By Mary Hoofnagle, LPC and updated by William Schroeder, LPC and clinically reviewed by Teri Schroeder, LCSW
Self-acceptance is the practice of recognizing who you are, freckles and all, without needing to earn the right to exist as that person. It is not the same as self-improvement, and it is not the same as liking everything about yourself. It is the steady ground you stand on while you grow.
Why Self-Acceptance is Important was first written by Mary Hoofnagle back in 2014. We have left her words largely intact because they still ring true. We have added a few sections at the end on what research now tells us about self-acceptance, how it differs from self-esteem, and a handful of exercises you can try this week.
A Lupita Nyong’o moment
The moment Lupita Nyong’o won best actress was incredibly exciting. Not because her performance in 12 Years a Slave was thrilling (which it was), but because the stunning actress didn’t arrive on the scene with talent alone. She comes with a powerful message. In a speech you may not have seen, she gets real about beauty.
In her words, “I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned…I tried to negotiate with God, I told him I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted, I would listen to my mother’s every word and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.”
My freckles and a bottle of sandalwood oil
When I was a young girl I went to a spice garden in Sri Lanka with my family. In this exotic magical place it seemed anything was possible. One of my greatest struggles at the time was the fact that I had freckles. I know, right? We should all be so lucky that freckles amount to the greatest struggle of life. Not to mention I probably only had about 10 to 15 across my cheeks. Nevertheless, this is what plagued me.
But it was deeper than that. I felt that if I could rid myself of these freckles and look like the models I saw all around me, I too, could be beautiful. And so, when the man in the spice gardens casually mentioned that pure sandalwood oil could make freckles fade when applied to the skin, I finally had hope. I begged my mom for this souvenir. I brought my treasure home and one sweltering summer afternoon in the desert of the Middle East, I woke, applied the oil to my face, and went outside to play with my friends.
I’ll let you imagine for a moment exactly what my oiled-up face felt like in the direct desert sun.
Yeah. On top of that I felt humiliated and disillusioned about life and beauty and my self worth. There are countless examples of this experience in popular culture and literature. If you are familiar with Anne of Green Gables, this was the moment she dyed her hair green in an effort to replace her red hair with shimmering black locks. This battle for acceptance and admiration is universal. It gets painted as a woman’s struggle, but it is also a man’s struggle. Michael Jackson, for example, went through great lengths to change his appearance.
We set up standards for beauty and strength that are unattainable, then feel unworthy when we don’t meet them. This never ending cycle can cause intense anxiety, hopeless depression, obsessions, compulsions, eating disorders, and a whole host of mental and emotional struggles. I see it begin in the students I work with in middle schools every day. Struggling with freckles, or curly hair, or red hair, or small lips, or a crooked nose, or brown eyes. Feeling too white, too dark, too tall, too short, too weak, too thin, too fat.
The most striking thing I’ve learned over the years is that even those who embody the standard of beauty that we strive toward don’t feel beautiful either.
Something is broken. It hurts my heart. True beauty is the fact that there are endless qualities that can grace a face or dwell in a heart. True beauty is seeing the beauty in all of the various combinations there are. True beauty is compassion for others and loving even those who are broken and considered unlovable.
To quote Lupita again, “What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul…and so I hope that my presence on your screens and in magazines may lead you on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty, but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.”
A simple (but not easy) challenge
And so today I leave you with a deceptively simple challenge. It will sound easy, but many people find it difficult. Check out this video if you don’t believe me. But I digress.
The task:
Start with you. Find one thing about you that is beautiful every day this month. No cheating. A new quality each day. Keep an even balance between internal qualities and external qualities. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that your ___________ is truly beautiful. Keep a list taped to the mirror or just write on the mirror with a dry erase marker.
And men… this is for you too.
In fact it is critical that men and women both begin to see the beauty in themselves, because it is only then that we can look out at the world and see all that beauty in absolutely everyone else.
What the research actually says about why self-acceptance is important
Mary wrote this piece more than a decade ago. The science has only caught up to her instincts since.
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Srini Pillay has written that greater self-acceptance is tied to better emotional well-being, in part because it lets us forgive ourselves and stop splitting into the part of us that messed up and the part of us that refuses to let it go. Recent studies have echoed this. A 2025 review of self-acceptance in middle-aged and older adults found higher self-acceptance protected mental well-being even during financial stress. Other 2025 work tied self-acceptance to more prosocial behavior, basically, people who are kinder to themselves end up being kinder to others.
