Accept Yourself
Your search for acceptance is going to be fruitless unless it begins with yourself. When you demand acceptance from others, you contract out your own self compassion work. How much of our demands for acceptance and tolerance from sources outside of our skin flow from our inability to accept and integrate the difficult bits of ourselves?
Individuals in a state of nervous system dysregulation cannot access learning, teaching, or safe connection. That's neurobiological reality. Connect with yourself first of all. Do you know your own intentions? What needs do your behaviours seek to meet— safe connection or safety seeking? Consider that, when you make demands, the other person’s flight or fight response to your demands may look to you like fragility and gaslighting.
Self introspection is so important and a practise to which the western culture in which we live doesn't easily lend itself—we are constantly being fed bullsh1t that erodes self trust. It's disempowering and meant to keep us in an unsafe state—that raw boundless vulnerability feeds the elite and the opportunists.
Start with yourself and only yourself. You are the only one from whom you must receive acceptance. No one else matters. Go to the source. Everything flows from that source.
