Acceptance doesn’t come easily to most of us. We’re certainly not raised to think this way. Quite the opposite, Western culture teaches us that if we put our foot down and refuse to accept something, it will magically change. Let’s explore why it’s so difficult to adopt an accepting attitude, especially when it comes to accepting ourselves.

We’re bucking cultural norms. One reason we resist accepting our quiet side is that it doesn’t match the cultural ideal. How many times have you seen a television show or a movie where the main character was reserved, cautious and thoughtful, and where this was seen as positive? We can’t think of a single example. Most often, the media portrays popular characters as outgoing. Shy or quiet characters, when they are seen, often assume the role of a victim. Is it any wonder we have trouble accepting ourselves as OK?

In Elaine Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Person, she describes some extremely important research dealing with this issue of culture. The study, conducted by Xinyin Chen and Kenneth Rubin of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and Yuerong Sun of Shanghai Teachers University, compared children in both cities to determine what traits made children popular. Among the group of 480 students in Shanghai, "shy" and "sensitive" children were the most sought-after as friends. In contrast, among the 296 Canadian children, shy and sensitive children were the least desirable. You can see, then, that whether you’re accepted by others can have little to do with you personally and much to do with the prevailing cultural norms.

Not measuring up to the ideal personality type can have an enormous impact on how you view yourself. For example, I still remember one horrible day in high school when a math teacher called attention to my quietness. He told the whole class that I was the quietest student he’d ever had in his 22 years of teaching. Of course, everyone turned around to look at me, as if I was some kind of freak. I was humiliated and felt deep shame. I truly believed there was something wrong with me. It didn’t even cross my mind that there was something wrong with a teacher who would make such a statement. Unfortunately, an accumulation of such experiences led me to hate myself for being so quiet.

Being in a minority can make accepting yourself difficult. But sometimes simply having an understanding of these cultural factors can make the task of acceptance a bit easier. When I’m having a bad day and wish I was more outgoing, it helps to remind myself of the study comparing children in China and Canada. I tell myself that it’s OK to be sensitive and quiet. If I lived in China, I’d be very popular!

We’re questioning the accuracy of family messages. Accepting ourselves may mean questioning the messages we’ve learned not only from the culture at large but also from our families. Perhaps you picked up on subtle, or not so subtle, signs from your family that they’d prefer you to be more sociable, not so sensitive. In addition, they may have mislabeled your sensitivity, thinking you were behaving like a prima donna rather than a painfully shy child.

I remember an example of when this happened in my family. I was 12 years old when my grandfather died. I was not only sad about my grandfather’s death, I was extremely anxious about attending the funeral as I had never been to one before. I locked myself in the bathroom, yelling through the door that I wasn’t going. My father, himself grief-stricken and clueless about why his daughter was acting this way, yelled back, “I can’t believe you could be so selfish. How can you say that you won’t go to my  father’s funeral?” Of course, I felt horrible about myself. 

What my father didn’t realize, and what I couldn’t articulate even to myself, was that I was threatened by the mere thought of this unfamiliar situation. I didn’t know what to expect at the funeral. I didn’t know what would be expected of me. How was I supposed to act? I hated the idea of having to make conversation with my distant relatives. What was I supposed to say?

I survived the funeral, and my father forgave me for the scene I’d made when I initially refused to attend.  But I know he didn’t understand. How could he? Parents aren’t taught how to recognize and deal with a socially anxious child. Unfortunately, the label “selfish” stuck with me, and it took me a long time to question the validity of what my dad had said.            

Sometimes memories get seared into the brain without the appropriate context surrounding them. In my own journey toward self-acceptance, I’ve had to revisit that incident and examine the circumstances surrounding my father calling me "selfish." I had to decide that he wasn’t right - he had completely confused my anxiety with selfishness.

Consider your own family. Were there times when your anxiety was misread? Did you receive messages about yourself that simply weren’t true? It can be difficult to dissect these experiences and develop your own interpretations. But learning to see ourselves clearly and to accept what we see is important work to do.

We think if we punish ourselves enough, we’ll change. Accepting ourselves unconditionally is also difficult because we must give up the fantasy that if we punish ourselves enough with negative thoughts, we’ll change. It’s as if we think we can whip ourselves into shape by saying things like:

• I’m weak for feeling any anxiety.
• I’m abnormal because I’m quiet.
• There’s something wrong with me if I don’t have lots of friends and an “active” social life.
• I’m a loser.
• I’m defective.
• I’m weird.
• I’m boring.

We cling to the belief that by berating ourselves, we’ll transform into “social butterflies.”  But as you’ve probably learned from experience, this strategy doesn’t work well. In fact, the more we yell at ourselves to “buck up,” “snap out of it,” or “get tough,” the more anxious we become. The frightened little child inside of us doesn’t respond favorably to such a mean dictator. Instead, we need to find ways to accept the anxious part of our selves, to hold that part by the hand and gently say, “You’re OK.”

We don’t believe we deserve self-acceptance. The messages we receive from our culture, our family, and ourselves become deeply ingrained, in part due to sheer repetition. It’s not that we hear “you’re too quiet” once or twice; we hear it over and over again from many different sources. Because these negative messages bombard us, and because we never stop to question whether they’re true, we internalize the feeling that we are, indeed, defective. We don’t believe we’re deserving of acceptance, at least not now. Similar to a woman who puts her life on hold until she loses 30 pounds, we put conditions on self-acceptance. We say to ourselves:

• Maybe I’ll feel OK about myself if I can go through with that presentation next month.
• Maybe I’ll feel OK about myself if I get up my nerve to ask that woman in my Tai Chi class out for a date.
• Maybe I’ll feel OK about myself if I get a decent job.
• What types of conditions do you place on yourself? Do you accept yourself as you are today? Or do you feel you must change before you can accept yourself?

Remember, acceptance doesn’t mean you’re giving up and not trying anymore. In contrast, it means you’re looking at yourself and your situation realistically. Most people with social anxiety disorder take too negative a view of themselves. Of course, there are aspects of your life you want to work on.  But as we’ve said before, it’s much easier to work toward change if you’re not wasting energy criticizing yourself for perceived flaws.

We believe we’re giving up control. The final barrier to self-acceptance, and perhaps the most difficult to overcome, is the belief that we’re exerting some sort of meaningful control when we fight against something. Again, this is a Western way of thinking: we must fight to conquer. In contrast, Eastern philosophy emphasizes “going with the flow,” moving with, not against, the resistance.  This shift in thinking can be frightening because it seems we’re giving up control, and it can feel like a terrible loss. In reality, however, we’re not losing; we’re gaining tremendous strength. Instead of giving away our power by letting other people determine our worth, we’re saying to ourselves, “I accept myself today, exactly the way I am.” By relinquishing control, we gain it.

Next: Learning & Practicing the Gentle Art of Acceptance

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