Accepting yourself as you are is essential to your healing, and it’s something that only you can do for you.

No practitioner can accept you for you. I can guide and teach you to access and cultivate self-compassion and self-acceptance through the lens of what you're dealing with, but I can’t give those things to you.

‍

Here’s the really irritating thing, though: until you come to self-acceptance, you will always be limited in your healing. We have to come to the understanding that we have done the best we could do given what life has served us. Our body and mind have adapted in the best ways possible in order to cope with the challenges we've faced.

I find people underestimate the power of self-acceptance as a baseline or a bedrock to support all of their healing work. People often tell me, "I don't know how it is that I've come to this point. Can you believe X or Y?" They’ll then list all the problems that they have.

‍

I've been there. I know what it feels like to be at the bottom of the hole. It's crappy, and it’s easy to wallow. It can be very difficult to trust that however you are coping is the best you can manage. When your best feels really bad, it’s hard to find self-compassion. It is in these moments, though, that self-compassion is needed the most.

‍