#not starving yourself into oblivion and punishing yourself for being human

[thecoolertails]

a 14yo pro-ana blog just followed me dear god someone needs to help this kid

[yan-purgatory]

NCT yandere profiles part 2

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Lucas

Possessive – 95

Violent – 80

Egotistic, superior, conceited…however you choose to describe Lucas it wouldn’t matter, because he knows it. He’s proud of it. So what if you felt that way? He doesn’t care. Why should he be bothered by something so insignificant as your feelings? He know’s how important he is. Lucas has girls lined up ready to sleep with him every. God damn. Night. It’s only his right to do so too. He will have you tied up and gagged in the closet while he fucks a girl into oblivion right in front of your face. He would never personally admit it but he did feel a sense of attachment to you for some unknown reason, that’s why he’s got you on a very tight leash, collared up. However Lucas see’s this attachment as a weakness, so it’s only in his nature to show you that he is the very best, that he could have anyone he wanted, but he has chosen you so you should be eternally grateful that you managed to bewitch him(wether you feel lucky or not). Due to his arrogant nature he cannot tolerate the idea of not being good enough, he will never relinquish his hold on you, so you won’t have the opportunity to prove him wrong.

Xiaojun

Possessive –  85

Violent – 1000

Xiaojun is one man you had better not anger, or better yet, never cross path with. This man will find faults in everything you do, from your looks to your personality, anything could be the cause of your punishment. His anger could never be contained by you no matter what you do, no amount of years spent by his side or the rare sweet moments, could quell his anger and need for violence. A vase smashes into a million pieces just inches away from you, looking up and crying from the shock, you were currently curled up in the corner looking for protection. “YOU BITCH! I’VE TREATED YOU SO WELL AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?” He screams at you. With wide eyes, you steal a glance at him, as you feel his fingers curling around your neck, tightening it’s hold…

Renjun

Possessive – 100

Violent – 85

Jealousy redefined. This boy was easily worked up even about the smallest things. He HATED anything that would take your attention away from him. Even just for a second. Renjun once had to fight the urge to leave you starving because you looked away to focus on eating. He wasn’t stupid, he knew he was pushing it with the extremities, the problem is he couldn’t give a fucking damn about it. Why should he? You couldn’t do anything to stop him anyway. He would never let you go out, use a cellphone and sometimes you weren’t even allowed to read a book. The worst that has ever happened is when you lost focused whilst he was talking, you didn’t answer his question and he immediately got jealous. You were thinking of someone else weren’t you? That incident earned you a week chained to the bed, you weren’t able to do anything at all, even feed yourself. He made sure the only contact with anyone or anything would be him. If you were ever able to escape him, if that’s even possible, anyone you would’ve come into contact with would immediately die by his hands, he wouldn’t want anyone else to even remember his angel but him.

Yuta

violent -1000

Possessive - 10000

He is not only a sadist but he is also full of himself. Yuta sees himself above everyone. He is a god and anyone who is not willing to admit it, should die. Yuta thinks he is above human weaknesses including love. So, when he met you he couldn’t understand what was going on. Why he couldn’t stop thinking about you? Why did he need to see you so badly? Yuta wouldn’t hesitate to kidnap you. In his mind it was all about fucking. He was sure that after fucking you a few times he would forget even your name. Alas, his obsession with you only worsened. That’s when he decided he couldn’t let others to know about his weakness meaning you. Since that day you are locked up in his house. Yuta expects you to worship him as a god he is. If you manage to satisfy him, then you are a lucky. If not…. Yuta is a violent man and you better not to get on his bad side.

Mark

Violent – 90

Possessive - 90

Obsessive. That’s the only right word to describe him. Mark is obsessed with you to the point where he can handcuff himself to you only to spend every possible second with you. Everything about you is a mystery to him which should be solved. Mark can seat on your bed for hours while you are sleep and watch you. It’s one of his favorite things to do. He is not delusional. No! He knows you are imperfect but at the same time he can’t let you go. That’s why he has to fix you. By fixing you Mark means to mold you into his perfect little kitten. If he needs to hurt you in the process… Well, it’s worth it, isn’t it?