The clinical concept that sits underneath all of this is what Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, called unconditional self-acceptance. The idea is straightforward. You stop rating your worth as a whole human based on any single trait, performance, or failure. You can dislike a behavior. You can want to change. You just refuse to rate yourself as fundamentally bad or lesser because of it.
Self-acceptance vs. self-esteem (they are not the same)
People use these words like synonyms. They are not.
Self-esteem is a verdict. You weigh your achievements, your looks, your relationships, your income against some standard or against other people, and you come back with a score. When the score is high, you feel good. When you lose a job or a relationship, the score drops, and so does your sense of yourself.
Self-acceptance is not a verdict at all. It is the decision to stop putting yourself on trial. The researcher Kristin Neff, who teaches at UT Austin, has spent decades showing that self-compassion (the close cousin of self-acceptance) predicts more stable well-being than self-esteem does, precisely because it does not depend on you winning today.
In practical terms, self-esteem says “I am worthwhile because I am good at X.” Self-acceptance says “I am worthwhile, and I happen to also be good at X, and bad at Y, and working on Z.” You can see why one of these is more durable when life knocks you sideways.
Five small practices to build self-acceptance this week
Mary’s mirror exercise is still a wonderful place to start. Here are five more that pair well with it. None of them require a therapist, although a therapist can help you stick with them.
- Name three things you are grateful for, including one about yourself. Most gratitude lists skip the self. Don’t. A quality of your character counts. The way you showed up for a friend counts.
- Catch one self-critical thought a day and rewrite it. Not into a forced positive. Into something true and kind. “I am so stupid” becomes “I missed something I usually catch. I was tired. I can fix it tomorrow.”
- Try a five-minute mindfulness sit. The point is not to clear your mind. The point is to notice your thoughts and let them pass without arguing with them. There are good free guided versions on Insight Timer and the UCLA Mindful app.
- Write yourself a forgiveness note for one specific thing. Pick something small. Address it the way you would address a friend who had done the same thing. Maya Angelou said it best: “If I’d known better, I’d have done better.”
- Audit who you spend your week with. Not the dramatic cuts. Just notice. Who leaves you feeling more like yourself? Who leaves you feeling like you need to perform? Spend a little more time with the first group.
When to consider working with a therapist
If the voice in your head that tears you down has been there since childhood, or if it has hardened into anxiety, depression, an eating disorder, or chronic shame, self-help exercises will only get you so far. Therapy is genuinely good at this kind of work. Approaches like Internal Family Systems, CBT, and EMDR can each help you get underneath the inner critic and change your relationship with it.
At Just Mind, our Austin counselors work with self-acceptance every day, often through our self-esteem therapy, anxiety counseling, depression counseling, and body image and food therapy services. If any of this resonated, you can reach out to set up a first appointment at our North or South Austin location, or by telehealth anywhere in Texas.
For more reading from the blog, you might also like Perfect is the Enemy of Better and Here’s a Quick Way to See Your Strengths.
FAQ about self-acceptance
What is self-acceptance in simple terms?
Self-acceptance is acknowledging who you are right now, the parts you like and the parts you don’t, without using those traits to decide whether you are worthy of love, respect, or belonging.
Is self-acceptance the same as giving up on growth?
No. Self-acceptance is what makes real growth possible. You can’t change what you refuse to look at. Accepting that you have a habit you want to shift is the first step toward shifting it, and it tends to work better than shame, which mostly just makes you hide.
What is the difference between self-acceptance and self-esteem?
Self-esteem rises and falls with your performance and comparisons to other people. Self-acceptance is steady because it does not depend on you winning today. Researchers like Kristin Neff have shown that the steady kind is more protective for your mental health over time.
How long does it take to become more self-accepting?
There is no fixed timeline. Most people notice small shifts within a few weeks of consistent practice (gratitude, reframing critical thoughts, mindfulness), and bigger shifts after a few months of therapy if shame or trauma is involved.
Can therapy help with self-acceptance?
Yes, and it is one of the things therapy is best at. IFS helps you get to know the inner critic instead of fighting it. CBT helps you challenge the beliefs feeding it. EMDR helps when the inner critic is rooted in old wounds. A good therapist will help you find the right fit.
Originally written by Mary Hoofnagle in 2014. Updated in 2026 with new research
