Accepted
Feeling accepted means being welcomed as you are, without needing to change. You can say what you think, laugh the way you laugh and show up on a bad day, and you're still wanted.
- On the wheel: Calm, then connected, then accepted
- Nearby: Loved, close
- Opposite: Rejected
- Often points to: A place where you can be yourself
The exhale
Acceptance feels like breathing out. You stop editing yourself.
You can admit you don't know something, or that you're struggling, and nobody pulls away, and it's often only then, with the guard down, that you notice how long you'd been holding it up.
"With my old friend group I rehearsed every story before I told it. With these people I said something half-formed over dinner, someone laughed, and then we ran with it. I didn't realize how tense I'd been until then."
The gauge inside self-esteem
Self-esteem works partly like a gauge of how accepted you are by others. That's the sociometer idea, from psychologist Mark Leary and colleagues, who tested it in five studies.1
In two of them, people learned they'd been left out of a group. Being left out for personal reasons lowered self-esteem. Being left out at random did not.1
That's why rejection from people you barely know can still sting, and why acceptance can lift how you see yourself as well as how you feel about the group.
Wanted, allowed, or liked for an act
Accepted sounds like "they want me here as I am." Tolerated sounds like "they let me stay": nobody pushes you out, and nobody warms to you either. Fitting in sounds like "they like me when I act like them", which is acceptance of a version of you.
Fitting in can feel like acceptance at first. One sign of the difference is how tired you feel on the drive home.
Finding the rooms where you edit least
- Notice where you edit yourself least. A person, a group or a place. Write it down and go there more.
- Test it with something small and true. Share an honest opinion or a small struggle, and watch what people do with it.
- Offer acceptance first. Let someone else be fully themselves around you. It makes room for the same back.
- Turn some of it inward. If you feel you have to hide parts of yourself everywhere, the self-esteem page and a thought record on "I'm not enough" are places to start.
Where can you be most fully yourself? Write who is there and one thing you can say or do there that you'd hide elsewhere.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about feeling accepted
Why do I care so much about being accepted?
Leary's team argued that the caring has a job. When the gauge drops, you feel worse about yourself, and that discomfort nudges you to repair your place with people.1 On that view, the sting is the alarm doing what it's for.
Why don't I feel accepted even when people are nice to me?
Nice can be tolerance with good manners. Ask yourself if you're still editing around them. If you only relax after you've performed the version they like, what you're getting is fitting in. Sometimes the people are warm and the gauge is reading low anyway, and then the self-esteem page is the better place to look.
What is the difference between acceptance and approval?
Approval is about what you did: "Good job." Acceptance is about who you are: "I'm glad you're here," whatever you did today. You can be accepted by someone who doesn't approve of every choice you make.