Hendery

Violent – 99

Possessive - 2000000

Jealous man. So fucking jealous that it’s definitely unhealthy. Anything you do can make him jealous. If you move away from his during your sleep then it’s because you are dreaming about someone else. “Don’t make me angry, sweetheart. We don’t want to spoil your pretty face. I own only the best things, don’t I?” In his attempts to make you his Hendery can go as far as completely isolating you. There will be no windows in your room and no tv or computer. Your days will be the same. All of this to see you happy when he visits you. “How are you doing, love? Oh, you really glad to see me, don’t you?”

Jeno

Violent – 10000

Possessive - 95

He is such a romantic. In his own way though. You may not agree with him when he brings you the head of your friend but the only reason why Jeno has done it is because he loves you. He sees himself as a hero who saves you from scums and he will be very offended if you don’t appreciate his efforts to help you. “What do you mean I shouldn’t have done it? Did you want them to use you as a toy? You are such a slut… Gosh I thought you were different!” He will make you to love him. The world has spoiled you but Jeno can fix it and he will use whatever he has to use to make you his.

by admins   ✂

[damnbutcher]

⚔ ✞ The Mortal Instruments (book series) ✞ ⚔

90 sentence starters from books one through six of The Mortal Instruments. send one for my muses reaction! Feel free to change anything that needs changing in order for it to make sense to have come from your muse.

