How to Truly See Yourself: Part 2 of 3

In part 1, I talked about the concept of mental health and how you can shift your perspective around it. To recap, the term mental health implies that there is something unhealthy about how we are currently operating. The traditional therapy system handles mental health with a very problem-based mentality. In the therapy world, there is a mental and emotional threshold that each client must pass to be considered “healthy.”

In this part of the blog series, we are going to explore the question: how do we operate at our highest potential in each moment of our lives? Doing this is a process that will take practice, commitment, and devotion to the progress you want to see within yourself. The goal is to shift from thinking about improving your mental health to learning how to accept yourself for who you really are.

The Truth About Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance and the process of getting there go by many different names; you can call it mental health, shadow work, inner child work, spiritual healing, expansion, or something you’ve coined for yourself. Self-acceptance looks different on everyone — there is absolutely nothing wrong with you if your way doesn’t “match” others’ way.

Self-acceptance is the key to healing and embodying sustainable self-love. If you feel like something is missing within you, how can you reach a space of expansion and joy? If you can’t stop thinking about all of the ways you are flawed, how can you learn to embrace and accept those “flaws” for what they are? Self-acceptance is the answer to both of these questions.

Your “flaws” are what make you different, unique, and you. Who you truly are is a mix of personality, energy, physiology, and mindset that was uniquely put together for your purpose on this planet. We just need to learn the nuances of how these interact within us. It’s truly an act of service to do so.

The people who engage with you are meant to understand your unique expression and be activated by your energy, so they are also motivated to accept themselves. Realizing how much of an impact you have on a person just by being yourself shows you how vital you are to this world and the people you surround yourself with.

In this vein, self-acceptance is also about ownership of the wholeness of who you are, all scars included. You are immensely powerful and valuable, and withholding self-acceptance encourages hiding from your true purpose and impact. As Marianne Williamson states in ‘A Return to Love,’ “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

There is so much power and wisdom held within your “symptoms,” codes from the universe that were sent through you to awaken humanity to how beautiful and interconnected we are. Realizing and admitting this role can feel daunting. Turning toward your wounds, scars, and uncomfortable feelings can also feel daunting. Let’s explore how to lighten this load.

Emotions: The Mental Manifestation of Energy

Being diagnosed with anything (e.g., ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or anxiety) can make you feel set apart and “different” from the people around you. Instead of viewing these things as wrong, view them as energy passing through you (and wisdom from the universe).

We can easily become a holding space for energy that is moving through the universe. We can also become aware of this energy, accept it, be grateful for it, and release it back into the universe. Energy is constantly moving through every being on this planet and can sometimes manifest as “mental illness,” as it’s defined through various sensations and forms of emotional expression. There is nothing inherently wrong with this energy; it is simply passing through.

Basic physics tells us that molecules are always vibrating and make up everything that exists. If we capture emotion within us, create stories around it, and view it as “wrong,” it becomes sticky and traps us. But this trap is an illusion because, if energy is always moving, it can simply pass through.

All emotion is energy handed to us by Source. It’s just humans that put labels, judgments, and meaning to it. Why are we viewing the source of this energy as wrong? Why aren’t we appreciating what Source is offering us? Why are we making the divine plan wrong? Source is handing us this energy for a reason. We are meant to be with the energy, witness it, and allow it to move. We are vessels for divine energy to flow, expand, and create in this world. But how do we actually put this into play?

How to Understand Your Unique Energy

The best thing we can do to reach our highest selves is intimately understand our unique energy (and connect with your soul, which is coming up in part 3).

One of the most effective approaches in the therapy world is internal family systems. It focuses on all the different pieces that make up our minds. But that approach still does not go beyond psychology. What we really want to look at is energy, spirit, and our holistic selves.

People who have chosen the spiritual path are practicing this to connect to their unique energy. The spiritual healing journey addresses all the pieces that make up our minds plus the soul, inner child, womb, heart space, somatic messages, and the chakra system.

Although there’s deep wisdom in all of these, getting to know the chakra system is a great place to begin. Learning how your chakras communicate with one another and where tension exists between them is one way to glean how the different parts of you work together. Spiritual communities exist to help us through this learning process. Many of us need somebody to hold our hand and hold space for us while we explore our inner world. Within spiritual communities there are groups, programs, coaches, and healers that invite you to recognize what’s coming up within you, and allow you to co-regulate so your nervous system feels safe as energy shifts and rearranges into new form. You can start with this meditation, if you’d like to test it out.

Human design is an even more tangible avenue you can take on this journey. It allows you to bring forward the energy from your time and location at birth to identify how your energy interacts with the world and what you are meant to do on this planet. In order to access your human design, you can go to jovianarchive.com or mybodygraph.com and enter your birth date, time, and location. You can also schedule a session with me if you need help exploring the world of human design and deciphering your chart.

Human design helps to answer the questions:

• How does my energy work?
• What drives me?
• How do I listen to my passion?
• How do I listen to my intuition and what does it look like?
• Where is my intuition meant to guide and direct me?

Finally, meditation is a wonderful way to feel into your unique energy, but it tends to take a little longer to be palpable if you’re just starting with this practice. Sitting in quiet space with just your energy allows whatever is in your field to arise and show itself. It’s the most beautiful way to move toward self-acceptance but it certainly doesn’t feel easy as you begin. It’s a process of witnessing the waves of thoughts, feelings, and sensations, knowing they are impermanent and clearing the way for deeper wisdom to arise.

Clearing the Way for Your Deepest Wisdom

Self-acceptance is not something that will happen overnight. No matter what emotions go through you on a daily basis, it is important not to write them off as negative and dismiss them. Just be aware of them and refrain from labeling them as “good” or “bad.”

Recently, I guided my VITALITY clients through this process. When we do this, forgiveness, anger, resentment, anxiety, and guilt can rise to the surface. Sitting with our emotions and witnessing them, as we hold space for one another, allows us to stay grounded and feel the energetic shifts as they flow. You may not consciously understand what moved through, but the fact is, you’re going to feel lighter (and you’ve opened space for new opportunity and creativity). That lightness is more important than conscious understanding of the energetic shift.

The mental health world is fixated on conscious understanding of the “issue.” It explores what is going on, the need to resolve it, and how we can fix it. We need to shift from that mentality to one where we don’t have to know everything about why we are feeling the emotions we are feeling. It’s more important to just give your emotions space to move through your field in a way that feels safe, patient, and compassionate.

Think about it like you are watching a child play at the playground. You watch them go through a number of emotions like sadness when they fall down, anger when they disagree with another kid, and joy when they’re gliding through the air on a swing. They are very resilient and bounce back super quickly so they can continue playing. We want to observe our own energy just as we observed this child at the playground, rewiring our brains to accept the energy and let it pass through rather than viewing it as a problem.

When we are attentive to our energy, patient and compassionate with ourselves, and release the need for meaning or understanding of our emotions, we can truly see our core essence. This essence is pure, wise, grounded, and clear. These skills will come in time if you are devoted to your own expansion and self-understanding. Give yourself space and contact me if you’d like some support along the way. Stay tuned for Part 3, “Why a Relationship with Your Soul is Paramount.”