Discovering Contentment in Life: Radical Self-Acceptance and Self-Awareness

When we find “the one,” we experience a high from the knowledge that this magnificent person finds something admirable in us. We accept them without conditions (for a while). Any defects or imperfections are invisible to us.

After a little while, the euphoria’s mist lifts. We start to grow impatient with each other over seemingly insignificant things, and emotions of unhappiness progressively permeate our relationships. This article elaborates on how you can develop or find contentment in life by making a conscious effort to control your body’s mental and physical reactions to various events in your relationship through self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Something with biology

The pleasure we experience at the beginning of a relationship is the result of a brief surge in hormones and biochemicals created to ensure the survival of our species. We remain attracted to each other thanks to these hormones. They have an impact on our emotions and our thinking, which is why we initially find certain quirks endearing but subsequently find them annoying.

These love chemicals suppress those all-too-familiar critical, self-defeating thoughts for a period in order to preserve the species. However, after our bodies return to their normal state, we are left to negotiate the wide spectrum of human emotions, which seem so challenging to us and keep us feeling uneasy.

Discovering Contentment in Life

We are all familiar with the heaviness in the chest that comes along with guilt or responsibility sentiments. Nearly everyone is familiar with the horrible sensation in the pit of the stomach that humiliation causes. When we are furious or resentful, our chests still burn hot and painful. We seek external means to prevent us from experiencing these negative emotions and to make us feel better. We frequently look on our partners to provide us with comfort, and when they disappoint us or are the cause of our sentiments in the first place, we get upset.

The majority of individuals, however, are unaware that these feelings and the bodily sensations that go along with them are actually memories because they lack self-awareness. That is to say, our body learnt to react with stress to any indication of annoyance, rejection, disappointment, or alienation from our primary caregivers long ago when maintaining a connection with them was literally a matter of life and death. We remember and recall these apparent disconnections as well as our bodily reactions as a matter of survival. But how is stress related to feelings?

Stress, emotions, and survival

The hormones and biochemicals the body releases when the stress response is triggered are significantly different from those that are released when we are falling in love. The survival reaction releases these molecular messengers, which cause discomfort in our bodies and are intended to signal danger and prompt an action to save our lives—fight or run.

We can’t do either in childhood, when these reactions are first encountered and remembered, so we freeze and instead, we adapt. The ability to adapt is a trait shared by all people. Beginning in the earliest stages of life, it initially helps us (after all, if Daddy tells us not to cry or he’ll give us something to cry about, we learn to suck it up), but over time, it causes issues.

Suggestion for read: Self-Esteem Building in Therapy

The foundation for this is our neurological stress response, which, together with the functioning of our heart, lungs, and digestive system, is a part of the fundamental system with which we are born.

While this response is automatically triggered whenever it detects danger or a threat, our response to that trigger is taught and retained.

Enduring memories

Our bodies’ taught responses to perceived threat start to work together with our minds (as they mature) throughout childhood and into early adulthood. This means that what starts out as a straightforward stimulus and neurobiological reaction (imagine a startled reptile running for cover) picks up self-critical and self-condemning ideas along the road, which are likewise learned and remembered—and which are also supposed to maintain some sense of safety by way of control.

For instance, as time goes on, it becomes less risky to conclude that we are unlovable than it is to believe that we are and experience rejection and bewilderment. Imagine these physical memories from childhood as blue marbles in a container. When we reach adulthood and the thrill of a new love has worn off, we are left with a jar full of blue marbles, or less-than-useful body memories.

Every individual in a partnership contributes their fair share of stale sensory, emotional, and mental memories to the relationship. The goal is to increase self-awareness so that we can feel what we are feeling and understand why we are feeling it.

Extreme self-acceptance

Gaining self-awareness or increasing self-awareness is the first step in the practice of radical self-acceptance. Which means you can achieve happiness through self-awareness by accepting what is currently taking place in your body. Consider a period when you felt animosity, fear, guilt, or duty toward your partner or relationship. It was probably related to feeling rejected, misunderstood, unwanted, as like you did something wrong, or just puzzled and taken aback all around.

Undoubtedly, these are all unpleasant times. However, during childhood, the body sent out an alarm signaling that our very lives were in danger. Therefore, when your partner expresses anger over what may have been an innocent oversight, our bodies’ memories summon the life-saving brigade—those hormones and biochemicals that cause uncomfortable physical sensations—to the scene.

We can have new experiences that create new memories, let’s say, green marbles, to replace the old ones if we are conscious of how this process works. This may occur as a result of your newfound relationship with challenging bodily sensations, ideas, and emotions.

The result of approaching each and every circumstance with this fresh viewpoint, a suspension of judgment, and the capacity to wait before responding is radical self-acceptance. We must make a commitment to paying attention to our bodily experiences and accepting them as a memory (a blue marble) if we are to build this new perspective. It suffices to admit that your body remembers and is responding with an old memory—as if your life were in danger—instead of remembering anything in particular.

Human pain is not caused by the physical feelings we experience. The things we think about cause us to suffer. We can start to unravel our own pain when we embrace the feelings for what they are—a mechanism of our neurobiological survival reaction. We can admit that our ideas are likewise acquired and ingrained behaviors that are no longer helpful to us (a component of our blue marble jar). We have a new experience when we engage in radical self-acceptance, and this new experience generates fresh, more inquisitive, and compassionate thinking.

We add a fresh memory (green pebble) to our jar each time we accomplish this. This takes time, but as our memory jar fills up with more green (new) marbles over time, reaching for an updated/new response becomes increasingly instinctive. The things we think about cause us to suffer. Because we stop seeking external solutions, our lives feel lighter, we are more self-assured and robust, and our relationships are improved.

Making a commitment to approach every situation from this fresh angle will result in long-lasting transformation. Creating a pause between your body’s reaction and your (automatic) thoughts and actions is crucial. Adopting a straightforward technique into your life each time you experience stress is one of the most effective methods to make that pause. Below, I’ve listed one such technique.

Try the following the next time you and your partner argue, if you feel blindsided, misunderstood, or in charge of your partner’s emotional state:

1. Speak directly to your body and explain that although it feels as though your life is in danger, that is not the case.
2. As directed here, inhale deeply through your nose for at least ten breaths, allowing your chest and abdomen to expand. Pause. Feel your tummy and chest expand as you exhale through your nostrils. Pause.
3. If you notice that your thoughts are straying, mentally count down from ten to one in a single breath by visualizing numbers (in the Sesame Street vein).
4. Make a commitment to refrain from acting until your body’s systems have stabilized and your mind feels anchored and in balance.

Your jar will gradually fill up with fresh memory marbles, and you’ll be able to continue assisting the people you care about in discovering similar freedom. The first step to attaining contentment is self-awareness, which over time can result in self-acceptance and help us find more happiness in our lives.

Inquire Talk certified therapists who you can get in touch and book a therapy session with:

Laura Dee

Enfys Jones

Dr Simon Cassar