❝ It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person, but it's a monster. ❞ ❝ I may be a killer, but I know what I am. Can you say the same? ❞ ❝ Unfortunately we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing. ❞ ❝ The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me. ❞ ❝ If you were half as funny as you thought you were, you'd be twice as funny as you are. ❞ ❝ The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love. ❞ ❝ I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain. ❞ ❝ Is this when you start tearing strips off your T-shirt to bind up my wound? ❞ ❝ If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked. It would have been a lot less painful. ❞ ❝ Next time you're planning to injure yourself to get my attention, just remember that a little sweet talk works wonders. ❞ ❝ You could try not being charming all the time. It might be a relief for everyone. ❞ ❝ If you insist on disavowing that which is ugly about what you do, you will never learn from your mistakes. ❞ ❝ You know, most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction. ❞ ❝ You tore my heart out years ago when you betrayed and deserted me. ❞ ❝ You're skilled enough, but you could not kill me. You have always been softhearted. ❞ ❝ I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt. ❞ ❝ You think charm is the same as honesty? I used to think so. I was wrong. ❞ ❝ I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own. ❞ ❝ Don't bother feeding me some story about how you just happened to wander along after he spontaneously died. I know you did this. ❞ ❝ Look on the bright side, if they need a human sacrifice, you can always offer me. ❞ ❝ Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. ❞ ❝ I wish I could hate you. I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. ❞ ❝ I admire your stubbornness. It's so much like mine. ❞ ❝ You never got a chance to tell me the truth. I don't trust you, I want you to know that, but I thought I'd give you the chance to tell me. ❞ ❝ We are meant for a higher purpose, you and I. The distractions of the world are just that, distractions. If we allow ourselves to be turned aside from our course by them, we are duly punished. ❞ ❝ I've heard the word 'fear’, I simply choose to believe it doesn't apply to me. ❞ ❝ I'd say it's been nice meeting you, but, in fact, it hasn't. It's been quite awkward, and frankly, the next time I see you will be far too soon. ❞ ❝ I thought I'd lie on the floor and writhe in pain for a while. It relaxes me. ❞ ❝ I hope you know what I mean when I say I'm sorry you're here, but I'm glad you're with me. ❞ ❝ You disappear so completely into your head sometimes. I wish I could follow you. ❞ ❝ But isn't that what love is? Ownership? 'I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine,' as the Song of Songs goes. ❞ ❝ Never believe the bad guy is dead until you see a body. That just leads to unhappiness and surprise ambushes. ❞ ❝ Every time you almost die, I almost die myself. ❞ ❝ You’re not going. If I have to tie you up and sit on you until this insane whim of yours passes, you are not going. ❞ ❝ You were just upset about being left behind, like a child, and you had a tantrum. And now we’re here. Lost. ❞ ❝ Go ahead and do whatever you want, regardless of who it hurts. You always do anyway, don’t you? ❞ ❝ You could at least pretend you were glad to see me. Even a little bit. ❞ ❝ I have a fetish for damsels in distress. My services are also available to gentlemen in distress. It’s an equal opportunity fetish. ❞ ❝ I know how you think you feel about me. You don’t, though. You just like me because I’m safe. There’s no risk. ❞ And then you never have to try to have a real relationship, because you can use me as an excuse. ❞ ❝ I felt like you were someone I’d always been waiting for. I saw you feel it too. Don’t tell me you didn’t. ❞ ❝ You think you only want me because you’re evil, not human. You just want something else you can hate yourself for. I won’t let you use me to prove to yourself how worthless you are. ❞ ❝ I’m tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I’m tired of watching you be in love with someone else—someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do. ❞ ❝ Anyway, I just saved you from being burned to death, so I figure you’re not allowed to be mad. ❞ ❝ I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then. ❞ ❝ I always figure it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission in these sorts of situations. ❞ ❝ I want them to writhe and die on the ground. They deserve shame before they get oblivion. ❞ ❝ So now what? You’re going to kill me while I’m tied up? Does the thought of fighting me scare you that much? ❝ You keep passing out on me. It’s extremely tedious. ❞ ❝ But I thought of you—I saw you there, clearly, as if you were standing in front of me, watching me, and I knew I wanted to live, wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything, if only so that I could see your face one more time. ❞ ❝ I am a man, and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone, woman, and bring me something brown. ❞ ❝ Oh, good. You’re starting to talk about yourself in the third person. That’s not a sign of impending megalomania or anything. ❞ ❝ Seems an odd time to start an insult contest, but if you insist, I could probably think up something good. ❞ ❝ It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense. ❞ ❝ You left me. You made a pet out of me, and then you left me. If love were food, I would have starved on the bones you gave me. ❞ ❝ You would do anything to save him, whatever it cost you, whatever you might owe to Hell or Heaven, would you not? ❞ ❝ Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time. ❞ ❝ You villains and your creepy eugenics programs are starting to bore me. ❞ ❝ Killing them is the most merciful thing you can do. ❞ ❝ I am a woman. I will use any weapon and all weapons to get what I want. ❞ ❝ I don’t know why I had to fall in love with someone who’s more stubborn than I am. ❞ ❝ God knows we’re all drawn toward what’s beautiful and broken. ❞ ❝ Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort. ❞ ❝ Let me break it down for you. I’m young. I’m pretty. And I’m willing to burn the whole world to the ground to get what I want. ❞ ❝ You have ruthlessness in your bones and ice in your heart. Don’t tell me any differently. ❞ ❝ Viewing my naked chest has caused many women to seriously injure themselves stampeding to get to me. ❞ ❝ I was going to kill someone today. I just wasn’t sure who when I woke up this morning. I do love mornings, so full of possibilities. ❞ ❝ Goodness is not kindness, and there is nothing crueler than virtue. ❞ ❝ Weapons, when they break and are mended, can be stronger at the mended places. Perhaps hearts are the same. ❞ ❝ We are so much lovelier when we fall. ❞ ❝ You are mine. You have always been mine. When you were born, you were mine, though you did not know me. There are bonds that nothing can erase. ❞ ❝ Mercy is a condition of your agreement. ❞ ❝ The things you’ve done are too terrible to ever be forgiven, and you don’t even know they’re terrible. I will never forgive you. I will never love you. ❞ ❝ You lie when you tell me you’ll never love me. ❞ ❝ I’ve given you your chance to come willingly now. I’ve paid in blood and inconvenience to have you with me by your own choice. But I will take you unwilling, just the same. ❞ ❝ I only have two reactions to bad news - uncontrollable rage and then a sharp left turn into boiling self-hatred. ❞ ❝ This better be really juicy. And weird. Were bicycles involved in some kinky way? Vacuum cleaners? Umbrellas? ❞ ❝ The wishes of our hearts are weapons that can be used against us. ❞ ❝ I think they’ll probably put that on my gravestone. ‘He Was Heterosexual and Had Low Expectations.’ ❞ ❝ It was a little homoerotic, maybe, but I’m secure in my sexuality. ❞ ❝ You must love me. I never thought you’d admit anyone was prettier than you. ❞ ❝ I loved you recklessly from the moment I knew you. I never cared about the consequences. ❞ ❝ There are things we want, down under what we know, under even what we feel. There are things our souls want, and mine wants you. ❞ ❝ I can read your face like a very open, very pornographic book. I wish I couldn’t. ❞ ❝ It doesn’t matter if I hurt you because you belong to me. I can do what I want with you. ❞ ❝ I don’t want other people touching you or owning you or hurting you. I want you to be around, to admire me and to see what I’ve done, what I’ve accomplished. ❞ ❝ You have a dark heart in you, and it is a darkness we share. ❞ ❝ When I am all there is in your world, when I am all that is left, you will love me back. ❞ ❝ Hate me. Rejoice when I die. The last thing I would want now would be to bring you more grief. ❞ ❝ Ghosts are memories, and we carry them because those we love do not leave the world. ❞ ❝ We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. ❞

[joshuabradleyn]

The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image

The Importance of Self-Acceptance.

