Self-Acceptance & Feeling at Home With Yourself
You've spent years being at war with yourself. What if there was another way?
Self-acceptance isn't about liking everything. It's about being able to be with all of it — without the exhausting campaign against yourself.
Book a consultation Call (615) 543-8786You might recognize yourself here:
- A constant sense that something about you needs to be fixed
- Treating yourself with a harshness you'd never direct at a friend
- Hiding parts of yourself you've decided are too much, too weird, too needy
- Belonging more to other people's comfort than to your own truth
- Oscillating between self-criticism and brief windows of okay-ness
- A quiet war between who you are and who you believe you're supposed to be
What self-acceptance is and isn't
It's not about fixing yourself. It's about ending the war.
Most people who come to therapy wanting to 'accept themselves' mean something specific: they want to stop the inner critic, quiet the shame, feel okay in their own skin. What they often discover is that the war against themselves has been going on so long they can't remember what they were fighting to protect.
In IFS, every part of you — including the ones you've most wanted to get rid of — has a history and a reason. The part that's too much was probably just enough, once, before it was told otherwise. The part that hides is protecting something real. Even the inner critic is trying to help, in its relentless way.
Self-acceptance isn't a feeling you arrive at. It's a relationship you build — with all the parts of yourself that have been at war. It starts not with liking them, but with getting curious about them. From there, something shifts.
The parts of yourself you most want to exile are usually the ones that have been waiting longest to be known. Self-acceptance isn't approval of everything. It's the willingness to look.
What this feels like
What the war with yourself costs
Exhaustion from managing and monitoring yourself constantly
Shame that arrives without warning and takes hours to clear
Difficulty receiving care, compliments, or belonging
A sense that you're performing 'you' rather than being you
The loneliness of not being fully known — because you keep the hard parts hidden
Moments of genuine connection followed immediately by the fear it will be taken away
The approach
What this work looks like
Not affirmations. Not willpower. Something that actually reaches the parts doing the fighting.
Getting curious instead of combative
IFS gives us a way to approach the parts of ourselves we've most wanted to change — not to reform them, but to understand them. What are they carrying? What do they fear? The shift from combat to curiosity changes everything.
Finding what's been hidden
Under the self-criticism and the hiding is almost always a part carrying something old: shame, a belief about their own worth, an experience of not belonging. When those parts finally feel seen — not fixed — the war starts to quiet.
Building an internal home
Self-acceptance isn't a destination. It's a daily practice of coming back to yourself — with warmth, with honesty, and with the kind of regard you'd offer someone you love. Therapy builds the conditions where that becomes possible, then habitual.
Perrin Holloway
T-MAFT · Therapist
- IFS-informed therapy
- Attachment-based approach
- Trauma-aware practice
- Nashville, TN · Telehealth
I work with people who are functioning well by most measures — and still feel like something fundamental is wrong, missing, or unavailable to them. They've often tried to think their way through it. They're tired of thinking.
My approach is IFS-informed and attachment-aware. That means we pay attention to what's happening inside — to the parts of you that protect, perform, and keep things fine — and we get curious about them rather than trying to fix or override them. The work is slow in the best way. Things that have been held for years don't shift through effort. They shift through being seen.
I see clients in Nashville, TN and via telehealth across Tennessee.
You don't have to keep fighting yourself. This is where it changes.
Nashville, TN — in-person and telehealth across Tennessee.
Get in touch