I’m afraid of what you will think of me.

So before I even give you the chance to judge me, I judge myself. And any thought, emotion, belief, or experience that I believe you will deem inappropriate, I stuff away and hide.

But I can’t hide them completely.

• Stuff anger and it will emerge unexpectedly as rage.
• Stuff shame or fear of being unlovable, and it will often show up as excess weight.
• Stuff sadness or grief, and it will show up as depression.
• Stuff feelings deeply enough and they will show up as illness in your body.

If you are not getting the body—or life—that you want, chances are that there are inner blocks that are literally weighing you down.

Uncovering these blocks and moving through them is a lot like peeling an onion.

There are layers of them and you have to remove a top layer before you can remove the next underlying layer.

I was surprised to uncover a layer of my own during my Beautiful Inside and Out interview on Tuesday night with Jodie Rodenbaugh. (If you want to listen to the interview, sign up here in the next 48 hours and I’ll send you the recording. http://loveyourwayslim.com/beautiful-inside-and-out/)

Jodie—for the first time—revealed how the step-father of a friend had made sexually infused remarks to her starting at about the age of 11 and culminating at age 13 with his actually touching her.

She talked about the confusion she felt because her body felt pleasure, but her mind did not.

That was the trigger for me.

While I’ve written about my healing around the abuse from my father to help others find peace, what I didn’t realize was there was another layer—one that I still held self-judgment about and fear about what others would think.

But my commitment to myself is to acknowledge and feel all of my emotions, because I no longer what to be trapped by old thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that do not serve me.

I want to be the best and brightest version of me—and that means participating in the art of extreme self-acceptance.

Part of the process of extreme self-acceptance is to:

• Look at what you have been avoiding. You have to be aware of something before you can actually address it.
• Allow yourself to feel the emotions. Most often, we fear feeling negative emotions, but the reality is the fear of them is worse than fully experiencing them. In fact, it is often cathartic to feel pain, sadness, grief, etc. You must fully embrace all of your emotions. You can’t feel joy if you don’t allow yourself to feel it’s opposite.
• Change your perception. How can you view the experience differently? What gifts or clarity did it give you? How did it move you forward in your life? How can you forgive the people involved—including yourself? You have to stop being the victim in your mind to stop being the victim in your life.
• Accept it about yourself. Self-love is not about picking and choosing the parts of yourself that are lovable. It’s not about contorting yourself to be lovable to others. It’s loving the light and dark of yourself. It’s loving the things you judge and fear others will judge, as well as the gifts and blessings you bring to the world. Truly, you can’t know yourself as loving if you don’t also know yourself as someone who is the opposite of loving. The key is to then choose Who you want to be moving forward—and love yourself no matter what.

So I’ve been dealing with the awareness of my rediscovered layer this week.

I’ll admit the fear of it crashed me down into depression on several occasions.

But I want to fully live my life, and I can tell you from having experienced years and years of depression that fully feeling your emotions—even the painful ones—is a lot better than not feeling anything at all.

I am sharing here with the intention of helping other women find understanding and love for themselves.

It is also cathartic for me to face my fear of what other people think me. If you judge me, you judge me. My goal is to love myself no matter what.

So here it is.

When I was 9 years old, one of my older brother’s friends began sneaking down to my room at night.

I had a crush on this boy, so I was extremely flattered to be getting this attention. And the petting we engaged in felt good.

But it also set up a huge conflict in my mind.

He ignored me at all other times, and I knew not to tell. While I didn’t fully understand why, what we were doing must be wrong, and I must be a bad girl.

In my innocence, I didn’t know what could get you pregnant and what couldn’t, so I had also a huge fear of getting pregnant.

By the time I was 11, I was developing into a woman rapidly.

That’s when my father tried to kiss me and I started to get uncomfortable attention from men—but not the boys I liked who were my own age.

At the age of 15, a married minister made it clear he would like to have sex with me.

I grew to fear my sexuality. Clearly it had power that was unsafe. I worried that I was the reason the men who were supposed to love and protect me where instead trying to take advantage of me.

Again, I thought it must mean I was a bad girl.

Instead of allowing myself to be angry at these men—who truly were responsible for their own behavior—and feeling sad and grieving, I turned that anger on myself and it became self-loathing.

Not only did this impact my self-esteem and success in life, but it impacted me physically.

• I started putting on weight at age 11 and began never ending dieting at 14.
• I began having problems with ovarian cysts at 15, and menstruating became a painful ordeal.
• I began getting chronic migraines.
• It’s actually not surprising to me that when I had a full hysterectomy in December 2011 the doctors found my sexual organs to be deformed and growing into the walls of my abdomen.

And the interesting thing is, no matter how much I tried to punish myself, my greatest fear of being judged by others actually played out anyway.

My friends turned on me in junior high and bullied, chastised, and isolated me.

When my mother divorced my father and we moved to a new town, I was met by much the same behavior at my new school.

From my vantage point now, I can see how my experiences mirrored my fears and insecurities. What you resist persists.

It’s been part of the “aha” of these old memories surfacing.

It’s helping me reframe those experiences so that I’m no longer the victim.

I’m working with my coach to identify and fully accept the parts of me that I have been fearful of others knowing about.

I’m striving to allow myself to feel the emotions that are coming up—and to love myself fully and completely, as I know Source (God, the Universe, Higher Self—whatever works for you) does.

Instead of trying to be the good girl and hide the “bad” girl out of sight, I’m embracing her and allowing her to be.

And I’m reconnecting with my powerful sexual energy, which is truly just creative energy. I don’t have to hide my light anymore because it is unsafe.

It is safe to fully be me.

And as I allow this process to unfold, I have no doubt it will only make me a better coach, wife, lover, daughter, and friend.

How can you begin to practice the art of extreme self-acceptance? How does that help you create the body—and life—that you want?

Together we can do it!