“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ― Lori Deschene

In order to unconditionally love your body, you’ll need to acknowledge and accept your whole inner self. Literally all of it, including the parts that you currently consider completely fucking unacceptable.

It’s a tall order, I know.

Accepting isn’t the same as loving, though. Accepting just means you acknowledge the reality and existence of everything about who you are with open arms and compassion, and without resistance.

It’s worth noting here that accepting something about yourself isn’t the same thing as giving up on self-improvement, or resigning to never changing it. Again, it’s just acknowledging that this part of yourself exists, and more importantly, that this part of yourself doesn’t make you any less worthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Most people fall into the trap of thinking that the only appropriate way to meet a perceived “flaw” is with rejection, resentment, resistance, and judgement. The hope is that by not accepting the truth of who they are, they will “motivate” themselves to change. Sadly, the exact opposite tends to be true.

Changing something about yourself is actually extremely difficult when you reject and condemn it. Likewise, it’s pretty damn easy when you’ve truly accepted it, and recognize that it’s existence doesn’t make you any less worthy of connection.

Let’s use weight loss as an example.

Let’s say you hate the weight you’re at right now, you consider it completely unacceptable, and you’re fully convinced it makes you less worthy of love, respect, care, and belonging. Despising what you see in the mirror every day, you join a gym in a burst of hate-fueled motivation. Desperate to lose the weight quickly, you show up every day, pushing your body past its limits, and cutting way back on calories. After about two weeks your body is exhausted, you’re starving all the time and have massive cravings, and when you step on the scale you haven’t lost as much as you feel like you “should” have, given how miserable you are.

So what happens? You dive face-first into a late night binge at Taco Bell, and wake up the next morning feeling so utterly defeated and worthless that you never go back to the gym again. “Why bother?” you think, furious with yourself for being too weak to succeed yet again.

Now let’s look at what happens if you accept your weight. You might think “this is the weight I am at right now, and it’s perfectly acceptable and understandable, and it doesn’t make me any less worthy of love, respect, acceptance, kindness, and belonging.” Along with that thought, you might notice that your moods, energy, and mental clarity have been a bit low, and that you get winded easily. Noticing this, and also accepting your current weight, you think “I am worthy of having better care, more energy, and a more active life.” You join a gym but decide to take it slow. You showing up twice a week to the gym for months, staying within a conservative level of effort until you’ve built a solid exercise habit, on top of making a few very subtle changes to your diet, like focusing on getting more vegetables and cutting out soda.

What happens? Over time you see results: better sleep, more positive moods, more energy, increased strength and endurance. Motivated by these results, you continue showing up and feeling good. Over the long term the composition of your body naturally changes, perhaps losing some fat and gaining some muscle. You enjoy these changes to your shape or size, but you also recognize that in and of themselves, they don’t make you any better, happier, or more worthy of love, acceptance, or belonging.

Do you see how much easier it is to make positive changes from a place of acceptance, rather than rejection? It may seem counter-intuitive, but resisting, resenting, shaming, and judging yourself for who you are in this moment is never going to lead to positive change.

So let’s talk about self-acceptance.

Our society teaches us generally what it means to be a good/normal person, and we are often shamed or punished for the ways in which we diverge from that definition.

While the specifics of what it means to be “good/normal” is different across cultures, races, religions, and genders, from an early age, we are constantly comparing what we notice inside of ourselves to the cultural definition of “good/normal.” When we find things inside ourselves that go against the messages we’ve received about what is “good/normal,” we tend to categorize it as “bad” and “unacceptable.” To avoid punishment or shame, we try to hide those things, banish them from our psyches, bury them deep down, or even deny their very existence in the hopes that they will eventually go away.

They don’t, of course.

The key to the parts of ourselves that we reject and deny is that we unconsciously (or consciously) believe they pose a threat– most often that threat is to connection itself. It feels like if anyone ever found out about that part of us, they would hate us, abandon us, reject us, or punish us.

