What the $%A^^? You folks have totally lost me in your conversation.

I do want to talk about self acceptance, though, because I have learned a little about that recently, or I've realized that I am in a different place with it.

My T and I were reviewing yesterday some of the ground we've covered, and how some of that ground is not ground that I necessarily intended to cover. We had a long conversation about how frustrating it was for me when he consistently refused to collude in my bad feelings about myself. I posted about this once not too long ago. And then I stopped asking him to do that, but I still liked to beat myself up and have him witness it, either by giving him my journal or directly talking about it in front of him. Then one day I realized as I was doing it inside my head, distracting me from the wonderful exchange I was having with my T, that I just wanted to stop (beating myself up). I just lost interest in doing it. And since then, my journal writings have lost this as a major theme, and I have written (and feel) more accepting towards those parts of myself that were or are vulnerable, compliant (a big issue for me, as I now think of myself as a brave person who defends others from abusers) or even wounded and hurt. So I guess that part of what I have learned is either direct modeling from my T in that I refuse to collude with myself any more. Or I have internalized his tender and compassionate stance towards those parts of me and made this my own response. Or maybe I just got sick of myself and there eventually was some sort of catharsis of getting it all out of my system and now I don't need to try to beat up on myself anymore. Whatever has happened in terms of greater self acceptance, I'm pretty sure has something to do with my T.

The other thing I notice is that I am no longer disrespectful and avoidant in my response to reading my own journals. This seems like a bit of self acceptance too.

And one more thing I notice-- the more self accepting I am, the less critical I am of others. I suspect this is also a good thing.

Anne