How Parents Effect A Child’s Level Of Self Acceptance
- Did your parents teach you to deny the things you want?
- Do you sacrifice your wants and needs to make others happy?
- Learn how to accept yourself and the things you want in life.
How much you accept yourself as an adult, is strongly tied to the type of love you received as a child. However self acceptance is also tied to how often your parents accepted the things that you wanted, and the things that you dreamt about.
Denying Dreams
For example, many children often aspire to be something their parents do not approve of. They may want to be an artist, a singer or maybe an actor?
However their parents do not approve, and tell the child they are living in a “fantasy land”. They may tell them something like they are “not good enough”, or they will “never make it anyway” so it would be better to pursue a more traditional and safer job like they have.
Learning To Deny Yourself
This is an extremely common scenario, especially during teenage years of life. Although it may occur much early, such as when children begin to model people they see on TV.
But if the child or teenager is constantly told that they shouldn’t want to do that, and they should do this instead, in effect what happens is that the child becomes encouraged to deny or disown their own feelings in order to please the parent.
Since as children the desire to please our parents is extremely strong, we will often do anything in order to please them, and receive the love that comes with that approval.
However should the child learn to deny the things they want in order to please their parents, ultimately this leads to a lack of self acceptance.
As the child grows older into an adult, this lack of self acceptance then leads to poor levels of confidence, self esteem and an attitude that even though they may want something, they probably wouldn’t get it anyway and so there would be no point in trying.
The adult has now become conditioned to give up on the things they would like to do, even before they try to do it.
A Need To Please
This lack of self acceptance extends further into work and social life. As if the adult lacks self acceptance, they will often have an attitude that in order to get what they want, they must first please or prove themselves to other people.
You can see this attitude in people who are overly nice and are completely submissive, willing to do or say anything to make you happy or to “like them”.
However this attitude often leaves them with a lack of fulfillment in life, and a loss of control. Since how they feel about themselves, is dependant on how you react towards them.
Finding A Solution
Lack of self acceptance is extremely common in today’s society, and amplified by the media which instills feelings of inadequacy in the viewer.
As a result there are a lot of people who are completely submissive, and tend to do what other people tell them to do, whilst forgetting about their own hopes and aspirations.
However in reality these hopes and aspirations are not forgotten, but merely pushed to the back of the mind. Because they are still there, and the person is living a life that is not aligned with their true desires, this causes a conflict in the mind.
Ultimately this leads to a lack of fulfillment and satisfaction in life, because the person wants to do one thing, but is forced to do something else.
The key point to understand here is that a lack of self acceptance often stems from how your parents treated you as a child, and whether or not you learnt to deny what you wanted in order to please your parents.
This lack of self acceptance then became a subconscious limiting belief which was carried through to adult life. So even though you may have left your parents a long time ago, you still have a subconscious belief that you must first deny yourself in order to please other people, and receive approval from them.
In order to reverse this limiting belief it is necessary for you to become more focused on yourself. To stop being concerned about what other people think of you, and whether or not they like what you are doing.
You can never please everyone, and if you try, you will never please yourself. So from now on make an effort to stop trying to please everyone you meet, and instead please yourself.
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December 16th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Thank you for the enlightening article - I have often relayed to people the power of words, especially with children and you are absolutely right - often times, words of concern relay to a child that they are simply not good enough. Thank you!
December 16th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
That is so dangerous to tell a child that they are living in a fantasy land when they relay their dreams - it has such negative results, please parents everywhere, don’t do that