Let’s take the example of a man, who is brought up with the message that a good/normal man is masculine, stoic, self-sacrificing, and silent. This man might find within himself bits of sensitivity, weakness, fear, emotions, and insecurity, and decide that in order to keep his status and connections safe, he must push all of those bits of himself down into oblivion, and deny their existence forever. Those parts of himself might become so loathsome to him, so dangerous and disgusting, that he finds himself resenting anyone else, male or female, who displays these traits, and find himself drawn to hyper-masculinity in the form of violence, porn, and an obsessive need to look big, strong, and powerful.

A woman on the other hand might get the message that in order to be “good” she must be small, delicate, passive, feminine, and selfless. Afraid of all the non-small, non-passive parts of her that she discovers inside, she becomes terrified that her very existence poses a threat to connection and belonging. She takes all of her aggression and “selfishness” (aka her strong sense of self and boundaries) and stuff them down out of reach, along with her needs, desires, intuition, anger, sexuality, and voice. She skates down the middle, careful to be enough of something, but never too much. Confident, but not too confident. Funny, but not too funny. Successful, but not too successful.

It’s not only cultural messages which teach us to reject parts of ourselves, either.

Many of us have specific memories of being shamed for something about our personalities, behavior, or bodies which we tagged forever as “unacceptable.” ��Maybe your sister always called you dumb, or your dad used to comment on your unladylike manners or your mom worried about your weight. Whatever it was, these moments land in our brains as red flags for disconnection, letting us know that something about who we are is dangerous and we must stay on high alert to fight it off.

Self-acceptance isn’t easy. But it is absolutely a requirement for healing body image and walking around with an unconditional sense of self-worth.

If you still carry shame for any part of who you are– whether it’s about the kind of sex you fantasize about, or how much you want out of life, or how hungry you are for intimacy or attention, or how unkind you can be in your own mind– you will always need an outlet for that self-rejection.

Your body will always be a convenient location for your self-hatred, offering a tidy distraction and protection from the truth of your own hatred.

Think of it like this: all the parts of yourself that you reject get locked away in a corner of the deep dark basement of your psyche and treated like garbage with no food, no light, no human contact for years.

You, (the You who lives on the 5th floor of your psyche, with sun streaming through your windows enjoying the view and getting on with your life) rarely think about the basement. You’re far too busy with work and family and relationships and hobbies and routines and life.

So you carry on, happy-ish, thinking you did the right thing by locking those parts of yourself in the basement.

But two terrible things happen.

The first is that you are desperately lonely, and always feel like something is missing. People who meet you and don’t like you make you feel worse, because you’re paranoid that they suspect, or can tell, about the parts of yourself you have banished to the basement, and you live in fear that they know and already hate you.

People who meet you and like you make you feel guilty, because you know you’re pulling the wool over their eyes, and that they would despise you if they ever knew the truth of who you really are.

You meet people all day, unable to fully connect with any of them, no matter how they treat you, because you are constantly distracted by guarding your secrets, and are never able to be fully authentic anyway, because you have far too much to hide and protect.

The second is that sometimes you are there happily working on the fifth floor and you think everything is fine, when you suddenly hear screaming coming from the basement: blood-curdling, primal raging enemy-screams.

One might call these moments shame spirals, “imposter syndrome,” anxiety/depression, self-loathing, beating yourself up, or bad body image days. They arise when you remember that these severed parts of yourself (fueled with rage and hatred for having been chained up in the dark for so long) exist, which means that you are inherently a monster.

Plus, occasionally, one or more of your basement captives will break loose and take over the whole building with extraordinary violence in vengeance for the war you have waged against them, leading to exquisite levels of self-sabotage and out-of-control bad decision-making.

Self-acceptance is about recognizing that we all have these parts of ourselves, that they’re normal and natural, and that (if you don’t wage war on them first) they’re not dangerous.

We all have flaws. We all have the capacity for unkindness, gross habits, and weird shit that we like and want and do and are. These parts of ourselves do not make us lessworthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Self-acceptance is about letting those parts of ourselves out of the basement, raising the white flag of peace, and gently integrating them into our sense of self.

What happens when you do this is that you restore yourself to psychic wholeness, and stop being afraid all the time. When you stop hiding and protecting your secrets, you can connect with people more fully– so the feelings of loneliness and isolation cease, and those moments of “I am worthless garbage” ease up.

Don’t get me wrong. Self-acceptance takes courage, patience, compassion, and tons of self-examination. But it’s worth it, because on the other side of self-acceptance you actually have access to unconditional body love, confidence, wholeness, aliveness, and a deep feeling of unshakeable, unconditional self-worth.

