What are some healthy alternatives to the irrational thinking about unconditional self-acceptance and self-love?
Irrational: You should always obey rules, accept limits, and meet your own expectations and conditions before you can accept and love yourself.
Healthy: Following rules, accepting limits, and meeting expectations and conditions are often necessary for survival in this world but are not necessary conditions to be self-accepted and self-loved.
Irrational: It was right that my parents required me to obey their rules, accept limits set, and meet their expectations and conditions before they showed acceptance and love for me.
Healthy: My parents first needed to accept and love me because I existed. Only once I felt this acceptance and love would I more likely obey the rules, accept limits, and meet their expectations in a healthy way.
Irrational: The goal in life is to scope out the rules of the games in the workplace, school, family, community, and relationships so as to gain acceptance and love by playing the games by the rules.
Healthy: It is politically healthy to scope out the rules of the games so as to survive in the workplace, school, family, community, and relationships but such survival does not always guarantee acceptance and love. Home, workplace, school, family, the community, and relationships can be too sick or toxic to offer acceptance or love even after all of the rules of the game have been followed. In such cases, you need to look outside of these environments and to yourself for the unconditional self-acceptance and self-love you need to feel healthy, fulfilled, and fully human.
Irrational: It was impossible for my parents to discipline me and still accept and love me unconditionally.
Healthy: It is possible to not like your behavior and actions and develop logical consequences or disciplinary actions which you must abide by and still love and accept you unconditionally as seen in the statement, I accept and love you unconditionally. It's just your behaviors which I don't like right now and it is because I love you that I am making you experience the negative consequence of your own actions.
Irrational: You must be perfect in everything you do or others will not accept or love you.
Healthy: You are a human being subject to faults, failings, and mistakes and yet you deserve to be accepted and loved not because you are perfect but because you are you.
Irrational: It was good for me as a child to experience all of the negative conditions of life in my relationships in order to grow up realistic about myself and the world.
Healthy: The words of this poem by an unknown author state clearly that it is healthier for you as a child to have experienced unconditional positive acceptance and love if you are to grow up into a healthy, self-loving person.
Children Learn What They Live
If a child lives with criticism,
he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
he learns to feel shy.
If a child lives with shame,
he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance,
he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise,
he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
he learns justice.
If a child lives with security,
he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval,
he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship,
he learns to find love in the world.
