Summary: Whenever you label something as unacceptable, you are knowingly or unknowingly declaring that there will be emotional consequences if you’re ever imperfect or experience what you’ve labeled as unacceptable. Instead of labeling something as unacceptable which is a strategy to help you do everything you can to avoid, experiencing, doing or being what you want to avoid, you can focus your efforts on being how you want to be or how to strategically avoid the undesired situation. There are no reported perfect human beings, so if you fall short of your desired way of being, it’s ok. That doesn’t mean you like falling short. You can, if you wish, strive to be the person you want to be and avoid whatever you want to avoid or be cautious about.
If you self-reflect we think you’ll find that most things you find unacceptable are things you get anxious about. Anxiety is our body’s alarm system which is why your body triggers anxiety when something you think unacceptable is about to or may happen. The idea that you should find certain things as unacceptable is a strategy you created or adopted in the past to avoid doing or experiencing certain things. For more on why and how our body creates anxiety triggers from how we think, see this.
Eliminating an anxiety trigger will require you to stop viewing the thing/behavior/activity you dislike as unacceptable, however sucky it may be if it were to happen. This change in thinking will remove the anxiety you experience whenever you picture or imagine yourself doing or experiencing the thing you want to avoid.
How to stop viewing something as unacceptable
Note: we cover this in some of our anxiety trigger solutions
If you’re finding it difficult to stop viewing something as unacceptable or something you should be anxious about, then you probably have 1 or more reasons (likely unconscious and unique to you) why you think you should view the behavior, action, etc, as unacceptable. Remember that thinking something is unacceptable means your body will register whatever you tag as unacceptable as dangerous and trigger anxiety when the unacceptable thing has the possibility of happening.
To address this, you will have to uncover the reasons why you think you should find the thing you dislike or want to avoid as unacceptable so they are out in plain sight. Uncovering these reasons alone may dissolve the trigger. In other cases, uncovering these reasons will reveal what happened to you (likely in the past) that led to you tagging the thing you hate, dislike, or want to avoid as unacceptable/something to be anxious about. If you recall, the idea that certain things should be or are unacceptable is a way of thinking you picked up sometime in the past. An alternative strategy is to recognize that you dislike–probably extremely–whatever you think is unacceptable.
After recognizing this, you can use your personal goals to decide how you’d like to now handle the things you previously thought were unacceptable. This shift in thinking may lead you to avoid or change certain things but you’ll be doing this in service of your long-term goals.
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or contact us at theclarityapp1@gmail.com. We have targeted solutions for social anxiety, anxiety, low self-esteem, and more here.
