How do you battle self-hate??

I've dropped by this forum from time to time, but thought that it really didn't apply to me. I think I left a bit of advice and felt glad that, though I have severe issues, I never really hated myself.

Currently, I feel awful bad about who and what I am. Since last night, I have been thinking about this forum and feeling rather like I belong here. I feel like I am a complete disgrace. And I can't stand it. It is taking over, and I really can't stand it. Now I think I know why there is so much pain expressed here.

I thought I was mostly, and mainly, upset with how life is and how I got some bad breaks that I didn't blame myself for. All that was real depressing and cost me plenty of tears.

Well, now I am blaming me and I'm not good at taking blame. I'm doing nothing to help myself - for days, now! (Probably for months, if I think about it hard enough.) I feel like I've already lost the respect of people involved in my care, like my pdoc, who told me to consider maybe just not going to see him anymore.

I'm a mess - literally. I look a mess. My place is a mess. I've neglected things I'm responsible for, and that hasn't been all that much, lately. I feel like - Who could possibly look my situation over and not lose respect for me? I have lost respect for myself. I feel like all I deserve from anyone who could really see what I'm doing with my life is total disgust. Disgust. It feels awful. I tell myself to do something about how I am, and then I continue doing nothing, and I guess I'm at the point where I loath myself.

Nothing bad that ever happened to me makes me feel as sorrowful as what I've let myself deteriorate into. That's what seems so bad. I see that it is my fault. I am just letting it happen.

i don't think i actually hate myself, but i do say those words quite a bit. i sometimes correct myself and say i have a hard time dealing with my situation or i dislike my behavioral patterns

I think it's both.

I hate myself because of my emotional issues and how they mess up my life and my relationships.

And my self-hate can also get me in a very vicious cycle.

When I reject myself, I don't change. I stay stuck in my issues.

So I need to deal with my self-rejection.

Billi

I need to respond to this as I really was touched by this.

I feel that the above statements (which seem to tell my own story right now) have brought me to a very low point right now.

I too feel like all I deserve is disgust, as I don't feel that I have made enough progress over the past year. I can validate that I have made some progress in my recovery that I am at least aware of how I talk to myself and how I behave and how I think.

But behaviorally, I feel that I am still social phobic and have a long way to go.

I still feel like a ball of anger and have "hair-trigger temper" that makes people afraid of me and make people turn around and glare at me.

I hate that.

I am trying to get after my behavior and not myself, but it is still very easy to call myself a bad person or someone who still will not adapt.

I still am extremely afraid of being looked upon as a terrible person.

And I had to honestly answer the poll as "always hating myself".

Thanks for this Rose.

Your post validated how I am feeling and what I need to work on.

Billi

I think we should have one additional, alternate choice: More often then not!

oh I have alot of self hate! I hate myself all the time. I think I'm ugly, stupid, fat... I blame myself for anything wrong that goes on with other people(especially my fiance') and the past things and trauma's that have happened to me, I blame myself for them. I don't know how to love myself anymore.

Self-Hate is caused due to many problems in life. But there is a cure for everything. Try Meditation or Yoga at least thrice a week. this may help you.

I might have already answered this; I don't remember. But my answer today would be I have enough people who have expressed extreme dislike for me over the years -- including my own family -- that I decided I was going to stop being on their team (stop hating myself) and instead love me, building my own team of me-support. So far this approach is working far better. Once I started liking me I slowly started noticing people who also liked me -- and I don't doubt there always were people who liked me but I couldn't find those trees for the forest of hate I was lost in, so to speak. Courage! And love!

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.

I went to the link in the post above. It gives good suggestions. The one that I liked especially was the one that said "Stop scaring yourself."

I do that a lot. It's awful. I think of awful things that could happen to me, and then I say that I deserve those things to happen to me.

billi_lelli - you sound a lot like me to me. I think we need to find a more positive way to talk to ourselves. Despite how mean others think we are when we are mad, or whatever, we are really meanest to ourselves.

Rose, I do this too. I picture myself failing a class or ending up homeless and it scares me so much, even though I'm nowhere near failing and I hopefully will never be homeless. And, of course, I think I deserve these things for being stupid and lazy.

I'm also a self-hater. I just feel too flawed to see myself through any other light. I'm also very different from others, which doesn't help.

I try, and try, and TRY to change myself, but it NEVER works. Trust me, I hate that as well.

soooo right on!

I must remember this today and always.

Billi

I wrote a post on here a couple of weeks back about me hating me.here it goes......


All my life I have been the victim of bullying, I have mood swings almost everyday so why would anyone want to be friends with someone like me?
I hate myself for it I hate the way I am and the way I look, I don't see myself as a nice person at all, I wish that I was a better person, I have tried to change but I can't, I am scared of myself.

I want to be a comedian.

But I have a terrifying idea that I am really not funny, I am just sick.

And it does not help that Bruce (roommate) does not appreciate my humor. (that's okay, but I need to be around ppl who do appreciate it, to build myself up.) I told some jokes to him yesterday, in fact some stuff that I thought he could relate to and he did not laugh---he just looked annoyed. Thank goodness I realize that part of it is because he's been so sickly lately, poor thing. But still... I need to be around ppl who can appreciate me.

I want to follow either this or other dreams that I have but I really relate to fear of failing and then not knowing how I am going to talk to myself then! "See, Billi, you dumb butt! You can't do nothing!"

I got to get a grip on that.

thanks for this,

Billi