The Root of All Self-Hatred (10 min read)

"Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on Earth, though he had bread in abundance." [1]

This quote by Dostoyevsky gets to the core of why we opt for the path of hating ourselves. Simply put, our self-hatred festers inside us when we lack meaning and purpose in our lives. If we haven’t created a meaningful purpose to strive for, feelings of loneliness, despair and anguish will bubble up to the surface.

If the meaning of life remains ambiguous to us, we will be overwhelmed by difficult feelings caused by our aimlessness and then, these negative feelings will accelerate and we will resort to inflicting pain, both mentally and physically on ourselves when things get difficult.

In this article, I will look into why we make the masochistic choice to allow our self-hatred to fester to boiling point, as well as offering practical solutions to reduce the power of negative thoughts that occur. Fortunately, because we often get into these negative patterns ourselves, they are our own creation and, as such, their origin can be tracked and with a little bit of reverse engineering we will have answers to what we are doing that’s causing self-hatred to fester.

“There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life”. [2]

The power of this quote by Viktor Frankl comes from the context of his life in the 1940’s, when he was forced into a concentration camp. Overcoming his seemingly hopeless sentence which totally restricted his human freedom should serve as a wake-up call for us, and dispel the myth that our problems are unsolvable, if only you’re willing to put up with the pain.

You need a high threshold for pain to stop you from quitting when things get difficult

One reason you may suffer from self-hatred is because you have a low threshold for pain.

If you get overwhelmed easily and you’re always looking for any way to escape uncomfortable and unpleasant situations, you have a low tolerance for pain. Because of your low pain threshold, you rarely give a situation enough time and patience to find a solution so a swift exit will always seem most appealing.

However, this habit to escape when things get tough is terrible for growth as you will be blind to the regenerative value found in being responsible for something.

Frankl would agree that this is the secret to overcoming suffering with him saying:

“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the task which it constantly sets for each individual”. [3]

To Franz, this lack of courage means that “he never commits himself to anything, paralyzed by anything that requires responsibility”. [4]

Stemming from the fear of the unknown, the individual is inclined to choose a life of unnatural safety. This comfortable existence is terrible for our growth as we are not challenging ourselves enough. If we shy away from difficulty, we have no idea what we are capable of.

This neurosis led Seneca to the conclusion that “no man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself”. [5] Therefore, going to the limits of what you can endure is the only way to find out what you are capable of.

There is a familiar comfort to self-hatred that we are drawn to

If we are used to our negative feelings so much so that we actually expect their presence, it will only accelerate our negative emotions so that they become more and more familiar, so you begin to welcome them with open arms.

This results in us becoming more cowardly and masochistic when faced with our negative emotions.

In this sense, familiarity breeds complacency, and the longer you sit and ignore what should be done, the more challenging the obstacle becomes in your mind.

To illustrate this further, the writers Moore and Gillette use an example of an anxious salesman who sits at his desk, staring at his list of contacts, too nervous to pick up the phone. The longer he sits at his desk, scared to start dialling, the more challenging the task seems. [6]

What scares an individual into this state of paralysis is the fear of committing themselves to a decision. They are scared to make a decision, any decision, because to commit to something is to run the risk of failure. What the salesman fails to realise is that doing nothing is also a choice.

The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, would say that his impulse to sabotage his own happiness won out over his “life instinct”, which favours pleasure over pain. To Freud, this pull towards pleasure that we all have inside us, is constantly at odds with our “death drive” which seeks a destructive conclusion to a persistent problem. An apt term for this driving force, offered by Freud, is the “bed-rotting instinct”. [7]

When we fall short of the person we think we should be, it becomes a tempting prospect to make things even worse for ourselves. For example, say you are an alcoholic and you relapse with one drink. Once you “break the seal”, it becomes easier to rationalise the next drink. This is because once your principles are broken, your life begins to lose meaning and your feelings of responsibility dwindle. Or, if you’re edging closer to your overdraft and then a payment takes you into negative figures, your mind will see that you’re already in the negatives which, in turn, makes it easier to convince yourself to spend more.

Instead of taking time to figure out a rational solution, our lack of meaning makes us irrational, trusting shortcuts instead

If we feel unpleasant and agitated, rather than sitting with and getting to the root of those feelings in a calm and rational way, we regress and wallow in feelings of self-pity.

In this volatile state, we will seek anything that offers us an “out” from the pain.

These “outs” are shortcuts which promise a simple answer to a complex problem.

These tempting shortcuts frazzle our brains into asking the wrong questions.

This is what the psychologist Lisa Barrett discusses in her insightful book How Emotions are Made. When we expect a quick fix, we are blind to the right questions. We may say “Why is this happening to me? Am I depressed? Am I sick?”. [8]

The problem with these questions comes from our expectance of an instant answer. If we fail to answer these questions quickly, we concede. Once we give up and proclaim "I can’t take this anymore!”, we devise an overly simplistic exit strategy to escape from the pain we have created.

In her discussion of negative emotions, Barrett offers the Buddhist concept of the two arrows to demonstrate how we inflict unnecessary pain when we are knocked off course. She argues that when something bad happens to us, we are hit with the first “arrow” of emotional or physical pain. But the second arrow, Barret says, we shoot ourselves: “It is the mental suffering our thoughts create”. [9] When we say “I feel so awful” and begin to wallow in our pain, we are firing the second arrow and unnecessarily adding more pain to the mix.  