The post The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2UNzf3o

[johnclapperne]

The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image

The Importance of Self-Acceptance.

“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ― Lori Deschene

In order to unconditionally love your body, you’ll need to acknowledge and accept your whole inner self. Literally all of it, including the parts that you currently consider completely fucking unacceptable.

It’s a tall order, I know.

Accepting isn’t the same as loving, though. Accepting just means you acknowledge the reality and existence of everything about who you are with open arms and compassion, and without resistance.

It’s worth noting here that accepting something about yourself isn’t the same thing as giving up on self-improvement, or resigning to never changing it. Again, it’s just acknowledging that this part of yourself exists, and more importantly, that this part of yourself doesn’t make you any less worthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Most people fall into the trap of thinking that the only appropriate way to meet a perceived “flaw” is with rejection, resentment, resistance, and judgement. The hope is that by not accepting the truth of who they are, they will “motivate” themselves to change. Sadly, the exact opposite tends to be true.

Changing something about yourself is actually extremely difficult when you reject and condemn it. Likewise, it’s pretty damn easy when you’ve truly accepted it, and recognize that it’s existence doesn’t make you any less worthy of connection.

Let’s use weight loss as an example.

Let’s say you hate the weight you’re at right now, you consider it completely unacceptable, and you’re fully convinced it makes you less worthy of love, respect, care, and belonging. Despising what you see in the mirror every day, you join a gym in a burst of hate-fueled motivation. Desperate to lose the weight quickly, you show up every day, pushing your body past its limits, and cutting way back on calories. After about two weeks your body is exhausted, you’re starving all the time and have massive cravings, and when you step on the scale you haven’t lost as much as you feel like you “should” have, given how miserable you are.

So what happens? You dive face-first into a late night binge at Taco Bell, and wake up the next morning feeling so utterly defeated and worthless that you never go back to the gym again. “Why bother?” you think, furious with yourself for being too weak to succeed yet again.

Now let’s look at what happens if you accept your weight. You might think “this is the weight I am at right now, and it’s perfectly acceptable and understandable, and it doesn’t make me any less worthy of love, respect, acceptance, kindness, and belonging.” Along with that thought, you might notice that your moods, energy, and mental clarity have been a bit low, and that you get winded easily. Noticing this, and also accepting your current weight, you think “I am worthy of having better care, more energy, and a more active life.” You join a gym but decide to take it slow. You showing up twice a week to the gym for months, staying within a conservative level of effort until you’ve built a solid exercise habit, on top of making a few very subtle changes to your diet, like focusing on getting more vegetables and cutting out soda.

What happens? Over time you see results: better sleep, more positive moods, more energy, increased strength and endurance. Motivated by these results, you continue showing up and feeling good. Over the long term the composition of your body naturally changes, perhaps losing some fat and gaining some muscle. You enjoy these changes to your shape or size, but you also recognize that in and of themselves, they don’t make you any better, happier, or more worthy of love, acceptance, or belonging.

Do you see how much easier it is to make positive changes from a place of acceptance, rather than rejection? It may seem counter-intuitive, but resisting, resenting, shaming, and judging yourself for who you are in this moment is never going to lead to positive change.

So let’s talk about self-acceptance.

Our society teaches us generally what it means to be a good/normal person, and we are often shamed or punished for the ways in which we diverge from that definition.

While the specifics of what it means to be “good/normal” is different across cultures, races, religions, and genders, from an early age, we are constantly comparing what we notice inside of ourselves to the cultural definition of “good/normal.” When we find things inside ourselves that go against the messages we’ve received about what is “good/normal,” we tend to categorize it as “bad” and “unacceptable.” To avoid punishment or shame, we try to hide those things, banish them from our psyches, bury them deep down, or even deny their very existence in the hopes that they will eventually go away.

They don’t, of course.

The key to the parts of ourselves that we reject and deny is that we unconsciously (or consciously) believe they pose a threat– most often that threat is to connection itself. It feels like if anyone ever found out about that part of us, they would hate us, abandon us, reject us, or punish us.

