What do I think?

Self-acceptance, self-criticism, and avoiding the problem

What do I actually believe in? It feels like I’ve been digging tunnels instead of growing. The ‘self’ that I grew up learning to love has stagnated. I have long felt like I used to know things, used to have opinions, used to be insightful, incisive, articulate.

I have desperately joked that I can feel myself becoming less radical, although I’m certain my core beliefs haven’t changed. I’m just getting sucked into adult life, maybe. My emotions are dulling further, and empathy for those immediately around me is blinding me from the bigger picture. But I’m not certain that emotional development truly explains why so many of us feel this movement within us, where we’re not exactly drifting away from our principles, but feeling distant from them.

★ Unsuccessfully self-caring my cares away ★

I think that making peace with ourselves is a slippery slope. Self-acceptance is unfortunately akin to working within the confines of the system. It’s the same model. For better or for worse, you are the way you are, but you can learn to place your hands firmly and proudly on your own belly, leave the house without concealer, differentiate your recycling.

My view is that as we learn that we must make peace with ourselves, recognise and accept our flaws, that acceptance can pulse into everything around us. To be clear, I certainly advocate the expansion of profound, soul-scratching love to those around you, and kindness as the default. But unconditional self-acceptance creates one of these terrible human conditions where there are two incongruous truths. You’re good enough as you are, but the world is not.

Making peace with yourself is accepting that there are limits to what your actions can do. I think once I decided this, I stopped trying so hard to be better, stopped holding so fast to what I knew to ring morally true, deep within me. I still think my standards are high, but my effort has stagnated. Perhaps, if I was observing myself as a student, I would wonder if there was a better way to apply myself. I have collected books I should read and trudged no more than 72 pages in (the length that the Rainbow Magic Fairy books used to be). Am I reading wrong, or should I be finding another way to broaden my understanding?

I often wonder if the people doing the most work, the people who dedicate their whole beings to the causes that I most support and respect, are destroying themselves for something bigger, in a way that is unsustainable for most of us. I wonder what on Earth I’m doing with my 20s, free of most responsibilities, the perfect time to give 110% to what I believe in. But in reality I’m just at home, feeling annoyed at myself for not ticking off the one thing I meant to do today, and alternating between stuffing the void with screens and trying to find a reason for the void which isn’t just that life feels like that. Maybe I only thrive in a fast-paced environment.

I’m sure there are brilliant people who could point out the resistance of self-love, its inherent radicalism and anarchy, but it wouldn’t change how I’m experiencing this phenomena. Lowering my expectations for myself means shifting my perspective of the confines of the universe, because all I experience is within myself; I am the only universe I can truly inhabit.

★ Unsuccessfully criticising my cares away ★

Self-criticism is a distraction. By extension, the way that I have obsessively self-helped my whole life is probably a distraction too. I distinctly remember the feeling that I was a project - did anyone else understand themselves in this way when they were young? Perhaps it’s because I’m my mother’s only child, and I spent a lot of time playing Sims. Dialling down the self-criticism has left me with some feeling of powerlessness.

Sometimes, self-criticism is a form of wider sabotage, isolation from the world around us. At times, no longer having teenage reserves of outrage to dip into, I’ve felt fatigued by everything I know. I resent powerlessness, it has begun to paralyse me. I resent my paralysis and inaction. I feel paralysed by resentment, because I have to take the time to work through it.

We’re redirecting the problem into ourselves, crossing the wires when we receive the message that we can make a difference. If I can change it, why haven’t I? Let’s reflect. Let’s stare at the same book cover every night before swapping it for something easier. Let’s consider whether inaction is ingrained in my DNA. Let’s do something about everything except the one thing that started off this streak of doing things. Every few months or so, I have to re-learn how to leave myself behind when going about society. Some people certainly need the message to involve themselves more, but I think I fall into a group that feels a neurotic relief upon hearing that the problem could have been me all along.

My self-criticisms have always been in the form of unresolved, incessant interrogations. But maybe I’ve done enough reading, thinking, and learning to say that why I’m doing something or not is no longer of interest and I should just leave all self-directed whys behind. I hope that by explaining these internal processes, we gain the tools to break out of them. It’s not really about me, which you wouldn’t have guessed based on how much I have to say about myself. The knowledge of how to behave and respond cycles over and over and over, never sticking down firmly. Every tragedy I observe leads to another personal whirlwind which sweeps me upwards, away from what’s happening on the ground.

★ Unsuccessfully summarising ★

Ultimately, these are things I have known, that I have been told before, that much smarter, much angrier individuals have inserted into my way of thinking. I will continue with my life of regurgitating random parts of the things I once knew and creating new collages of stances. I don’t claim to be the first person to have thought any of this, but I hope you like what I’ve put together.

I’m speaking from my own particular context, hoping that someone will relate, but I certainly don’t expect it to be everyone. I have plenty of privileges that cushion my feelings by creating distance between myself and the things that hurt. I was raised to have high self worth, and I am firmly grateful, as it’s better for children to learn to step down a peg or two than to learn to climb upwards.

So how do I differentiate acceptance of my internal, personal system from acceptance of everything around me? How do I maintain and internalise the urge to do something as some consistent ideal, when I’m being told by everyone else to take it easy? Social Media is a sedative; I have to delete TikTok over and over so the algorithm forgets the issues which occupy the part of my mind that would otherwise be suggesting that we lock the phone. The part that would be seeking self-expansion by touching grass goes wait, maybe this is important. Do you have mummy issues? Daddy issues? Attachment issues? Have you forgotten your childhood? Have you ever experienced a distraction? Have you ever misunderstood a situation? Did you put five fingers down? Wait for part two!

★ Thinking and promising ★

We are offered so many alternatives to thinking. It’s far too easy for my liking to just scroll TikToks or reels when I don’t know what to do with my time. It’s more addictive than a hobby. But sometimes I learn something, or get inspired. I scroll until I find that spark, then scroll past it and hope I remember it in an hour. I felt like I was thinking very profoundly at A Level, but perhaps I had just stepped into a huge gallery that I’ve circled a hundred times now. I often think I should think more, but don’t know how to. Again, that’s what the Substack is for! God I hope this fixes every single problem I have.

Next year, I will set myself a monthly challenge. In 2021, I wrote a poem for every month, and although I can’t claim that they were all good, they were all written. For 2024, I will write an essay every month. That should be nothing compared to whatever on Earth I was doing at university, but I want to have the tenderness to actually put my soul behind what I’m writing. Tenderness involves sacrifice, I’m realising, and I struggle to make sacrifices for myself. Some readers will question whether what I’m describing is “discipline”.

If there is one area in which I’ve experienced astronomical growth in the last few years, it’s tricking my brain into seeing something differently. Discipline is dead and gone, it has melted into syllables from someone else’s lexis. It’s not a word that motivates me. The idea of being kind to myself by making sacrifices, consistently, and holding myself accountable by convincing myself that the project is for my closest friend? Maybe that will take me somewhere.

So, I want to remember what I actually believe in. Furthermore, I want to develop what I actually believe in. I have so many core tenets that influence everything I say and do, but I don’t revisit them. I just build and build and build, layering plaster and paint and wallpaper over a forgotten oak foundation. I want to peel my ideas back and paint over the blotches, circle the highlights, carve patterns in the curves. I am going to become the person I wanted to become, and that takes sacrifice. I will do it for my younger self, I will do it for my future self, and by accident, I’ll do it for me.