Do you accept yourself?

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My therapist said I need to start accepting myself for who I am. He said having Asperger's means some things such as socialising and making friends will always be difficult but that doesn't make me unacceptable as a human being.
Do you accept yourself for who you are? If so, how do you do it? I'm not even sure who I am or if I have a 'self'. Is this common with Aspies?

Yes, I accept myself, but I also try to improve myself.

I accept myself although when I was younger, I used to find that having Asperger's and deafness was incredibly difficult to cope and come to terms with in an environment where there was very little understanding and acceptance of disabilities and disabled people.

I guess that I've learned to accept myself by realising that crying about having my disabilities will do me no good and that I have to live with them for the rest of my life (the type of deafness that I have is permanent - it cannot be cured). I also learned to laugh about having my disabilities too instead of crying about them. Another aspect that helped me was researching my disabilities which allowed me to understand myself more and not feel so misunderstood and alone at the time. Though, I still have rare moments where having deafness and autism does get to me and it does upset me.

I feel I am more accepting of myself now than at any time in my life.

While I am not a religious person whatsoever, I really like the message from the Serenity Prayer:
--- God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
--- The courage to change the things I can,
--- And the wisdom to know the difference.

I love the serenity prayer, because of the fundamental wisdom in it. Self-acceptance is complex, I think, and one way to it is to peel away the barriers standing in the way, like perfectionism. Once you strip the barriers away, you may find the self-acceptance reveals itself, like a hidden presence that was there all the time.

I accept myself because I realized I can't change who I am and I learned to see the many good things of who I am and realized that no one can have everything or be complete. Before I remember I hated myself for what I am and what I don't have and how much bad things I have.

That's wonderful. Good for you.

I did not really accept myself. I still always try to improve myself.
But now I am working on accepting myself.

I was even going to engrave this on a candle and meditate on it for a whole moon cycle.
My spirituality and path have been what pushed me towards accepting myself.

Common affirmations I have use are:

I love myself, I am infintly loved.
I walk in the footsteps of the Goddess.
I and calm and relaxed.

Yes and no. Probably a complicated answer, but I'll attempt to explain.

I had seething self esteem issues up until about age 23 as a result of autism. Every day of my life and every action I took was dedicated to trying to be "less autistic" if that makes any sense. I hated myself for having social anxiety. Society dictates that a man can be anything he wants, but he has to be confident in it. I've never had confidence in anything I've ever done, mostly because of social anxiety.

I only realized these things at age 23, I didn't really even fully understand what a self esteem was. So now, I'm self aware, and I'm slowly starting to accept - hey, this is me. I'll probably never fulfill my obligation to my gender role. I'll probably always suffer from social anxiety. I'll never be able to enjoy a meal like other people. I can learn to accept those things and try to change them in more healthy ways rather than getting my self worth from how others perceive me.

The problem is I still have to hide some things and some days I truly do feel inferior as a result of social anxiety. It's not like I can just flip a switch and be confident, though.

Often people see their (sometimes imaginary) flaws in bright lights and mega-sized, their wonderful attributes in miniature, and blurred.. even deliberately doing the opposite for half a day can be a revealing process. Strive for the balance; it's good for your health, life and self.

PS: The idea of valuing yourself can be very scary at first if you have never been valued by the people who should have valued you. That rarely resolves on its own without sympathetic and understanding assistance.

More and more.

I keep having this discussion with my therapist - "How will I know if I've accepted it?"

It's one of those things I have problems understanding.
If there's no practical difference between two opposites then how can you know one from the other? Probably not what you asked!

When I was younger definitely NOT!! Then sometime around my late 20's I gradually started becoming more and more accepting of myself. I would say I have pretty well achieved it now.

Absolutely!

My reason:
Why get worked up about something you cannot change. Also it gives me uniqueness, something needed in the modern world.

It depends. I have learned to accept myself in some ways. I know that having autism is part of me, and I would never want to change that at all. However, I do have a hard time with my outbursts/meltdowns. These can make it even harder because it's embarrassing to be making a scene when you're 26 years old. That's the only thing I find really hard to accept.

One size never fits all because of individual differences, though I have seen many people struggle with this and different things help different people. My 17 year old grandson had the same problem, it was terribly distressing for him, and eventually we found that building up the levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in his brain did help a lot in his case - it helped him sleep too, which had been a huge problem. The thing is you have to keep experimenting until you find what works for you. It can be a long search process of trial and error for sure.