Does Self-Acceptance Equal Selfishness? (long)
Does Self-Acceptance Equal Selfishness?
I have spent most of this year trying to maintain my weight and working toward self-acceptance and a greater sense of inner peace. I was determined to face my weaknesses and worst fears about my acceptability as a human being without resorting to emotional eating, alcohol, illicit substances or other addictive behaviors. Thus far I have been successful at treating my body well almost all the time. My weight has been stable and people ask me for diet and exercise advice. Me?!
Having had little practice with actually dealing with my emotions and deep-seated feelings over the past 49 years, though, the result of exploring my “issues" has been that my emotions have been all over the place and I haven’t tried to hide them for a change. At times I have exercised 3 or 4 or 5 hours a day when I felt my emotions getting away from me. Most days 1 or 2 hours a day felt right. Some days no amount of exercise seemed to be enough and I swung through emotional highs and lows hour by hour and day by day. At one point, the thought of suicide actually crossed my mind for the first time ever. For the record, that thought quickly evaporated and has not returned. However, those swirling, rollercoaster emotions scared the hell out of me. I sought out and received support on OH, through support groups and with a bariatric psychologist when I felt that way. That support has been a true blessing and has allowed me to keep working on accepting myself as I am.
An objective psychological assessment of me would probably suggest that I am mildly bi-polar or cyclothymic as some call it. I am prone to mood swings not driven by cir****tances, charming one day, distant the next. I can be wildly creative or completely unproductive. I am oversensitive to the point of my own embarrassment sometimes. I am the very hardest kind of person to live with because you don’t know which Rick you will experience from day to day….that is unless I hide my emotions or try to smother them with food as I did so well for so long. I spent a lot of years doing that and became morbidly obese and terribly unhappy, despite the outwardly calm demeanor of “Mr. Nice Guy", the face and countenance I showed to the world.
So how I live from here on out comes down to making choices. I could go on bi-polar medication and try to maintain my job cir****tances and relationships within the range of expectations that others have of me and that I have lived within all this time or I can try to re-orient my life to better fit who and what I am. I am inclined to choose the latter and have, in fact, been pursuing a substantial career change for some months now, to something that would better accommodate my ups and down, make better use of my creativity, and provide more opportunities to receive the validation that I seem to crave. It looks like I might be starting some of that work part-time in the weeks ahead. As eventual full-time work it would be riskier than what I am doing now, but potentially more satisfying, so we’ll see how it goes.
I can finally say that on most days I can accept myself as I am, yet showing my more complete self to the people in my life, my wife, my family, and friends has not gone all that well. I have been told that I am selfish, distant, withdrawn, overly-emotional, etc. Yes, I am all of those things, but that is who I need to be some of the time or risk going back to old destructive behaviors or developing new ones if I fail at being true to myself and the self-loathing begins in earnest again. Compared to how I was in the past, I am much more selfish or at least much more self-focused now. It seems to be the price I, and the people in my life, have to pay for my self acceptance and inner peace. Is it too great a price?
RP
Remember, we all all works in progress! Admitting the problem is always the first step. So maybe you are on the way towards "tweaking" it!
Good luck, be proud of what you are doing right and fix the rest that you feel needs work.
Your subject line caught my attention tonight. I just asked my father this very same question right before I had my RNY surgery. I was living in Texas and had no family or anyone around for support after my surgery. He came to town about 3 weeks prior for his own medical reasons. After he was cleared by his docs, he announced he was headed home. I asked him if he would consider staying a couple more weeks and hang around after my surgery. Just so they could release me. I had no expectations of "care taking". He out right refused. He is retired and had an empty house to come home to. I couldn't believe it. But he said something about how tired he was of taking care of everyone else (my mother recently died, he was the primary care-taker and her dog had diabetes so he was indeed overloaded as a caretaker). He said he was going to just worry about himself because that's all he could handle. He is also alcoholic and has been a fairly self-centered man. So, I let it go. The the last night of his visit, we were having a cup of coffee and he said something again about doing something special for himself. And turned and said, "Dad, I'm really wondering, when do think the turning point is for a person to go from caring for himself and being selfish?" At what point does it become pure selfishness. Well, some would say I was being selfish because I wasn't getting MY way (Help from him). But I was wondering why he wouldn't help his daughter during this difficult time. Especially since my weight issues have always bothered him.
I guess what I'm saying is I get you. I went through this whole period of complete self-focused days. I had to in order to survive therapy! I remember that I was no longer the fat happy girl and everyone else noticed too. Maybe it was my depression. But frankly, I just couldn't help another person or be there for another person. In other words, sometimes we have to take care of ourselves in order to understand how to help others. Our emotional bank accounts have to be full and not on empty to be there for others.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Hang in there for you and your family.
