Accept my inner apikorus?!

Gut chodesh!

It’s Rosh Chodesh Elul, and for a lot of women this brings up anxiety. It’s the time of year when we are supposed to start introspecting and getting ready for the Yamim Noraim.

Yet for women who are struggling with perfectionism, this time of year can be especially crippling.

When we think about who we want to become and the improvements we want to make in our lives, we can get stuck on the assumption that we are meant to push ourselves past our limits in order to become some perfected version of ourselves. That’s unrealistic.

One way to look at this is through the term widening the window of tolerance.

Let’s use an elastic band as a metaphor. If you try to stretch it all at once, it will snap. To stretch it successfully, you need to do it gradually, just a little at a time.

It’s the same with us. When we push ourselves past our limits, beyond what we’re truly capable of in this moment, we take ourselves out of a state of menuchas hanefesh. And true growth can only happen within our window of tolerance, within that state of menuchas hanefesh.

For women who are perfectionistic, we have a tendency to push ourselves way too far.

This is the time of year when the King is in the field, ready to welcome us, hold us close with open arms.

But can we accept ourselves?
Can we accept where we are in our process?
Can we accept the one that the King is fully accepting?

When we don’t accept ourselves where we are, we thrust ourselves out of menuchas hanefesh and our nervous systems get dysregulated. Then we do whatever we can to avoid this time of year: run away from it, dissociate from it, try to fight it, or push ourselves too far.

Versus when we can accept where we’re at and start from a place of inner menuchas hanefesh, welcoming ourselves as we are, that’s when we can take our next step forward in growth.

Now, you might be thinking: “If I accept where I’m at, I’ll just be complacent and won’t actually take steps to move forward.”

But acceptance doesn’t mean I have to like where I’m at. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with where I’m at. It means I acknowledge that this is where I am right now. That’s our starting point. From there, we can move forward.

If I imagine myself worse off than I am, or better than I am, I’m not going to make progress. Accepting where I’m at means being realistic about where I’m at.

In my work, we recognize that what we resist persists, and what we accept dissolves. It dissolves and helps things actually move forward.

When we can have radical acceptance for what’s coming up inside of us: all the parts we can’t stand, our apikorus parts, our emotions we judge as ugly, the midos that get in the way between us and those we love, the emotions, sensations, and thoughts that arise — we don’t have to agree with them or follow them. But by first acknowledging that this is what’s here, we make space for real movement.

In B’Etzem, so much of our work is about learning to radically accept what comes up within us — our parts, our sensations — and trusting that by being with them in this way, we can grow into the people we want to become.

If this is something you want to deepen, both for yourself and for those you work with, I invite you to join the upcoming B’Etzem training. We’ll explore these principles in depth, with embodied practice, Torah sources, and the skills to support lasting growth. If you’re ready to bring this way of working into your own practice and into your own life I’d love to have you join us for the upcoming Zoom training September 8-11 (Lakewood and Israel dates coming soon).