Self Hatred (and Love)

In recent months its become very apparent to me that I have a very difficult relationship with myself. I have pretty consistently struggled with self-love throughout my life, but I feel like its gotten particularly bad in the last five or so years. One aspect of my strained relationship with self-love is that I sometimes find myself in these spirals of self-hatred where I tell myself that I don’t deserve the love thats in my life, and I refuse to forgive myself for my shitty behavior. Moreover, I judge myself for the feelings I’m having. Fatigue and anxiety are the biggest predictors for when I’ll experience one of these self-loathing spirals. It can be very difficult for me calm myself down when I’m experiencing one of these moments.

It makes my heart race when I use the word self-hatred because I’m admitting something to myself that I’m deeply ashamed about. I’m ashamed because I feel like I’m letting myself down, and that I’m letting down all the people in my life who love me. Part of me feels like I’m being a little melodramatic, but when I think about the way that I’ve talked to myself over the years, I have to accept that there is an element of self-hatred at play.

I don’t think of self-love and self-hatred as existing on the same spectrum. I can love certain parts of myself and hate others. Sometimes I feel a general sense of contentedness with myself: I’m proud of the relationships I’ve forged with friends, family and lovers, and I feel like I spend my days in a way that is fulfilling for me. In those moments I feel love for myself, and the love seems to overwhelm any dislike or hate that might linger in my psyche. Other times the self-loathing wins out, leaving only a tiny kernel of self-love buried in my mind. I don’t think either of these things as permanent, static states of being; rather I think of them as dynamic and somewhat ephemeral. Over the years I’ve learned techniques that help me keep negative, intrusive thoughts at bay. I’ve also learned that certain habits and lifestyle choices help nudge me towards contentedness. Exercising regularly, spending time with friends, sleeping enough and not drinking or doing drugs seem to be the most important things. Lately, I’ve found that loving-kindness meditations are a useful tool for cultivating a more forgiving and lenient attitude towards myself. When I started doing these meditations a few months ago I realized that it was the first time that I remember where I had deliberately wished myself well. This was so cathartic and overwhelming that I often found myself crying, and sometimes sobbing into my yoga mat.

We’re often told that we can’t love another person until we love ourselves. I think there is some truth to this. Lacking self-love is generally accompanied by self-hatred, and to the same degree that love begets openness and selflessness, hatred begets selfishness and being closed off. Loving someone else means being open to empathizing with them. True empathy is a radical, vulnerable act that requires one to shed their own ego and attempt to see and feel the world as another. This means, at the very least, creating space for another person’s feelings. Creating space isn’t waiting for someone to finish talking so you can rebut what they just said like a high school debate. It means acknowledging and validating what the other person said. When I hate myself most, I am unable to create this sort of space, because I am entirely self-absorbed. Everything other people say feeds into the self-hatred. I find myself twisting other peoples’ words so that they feed into a narrative about my own inadequacies or insecurities. I find myself hearing everything as an attack. As I spiral deeper into my own self-hatred and accompanying self-pity, these attacks morph into assaults on my character and my identity. At the end of the day, my self-hatred ends up occupying all the emotional space in the conversation, to the point where others even feel compelled to take care of me¹. Self-hatred is deeply ego-centric. This self-centeredness is antithetical to love, which entails laying oneself vulnerable and bare before another.

The more interesting question is not whether or not we can love another if we don’t love ourselves, but whether we can hold a relationship (in particular a romantic one) if we don’t love ourselves. I think the answer is yes, so long as the self-hatred is under control. As I said earlier, self-love and self-hatred aren’t permanent states of being. Despite experiencing moments of profound self-hatred over the past few years, I have also experienced contentedness and self-love that have created openings to dazzling moments of empathy and connection. I have also learned to listen better, which sometimes means taking time to myself to re-connect with my sense of self-love. That said, there have been many moments over the last several years where I have been an awful partner. All that ego-centric self-hatred can lead to a victim mentality, where I feel angry at my partner for “inflicting” my spiral of self-hate on me. A victim implies a perpetrator, which in turn creates a dynamic where people don’t interact as equals.

I have made building up my sense of self-love my primary goal for myself for the next six to twelve months. I already mentioned how cultivating certain habits has already made a big difference. I’ve learned some important tools for managing negative self-talk in therapy. I’ve also realized that these self-hating spirals can sometimes be “nipped in the bud” by talking about my feelings with people close to me. Sometimes just mentioning that something someone said left me feeling angry or insecure or sad can help me from sliding into one of these negative spirals. Practicing empathetic listening is another antidote, as it means “leaving my ego at the door”. It’s been exciting to see how much more compassionate and loving I’ve been with myself over the past couple of months, and to see how this improves all my relationships.