If you are struggling to accept yourself, or the things you may have done, then it might be because you are taking yourself out of context. Often when I am speaking to clients they tell me about the things they think they have done wrong or the things they don’t like about themselves. What they usually aren’t doing is exploring the reasons why. When this happens I often use the analogy of watching a film.

Let’s say that your friends are watching a film that documents a person’s life from birth to now. You walk in half way through and watch a couple of scenes in the middle of the film. You will be lost as to why the character is acting like they are or doing the things they are doing. However, if you had watched the film from beginning you would be more likely to understand them and their actions.

The part you walked in on is where you see the main character has applied for a job they really want. You see a scene where they have been offered an interview but they don’t go. Now, if we saw only that scene we might wonder why they had done this and think it was very weird seeing as they had applied for the job in the first place and they seemed to really want the job. However, if you had watched all the scenes that led up to that point and seen that they had developed very low self-worth through being bullied at school, got very anxious around new people, struggled with authority figures and didn’t think they would succeed at anything because they were judged quite harshly by their parents – then you might start to understand them a bit more.

A women goes to therapy. She is angry at herself for something that she did when she was a very young teenager that has had quite dire consequences for her life. She had gotten into a car with some older men and let them drive her to a house somewhere. And she kept going with them. Day after day, year after year for a long time. She now hated herself for this. She couldn’t understand why she would do it. How stupid it is for a young girl to go off with strange older men. She had ruined her life. She was to blame. No one else had forced her to get in that car – she had wanted to. While all these facts might be essentially true she was not putting them in the context of her life. She is looking at the scenes independently of each other.

Once she started to look at her life like a complete film, and look at all the scenes that had led up to this point, she started to see things a little differently. She had been neglected as a child and never felt loved by anyone. She had always felt ugly. She was a child who had been starved of attention and desperately craved it. These men offered her what she thought she wanted and needed. If we had been watching this film from the beginning we would be screaming at the TV for her not to get in the car but we would understand why this young girl did. We wouldn’t judge her. We wouldn’t want her to be hating herself for it all these years later. We would forgive her.

So, if you are beating yourself up about something that you have done, or not done, in the past then maybe think about your life as a whole film. Think about the scenes that have happened up until that point and why you might have got into certain situations or done certain things. This might help relieve some of the guilt and self-judgement and help you to start accepting yourself more.

If you find this too distressing or difficult to do by yourself don’t hesitate in seeking the support of a professional.

(Exert taken from the ‘Learn to Like Yourself’ course written and developed with my colleague Laura Pickles for Huddersfield University.)

If you have anything you would like me to write about in this blog, or you have any other questions or comments, don’t hesitate to Contact me.