To Barrett, if we can recognize that our thoughts are the second arrow, we can remove that additional layer of pain, and be left with simple discomfort.

To reduce the power of these negative thoughts, the psychologist Tara Brach suggests using two aspects of radical acceptance:

Recognition and compassion.

·       Recognition = Mindfulness, observing negative thoughts as they arise

·       Compassion = Responding to the negative feeling in the same way you would tell a friend to, rather than resorting to self-hatred and berating yourself.

Once you incorporate both aspects of radical acceptance when negative thoughts arise, you will be able to respond to them with care and kindness. This kind of practice takes a long time to master; you can’t change your entire mindset overnight, but you can begin to take small steps in the right direction.

Without care and kindness, you will be too hard on yourself

You must be more forgiving to yourself and be ok with falling short of perfection. If you see yourself as a perfectionist, your obsessive nature will be at the detriment of your happiness and you will never be satisfied. Besides, things rarely go exactly how you expect. Panicking over something unexpected and getting bitter at the cards you were dealt demonstrates a lack of awareness of the unpredictable nature of our existence. Life rarely goes to plan and if you yell at the world “Why Me?” you are wasting energy trying to control the uncontrollable. As John Lennon poignantly wrote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” so you may as well give up chasing order and perfection as you will never be satisfied, only resentful.

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When we reframe perfection so that it is not the be all and end all, our self-hatred dissipates and we become more receptive to the ideas that deserve attention because our calmer state of mind invites clarity. In letting go of this unattainable goal of perfection, we are being humble in our power compared to nature, in turn creating a calm trust that the powers that be will show us the light. Despite our smallness, if we focus on consistency, taking action every day, however small it may be, in time you will move past your hurdles.

Potential obstacles that are causing self-hatred to fester

·      If you give too much credence to your feelings and your inner critic/voice.

Just because you feel a negative emotion, doesn’t mean it is valid. Emotions are not always wise, and we often put too much weight in our feelings, believing them to be an accurate response to the reality of the situation.

In fact, our emotional patterns may just be a coping mechanism for a deeper underlying problem, a desperate attempt to hold onto the emotion that we think will solve our problems.

These emotional coping mechanisms will be abundant if your inner voice is too critical.

If you have a negative opinion of yourself, it may be too solidified and your inner critic too loud that you are always looking to pleasure to fix your issues. Therefore, talk back to your inner critic when its negativity is causing you to repress a deeper unmet need.

If you struggle with talking through things by yourself, talk to someone you trust so you can look at yourself from a distance and assess how unproductive your self-hatred is for your well-being and those around you and change accordingly.

If you prefer to fix your self-hatred alone, a starting question you can ask yourself is:

·      Has your self-loathing been effective in helping you change?

If the answer is no, you can then see which obstacles you are putting up that accelerates this self-loathing.

·      Unchecked trauma/bullying.

If, in the past, you suffered a traumatic event and you blame yourself for it, you may have pent-up shame that is affecting your happiness. This comes up to the surface when a situation reminds you of this past event and in re-living it, the shame convinces you that you have a deep character flaw.

You may not even realise what past trauma is affecting you. It can be any moment in your past where you were called out for an imperfection. They say your childhood memories are your most impactful, still evoking strong feelings in adult life when an event reminds you of this past encounter. Say it is an insecurity, the next time you are placed in a relevant situation, if you haven’t come to terms with it, you will likely flare up and in your embarrassment will react as you did the first time.                                  

·      You have an all or nothing mentality

If you see your life as either good or bad, with no grey area, when you display less palatable emotions, you feel ashamed of it and will attempt to repress its power.

This is the wrong decision as when we block any emotion it will always come back when we least expect it. Not only will you be  more cruel to others, your inner shame and denial of your true nature will harm yourself.

With this, remember that living a cruel life is the result of failing to overcome one’s inner demons.

You must therefore learn to live with your darker traits productively

Let's say you have a jealous streak.  If you have this trait, don’t pretend you don't have it, learn to live with it productively.

Say you are going for a promotion that someone else is getting and you miss out to your colleague. Rather than wallowing in jealousy and gossiping to others about how you should have got the job, ask others for tips on how you can do better and focus on that. In this sense, you are being proactive with a set-back and re-channelling your jealousy into positive momentum rather than being bitter and playing the victim.

Besides, this bitterness will always pass. As Dostoyevsky wrote:

“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy”. [10]

Bonus ways to combat self-hatred:    

·      Journaling

Writing down your feelings can be beneficial as you can see what triggered your self-hatred in the day. If you do this consistently, you will begin to see your patterns of behaviour that is tripping you up.                                             

·      Surround yourself with kind people and be kinder to yourself        

I hope this advice has been helpful.

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Quote of the week:

“One day is enough for a man to know all happiness”. [11]

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Brandon Bartlett

Newel of Knowledge Writer

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Sources:

[1,10&11] Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Brothers Karamazov (1880) Pg 317 & 320

[2,3,4&5] Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

[5] Annaeus, L. and Anderson, P.J. (2015). Seneca : selected dialogues and consolations. Of Providence. Section 1.

[6] Robert Moore and Douglas Gilette – King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (1990)

[7]  Sigmund Freud – Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

[8&9] Lisa Barrett – How Emotions are Made (2017)

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