The proper nourishment for personal growth is a loving acceptance and encouragement by others not rejection and impatient suggestions for improvement. Human beings, like plants, grow in the soil of acceptance, not in the atmosphere of rejection. We have said that personal growth resembles physical growth: all the energies and tendencies are there.
But there is in most of us a civil war that stunts our personal growth. It is our inner struggle for self-acceptance.
Excerpt from Will the Real Me Please Stand Up? by John Powell, S. J.