Unconditional self-acceptance

Unconditional self-acceptance is the act of treating oneself with approval and worthiness, regardless of what’s happening. It does not mean approving of or wanting suffering. It means that while you are suffering, you still deserve respect and have worth and you treat yourself as though that’s true. One way to think about self-acceptance is in terms of time: your past, current, and future self.

Accepting your past self means acceptance of who you were and how that influences who you’ve become. It means compassion towards your mental illness and its consequences. The consequences of mental illness are very real and very painful. As you start to understand your mental illness — its symptoms and your response to those symptoms — you may feel sadness and grief.

You may feel sadness about how much you’ve suffered, how you’ve avoided, what you missed out on. You might have completely missed milestones, like some opportunities related to dating, family life, friendship, education or work. You might have experienced the circumstances that you hoped for but suffered through them.

You may feel anger. Many people experience anger about having a mental illness. You may wonder why it happened to them and feel angry about the extra work it takes to live with mental illness. Many people also feel angry about the people or circumstances that contributed to their mental illness.

You may feel embarrassed or ashamed. Perhaps you’ve said or done things in your past that you now regret. Without the awareness of your illness or the treatment you needed, you may have acted very differently than how you value. You may feel stigmatized and ashamed that you have mental illness altogether.

Sadness, anger, embarrassment, and shame may be rooted in the past, but you feel them in the present. In the present, you have the symptoms of the illness: the fatigue and loss of interest, the anxiety, the unwanted intrusive thoughts, the guilt, worthlessness, and hopelessness. You also have your reactions to your illness over time, which may include all of those same thoughts and feelings.

Accepting your current self means allowing your emotions in the present moment. This means allowing thoughts, sensations, and behavioral urges as private experiences, but not messages, signals, or threats. In the present, you also have your feelings about your illness and about yourself as a person with an illness. You may have sadness, anger, embarrassment, and shame towards yourself or about other people and the world. To heal, you also have to accept those feelings.

Accepting your future self means tolerating and hopefully even embracing the uncertainty of the future version of yourself. Mood and anxiety disorders are chronic, episodic illnesses. Once you have had one episode, it’s likely that you will have another episode under stress. Coping with mental illness requires that you build enough awareness to predict your stressors and relate to them effectively, while treating yourself with acceptance and compassion for suffering the way you are in the first place.