{"id":236,"date":"2022-03-26T15:21:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-26T15:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/?page_id=236"},"modified":"2022-03-26T17:16:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-26T17:16:13","slug":"accepting-your-friend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/?page_id=236","title":{"rendered":"2. Accepting your friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Acceptance can be hard. But it’s important if I want to work with my anxious self.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To accept someone or something, I have to feel safe; to feel safe I have to feel like I won’t be hurt. Where anxiety’s concerned, it’s often true that we already feel hurt and afraid. So the idea of accepting the part of ourselves that is hurt and afraid can seem like a really, really bad idea. Without learning to accept our anxious self, though, it’s probably really hard to work with it very well.<\/p>\n

What I’ve seen in people working with anxiety is that both the ‘parent self’ and the ‘anxious self’ need to feel safe and accepted — but it has to start with the parent self accepting the anxious self. If I’m standing next to a child in a busy parking lot or intersection who’s afraid, they’re not going to let me guide them across the scary place if they don’t trust me, and trust can only come if they have the experience that I won’t hurt them. The parent has to be the responsible party.<\/p>\n

So, too, your anxious self needs to trust that your parent self is listening and accepting of how the anxiety is expressing itself. Acceptance means that you can’t judge your anxious self. If you judge a child for being afraid, it isn’t going to be able to trust you very easily. So try to look at your anxious self as someone who isn’t wrong for being afraid<\/em>, and understand that the fear will subside if that part of yourself has the experience of safety and lack of additional harm. Once a child who’s afraid of traffic has had a few experiences of safely crossing parking lots or intersections, it will begin to trust that it’s safe and the anxiety scripts and messages will begin to lose some of their power and control.<\/p>\n

I think it’s important to also realize acceptance isn’t the same as trust.<\/strong> I can’t trust without acceptance, but I can accept without trust, if that’s where I am at. Acceptance requires being in present time. It is a way of seeing something for what it is, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you agree<\/em> with what it is. Acceptance only means that you have decided that you see it for what it is so you can work with it.<\/p>\n

But acceptance also doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel good about what I see.<\/strong> I may see something or someone that I don’t like; accepting what I’m seeing doesn’t mean I’m in agreement with it. It just means I’m seeing it for what it is.<\/p>\n

If I’m working on accepting something or someone, I usually ask myself several questions.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The first seems kind of silly, but I ask myself what today’s date is<\/strong>. If I’m wrestling with problems or places where I’m stuck, I will often be pulled out of present time to where I had some experience that’s getting in the way of my acceptance. So I ask myself ‘what’s today’s date?’ If I get the right answer, I usually can have confidence that I’m more or less in present time. But if I get a different date, I then start repeating the actual date in present time until I feel myself really here, present, for that date. I try to actually speak it with my mouth, so my body can hear it. Then I can ask myself the next question.<\/li>\n
  2. Next, I ask myself, am I judging what (or whom) I’m seeing?<\/strong> Judgment is tricky, because it’s tempting to look at someone or something and impose a judgement about that. I may not agree with what someone’s doing or what I am seeing, but judging imposes a kind of container over that person or thing: they are good, or they are bad. And it’s important to remember that not judging doesn’t mean I am in agreement with what I see or see someone doing. But acceptance is different: it’s not agreement.<\/li>\n
  3. And if I’m as much in present time as I can be at the moment, and as clear as I can be in the moment that I’m not sitting in judgement, then the third question I ask myself is what’s possible in relationship to this person or thing?<\/strong> I can accept someone whose values are very different than mine, but that doesn’t mean I will necessarily trust them or think that everything they do is good. When dealing with my anxious self, my ‘parent self’ has to want to help the anxious self have the experience of safety<\/em> so that the activation anxiety creates begins to lose its tendency to take over out of fear. I think the main thing that’s possible — and important — in parenting your anxious self is that your anxieties subside and you feel more whole and complete.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If we’re listening to our friend anxiety, and we’re working on accepting our anxious self, what’s next? Taking all of this out into the world.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Acceptance can be hard. But it’s important if I want to work with my anxious self. To accept someone or something, I have to feel safe; to feel safe I have to feel like I won’t be hurt. Where anxiety’s concerned, it’s often true that we already feel hurt and afraid. So the idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-236","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfriendanxiety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}