Learning not to hate yourself is hard work. But so is hating yourself, and it's worth putting your energy into having compassion for yourself instead.

A number of therapies, self help approaches and philosophies like Buddhism can tell you what to do. The bottom line is nearly always two things:

- Recognise that you did the best you could until now. Seeing your role in something/accepting reponsibility doesn't have to equal self-blame. Forgive yourself for the issues you now have, and accept your current situation as well as working to change it.

- Don't indulge yourself in self-criticism. It may sound odd to say "indulge", but it's easier to judge yourself than to substitute different throughts or distract yourself from the negative ones.

That doesn't mean denying your feelings, problems or what you've missed out on. You need to process these and grieve for what you've lost - in a healing way, not a self-hating one.

It doesn't matter which approach you choose, what matters is really working at it and sticking to it. Personally, I find DBT skills help, other people might prefer other therapies. I like Louise Hay's audio recording "How to Love Yourself" (there's an overview of it here: http://www.aplacefortheheart.co.uk/frame.php?sp=/louise_hay/loveyourself.htm) and Caroline Myss's work on self-esteem and on grace and "reptile" thoughts. Other people may click with Buddhism, or Mindfulness CBT, focussing on helping others or working one to one with a therapist to have more self-compassion.

Whatever you choose, I think if you work at it consistently, and work gently on the pain of what brought you to this point, you can change this. I'm not sure it works to battle it, though, because acceptance is at the core of healing it.