Experiencing self-acceptance can be difficult for individuals living with brain injuries.
As a result, individuals living with brain injuries may begin to doubt themselves.
This doubt can undermine their ability to trust or believe in themselves.
Click on this link to watch and listen to the video presentation of the article: Experiencing Self-Acceptance after a Traumatic/Acquired Brain Injury Video Presentation.
Labels, stereotypes, and stigmatization can lead individuals — living with brain injuries — to believe that they are their brain injuries.
In this belief, individuals living with brain injuries may find themselves angry. Angry at themselves and angry at the “world”.
I was angry at the impact of my brain injury. I was angry at the labels and stereotypes that society placed on me. I was angry for being minimized and marginalized.
Minimized, marginalized, dismissed and discounted for what was out of my control to change. I was angry at what I was powerless to change.
But I am grateful for this anger. For this anger and frustration motivated me to make changes. Changes that helped me to begin a journey of self-acceptance.
The journey of self-acceptance through a grieving process. A grieving process that helped me to accept what I could not change.
The acceptance of what I could not change gave me the ability to change what I could. By changing what I could, I grew in self-acceptance. And as I grew in self-acceptance I gained the ability to get into action.
The action that would prove to me that I was not my brain injury. The action that gave me the ability (to begin) to create hope in my life.
Hope that gave me the ability to grow in self-acceptance. And as I grew in self-acceptance I began to realize that my brain injury no longer had to limit me.
In the process, I discovered my own unique creative capacity to use my gifts, talents, and ability in ways that would work for me.
And as I grew in self-acceptance I began to realize that I could explore and define myself. Define myself apart from labels, stereotypes, and stigmatization.
Growing in self-acceptance gave in my ability to trust myself. The ability to trust myself, a loving God and the process.
And as I grow in self-acceptance I grow in my ability to love, accept and approve of myself.
For a list of articles on improving self-acceptance after a brain injury, click on this link: Category — Self-Acceptance after a Brain Injury — List of Articles. After clicking on the link, scroll down the page to see a list of article/presentation links. Click on the article/presentation link to open.
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