Without self-acceptance, success can be elusive. When you don’t have love and compassion for yourself, everything else gets a whole lot harder. However, there is hope for you, no matter how distant your self-compassion may seem. Embracing who you are is something that can be fostered and learned, if you give yourself the opportunity. 

Your identity can either be a source of shame, or a source for pride. If we go around resenting our own identity, it can be an incredibly painful experience, especially for those who love us. By celebrating your identity, you’re giving yourself permission to love both the person you are and the person you can be. So, if self-acceptance is so life-changing, how can you do it? 

“Be yourself: everyone else is already taken.” -Oscar Wilde

How Do You Embrace Who You Are?

It isn’t always a simple task. Embracing who you are means deprogramming the thought patterns of self-judgment and self-hatred that keep us locked in cycles of self-sabotage and inward neglect. That can be a hefty order, especially if you’ve spent your life rejecting who you are out of self hatred, and it can feel like a challenging task. Make no mistake, it is easier to accept yourself than to hate yourself.

Be Your Authentic Self. It’s all too easy to slip into hiding our identity behind a mask, especially around your family of origin. But this often adds to the shame we feel around our authentic self. Being authentic (even around your family) can be an incredible weight off your shoulders. 

Working Through Denial. Denial is a phase of The Journey that we all must face, but it looms especially large for those of us who struggle with self-acceptance. Denial can help us cope with difficult feelings in the short term, but it’s just kicking the can further down the road. 

Empowering Yourself. If you’re struggling to embrace yourself, empowerment might seem alien to you. After all, most of us aren’t born with inherent knowledge of our own empowerment, and we live in a society that disempowers and isolates us from our authentic self in many ways. That’s why we put together our Empower course! To help women, queer people, and anyone who wishes to empower their highest self. 

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others, you need to accept yourself.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

Why Should You Embrace Yourself?

I’ll cut to the chase, you should embrace yourself because we all deserve to approve of ourselves. Love is a basic human right, and self-love is perhaps the most potent form of love a human being can experience. If you’re waiting for someone’s permission, here it is: you deserve to love and approve of yourself. 

To Ease Your Anxiety. Anxiety often stems from an unmet need, and for many of us, that unmet need is self-love. Whether you struggle with anxieties over your actions in the past, present, or future, self-love can bring peace to your storming thoughts. 

To Break Free Of Your Social Programming. One of the greatest threats to self-love that we face today is toxic masculinity. For queer men especially, toxic masculinity can be a self-fulfilling prophecy of shame, privacy, and self-denial. In choosing to love yourself as you are, you’re taking a step away from the patterns of the past. 

To Do Yourself A Favor. In denying our true self, we ultimately harm ourselves by denying the approval that all of us crave. But in choosing self-love? We can be kind to ourselves in new and exciting ways. 

“Remember, you’ve been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” -Louise Hay

It can be challenging to sift through the build-up of years of not being accepted and embraced for who you are. It could be a traumatic experience, anxiety, or depression that dimmed your light and brought your authentic self into hiding. It might be difficult for your true self to re-emerge. You may need someone there to guide you through the process of getting to know your authentic self and learning to truly embrace who you are and let go of what has been holding you back, and that’s okay! 

We have experts on our team that can help you do this in a variety of ways-through creative art therapy, body-informed therapy and somatic therapy, our counselors can help you re-discover your passion and authenticity.

 If you feel stuck on your healing journey, working with a therapist can help. Based on your needs, our intake specialist will help you get matched up with your perfect therapist. Click here to schedule a consultation.

Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.