Embracing yourself, wholly

Radical acceptance after abuse

This is a section from my second book which I am currently editing

Radical acceptance does not mean that we accept that the abuse was ok, it means that we accept that this has been part of our life story. It never should have been, and you didn’t deserve it, but you have lived it. In accepting it, we can stop denying ourselves the right to be affected by it.

One of the main motivations for this book is how lonely recovery can be. Just as abuse isolates us, there is a continued sense of loneliness throughout healing. There is a sense of separateness from others who have not survived abuse, and that perpetuates the feeling that the problem is within us. You will continue to encounter people who brush off your experiences – who make excuses and plausible explanations for the abuser’s behaviour other than accepting the one that’s right in front of them; that it was abuse. Radical acceptance is about knowing your history and your current circumstances so that you can become unwavering in your recovery. When people present you with a misconception, rather than being steered by it, you manage the disappointment that arises.

Radically accepting ourselves does not mean that we don’t continue to try and grow, learn to self-soothe and reduce the impact of trauma. It means that we do so to improve our quality of life and relationships, rather than because we believe we need fixing.

You don’t need fixing; you’re not broken.

You do not need to become more than you are or to be a better version of yourself to be accepted. Isn’t that the same message we’ve been told by the abuser?

You do not need to be “healed enough” to accept yourself or be accepted by others.

You are enough.

In recovery, radical acceptance includes understanding that we will feel triggered. We will feel dysregulated and that’s our body doing what it’s supposed to. When we have a history of abuse or continue to experience harm, our body is not malfunctioning when it responds. It shows that our body is alive and attuned. Healing can help reduce the intensity of our symptoms, but our responses show that we deserve safety, understanding, and care. Our body responding to threat is an appropriate response, and it reminds us that we deserve better.

We cannot erase our past, so is it not a high expectation to hold ourselves to, when we expect to erase how it affects us? Rather than reject and deny these parts, we can learn to accept and accommodate them. Through radical acceptance we integrate our past, and how it continues to affect us. This lays the foundations to embrace yourself, wholly, as you are in this moment, and to accept that you have always been enough.

This Isn’t Victimhood

If there’s one thing I will say boldly, it’s that survivors don’t sit in their victimhood. We soften the abuse and might tell you the worst thing you’ve heard as a throw away comment, followed by a “no big deal” … and it wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to us.