desperato, like sabau2 commented on, you said, "so, I have learned to hate myself, as a result" and something that has helped me with my stepmother's abuse is to think of it like a learning "exercise" -- you learned to hate yourself "well" so you should be able to learn to love yourself well? Thinking of it as a teaching/learning problem rather than a personal failing helped me. I looked for things I liked, real life examples I wanted to be like and then studied the people/examples. I had a good friend, for example, who was a coworker and we were in the same office so I would "overhear" her conversations with her elderly mother (and had met/knew her mother, etc.) and loved how my friend listened and responded to her mother even when, to my thinking, her mother was being "difficult." My friend was very patient and not confrontational (which my stepmother and I both were :-) and I wanted to be like my friend so I tried to hold her "image" in my head when I talked to my stepmother or other people I was use to responding to as if they were my stepmother. When I got on a negative jag it was easier for me to remember Debbie and feel like I had a "friend" helping me through her example. I "studied" Debbie (to keep with the learning motif).

I would recommend you find someone whose attitude toward themselves you admire and work on being "like" them. I believe the direction you "look"/what you focus on is what you become. If you look toward how poorly your father treated you, you can't easily get past that but if you look toward someone you'd like to be like/copy/learn from, then you will learn from them.