one partner used alcohol or drugs, and the other tried to save him, leaving his own psychological comfort outside the brackets. Later it turned out that it occurs not only in families, where there is an obvious problem that fits the description of the disease. When a person does not separate himself from his partner, endures loneliness with great difficulty, systematically sacrifices his interests and needs for the sake of another, seeks to control a husband or wife at any cost - supposedly for the good so that he or she does not end up in a dangerous situation - the relationship becomes dysfunctional and destroy the personality of the "savior".
Often this type of interaction occurs between friends and between parents and adult children. We are so immersed in the problems of the one who is nearby, we want to please him or her so much that we gradually completely stop trusting ourselves and realize our independence, “separateness”, the value of ourselves as a person, and not as an application to another person. To date, many tests and questionnaires have been developed that allow you to determine if your relationship is codependent. One of the most accessible is posted on the Mental Health America website.
Make realistic plans
High expectations are the enemy of living in harmony with yourself. Of course, ambition allows us to achieve more, to realize ourselves in the profession, creativity and sports, but it is also important to be able to soberly assess our capabilities - both in the long term and in special cases. If you come to a new place of work and are going to take the boss's chair in a year, the probability that this plan will not work is very high. As well as a plan to prepare for a marathon race in two months or six months to learn Japanese. And not because you are trying "not enough": almost any person will be too tough.
A more correct strategy is to learn how to break the path to a dream into a series of small, specific tasks and set aside adequate deadlines for their implementation. It is reasonable to assume, for example, that learning new skills will take more time, and in every company there is a specific sequence of steps to promotion. This approach will allow you to identify and realize your strengths and significantly reduce the level of tension and dissatisfaction with yourself.
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Forgive yourself for mistakes and accept the fact that you will make them in the future.
This is not only about significant blunders that affected other people, such as betrayal in a relationship that was positioned as monogamous, or the loss of an important contract for the company. As a rule, we think a lot about such incidents, try to explain them to ourselves, understand how to behave next time in order to avoid negative consequences. Small oversights in this sense are much more dangerous: they are difficult to comprehend, since they happen by chance, through ignorance or negligence.
How many of us do not have a story about how we in an oriental restaurant drank from a bowl of water intended for washing hands, went from the hospital to the negligee? These episodes are remembered for years, causing burning shame and fueling self-doubt. But the truth is that those in front of whom we are trapped often do not attach importance to this. And a person in general is imperfect and will certainly make mistakes from time to time. And the more we strive to conform to the infallible ideal, the more painful it is to receive confirmation over and over again that the ideal does not exist.
Understand if you are trying to fit someone else's image of success
Relatives, colleagues, former classmates, neighbors - they all have opinions on how to look “right”, build relationships and spend money. Coping with pressure is especially difficult now that the Internet has given millions of people the opportunity to display, as in a window, photographs from travels and meetings with business partners, pictures of excellent children and loving spouses. And, of course, your own ideal body. As a result, the illusion arises that everyone should strive to implement a certain socially approved program of success, which, moreover, tends to change almost once a decade.
But happiness that is universal, common to all, simply does not exist. If your friends have been married for a long time, and you are quite comfortable alone, if you are attracted not by a career as a bank employee, but by studying at a culinary college, if everyone around you is obsessed with elastic buttocks, and you like swimming in the pool or not playing sports at all, you have every right to live the way you want, and not the way others see fit.
Accept other people
In the same way that we don't have to live up to someone else's expectations, loved ones and strangers don't have to live up to ours. Parents can be upset when they are not satisfied with the decision we made, even if we expected a different reaction. Friends can see a deep meaning in a movie, even if we consider it a purely commercial project devoid of cultural value. Metro passengers can dress as they please, even if it seems to us that these things categorically do not suit them. A person with a high body mass index may not strive to lose weight, even if we are sure that he or she is ruining their health. It is not at all necessary to agree with opinions that contradict your views, and a correct, without personal discussion is unlikely to destroy a relationship with an opponent. But, recognizing the right of another person to be himself,it is much easier to resolve the same thing for yourself.
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Set aside time only for yourself and your thoughts
Previously, the definition of "workaholic" was more of a compliment, but now we increasingly hear that spending too much time on work risks burnout. But this is not the only problem. Plunging headlong into professional responsibilities, or caring for a family, or maintaining an apartment in perfect order, we leave no room for hopes and worries, the nature of which should be understood so as not to drive ourselves into a state of insoluble conflict with ourselves over time.
In pursuit of the goal of being alone with your thoughts, you do not need to lock yourself in an empty room. It is quite possible to get out of the house, but not for the sake of another "task" that requires concentration and effort. For example, an intense workout in a fitness club or a calligraphy lesson is not the best background for introspection. But a walk at a calm pace or a cup of coffee, drunk alone in a quiet cafe, allows you to focus on yourself and separate the flow of information coming from outside from desires and doubts that really belong to us. After several such “sessions”, it may turn out that the vague anxiety that you have experienced over the past few years is caused by specific events or people, or the dissatisfaction of important needs for you.
True, it is often difficult to cope with this task without prompts and correctly asked questions: the skill of recognizing which of our experiences are fleeting and which indicate serious problems is not embedded in a person from birth. A psychotherapist will be an excellent assistant on this path. It is not at all shameful to turn to him if you feel that you cannot accept yourself as a whole: sometimes the consequences of the tyranny of older relatives, school bullying or an alliance with a partner who constantly humiliated you are so serious that you can deal with them without professional support. almost impossible.>