Let’s take the example of a man, who is brought up with the message that a good/normal man is masculine, stoic, self-sacrificing, and silent. This man might find within himself bits of sensitivity, weakness, fear, emotions, and insecurity, and decide that in order to keep his status and connections safe, he must push all of those bits of himself down into oblivion, and deny their existence forever. Those parts of himself might become so loathsome to him, so dangerous and disgusting, that he finds himself resenting anyone else, male or female, who displays these traits, and find himself drawn to hyper-masculinity in the form of violence, porn, and an obsessive need to look big, strong, and powerful.

A woman on the other hand might get the message that in order to be “good” she must be small, delicate, passive, feminine, and selfless. Afraid of all the non-small, non-passive parts of her that she discovers inside, she becomes terrified that her very existence poses a threat to connection and belonging. She takes all of her aggression and “selfishness” (aka her strong sense of self and boundaries) and stuff them down out of reach, along with her needs, desires, intuition, anger, sexuality, and voice. She skates down the middle, careful to be enough of something, but never too much. Confident, but not too confident. Funny, but not too funny. Successful, but not too successful.

It’s not only cultural messages which teach us to reject parts of ourselves, either.

Many of us have specific memories of being shamed for something about our personalities, behavior, or bodies which we tagged forever as “unacceptable.”  Maybe your sister always called you dumb, or your dad used to comment on your unladylike manners or your mom worried about your weight. Whatever it was, these moments land in our brains as red flags for disconnection, letting us know that something about who we are is dangerous and we must stay on high alert to fight it off.

Self-acceptance isn’t easy. But it is absolutely a requirement for healing body image and walking around with an unconditional sense of self-worth.

If you still carry shame for any part of who you are– whether it’s about the kind of sex you fantasize about, or how much you want out of life, or how hungry you are for intimacy or attention, or how unkind you can be in your own mind– you will always need an outlet for that self-rejection.

Your body will always be a convenient location for your self-hatred, offering a tidy distraction and protection from the truth of your own hatred.

Think of it like this: all the parts of yourself that you reject get locked away in a corner of the deep dark basement of your psyche and treated like garbage with no food, no light, no human contact for years.

You, (the You who lives on the 5th floor of your psyche, with sun streaming through your windows enjoying the view and getting on with your life) rarely think about the basement. You’re far too busy with work and family and relationships and hobbies and routines and life.

So you carry on, happy-ish, thinking you did the right thing by locking those parts of yourself in the basement.

But two terrible things happen.

The first is that you are desperately lonely, and always feel like something is missing. People who meet you and don’t like you make you feel worse, because you’re paranoid that they suspect, or can tell, about the parts of yourself you have banished to the basement, and you live in fear that they know and already hate you.

People who meet you and like you make you feel guilty, because you know you’re pulling the wool over their eyes, and that they would despise you if they ever knew the truth of who you really are.

You meet people all day, unable to fully connect with any of them, no matter how they treat you, because you are constantly distracted by guarding your secrets, and are never able to be fully authentic anyway, because you have far too much to hide and protect.

The second is that sometimes you are there happily working on the fifth floor and you think everything is fine, when you suddenly hear screaming coming from the basement: blood-curdling, primal raging enemy-screams.

One might call these moments shame spirals, “imposter syndrome,” anxiety/depression, self-loathing, beating yourself up, or bad body image days. They arise when you remember that these severed parts of yourself (fueled with rage and hatred for having been chained up in the dark for so long) exist, which means that you are inherently a monster.

Plus, occasionally, one or more of your basement captives will break loose and take over the whole building with extraordinary violence in vengeance for the war you have waged against them, leading to exquisite levels of self-sabotage and out-of-control bad decision-making.

Self-acceptance is about recognizing that we all have these parts of ourselves, that they’re normal and natural, and that (if you don’t wage war on them first) they’re not dangerous.

We all have flaws. We all have the capacity for unkindness, gross habits, and weird shit that we like and want and do and are. These parts of ourselves do not make us lessworthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Self-acceptance is about letting those parts of ourselves out of the basement, raising the white flag of peace, and gently integrating them into our sense of self.

What happens when you do this is that you restore yourself to psychic wholeness, and stop being afraid all the time. When you stop hiding and protecting your secrets, you can connect with people more fully– so the feelings of loneliness and isolation cease, and those moments of “I am worthless garbage” ease up.

Don’t get me wrong. Self-acceptance takes courage, patience, compassion, and tons of self-examination. But it’s worth it, because on the other side of self-acceptance you actually have access to unconditional body love, confidence, wholeness, aliveness, and a deep feeling of unshakeable, unconditional self-worth.

The post The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

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