This understanding is often very different from what people come to therapy assuming. It is almost universal that people think they need to "get rid of" something about themselves, or of some part of themselves, or at least that they want to get rid of something. Of course this misses the necessity of acceptance, and focuses, often prematurely, on the idea of change.
Example: a professional woman comes to see me, assuming that there are some things about her personality that are causing her problems in relationships, and wanting to know how she can go about changing these parts of herself. As we talk and explore her concerns and her ways of being in the world, we begin to discover that she has learned many forms of self judgment and self criticism. She believes, for example, that she is not gregarious enough in social situations, and that she is not good enough at small talk and "mingling", and that this is why her primary relationship is faltering. She wants to, or thinks she wants to, change these qualities of hers, thinking that if she does so, her relationship will be better.
I introduce the idea of putting changes on the back burner, while focusing instead on the idea that it would be very helpful to her to begin to understand her inherent personality qualities; to think about how she might relate with these qualities if her self criticisms of them could somehow be put aside; to discover if it might be possible to actually find ways to appreciate these qualities of hers, to value them.
Making changes will come much more easily and naturally from a position of self appreciation than from one of self hatred.
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