Overcoming Self-Hatred

Self-hatred is something I’ve struggled with a lot in the past, so this video is quite personal. The experience of self-hatred often goes together with depression and is basically a mechanism to cope with beliefs about oneself and our position in the greater picture. It can lead to self-sabotage and even suicide.

Now, I’m not going into the causes too deeply. Rather, I’d like to share with you what helps me when I experience moments of self-hatred, and I hope it’ll help you as well. When we grow up, we form a normative framework about ourselves and the environment. This framework consists of a number of judgments about what’s desirable and undesirable. Outside our basic needs like food and shelter, we have created a set of criteria that we should meet to become a wholesome human being.

Also, we’ve created a set of undesirable traits that makes one inferior. Our parents might have told us that creativity is useless, and it’s all about making money. Or, society tells us that if you aren’t married and don’t have children you don’t really count. So, the first ‘step’ for me is... Realizing that hate comes from judgment. Most likely, we have created our own personalized list of demands that we have to meet in order to like ourselves.

But if we fail to meet these demands, we become dissatisfied and, eventually, begin to hate ourselves. Even if external factors are not up to us and we cannot control the outcome. The Stoics would say that it's not the events that disturb you but your position towards these events, which is, in this case, a position of hatred. The very fact that you haven’t got that job you wanted, that you aren’t a millionaire now you’re approaching the age of forty, that you haven’t got the stand-alone house in the suburbs, isn’t intrinsically good or bad. It’s what you make of it.

I always remember that I’ve created my judgments along the way. Something that I would’ve thought of as fantastic five years ago, I might consider neutral or, even, bad now. So, judgments change. And that fact alone makes them unreliable. For me, I don’t take them too seriously; especially the negative self-talk which is mostly a bunch of nonsense. It’s also possible to hate oneself because of our past actions or inactions. Some actions indeed are evil, like deliberately making other people suffer, or engaging in self-sabotage.

In those cases, I think that negative judgment - or at least a slight aversion towards my actions - is helpful to get myself on the right path. However, beating myself up all the time doesn’t help anyone. Negative self-talk, especially when this self-talk is flawed and based on irrational thinking, can be very harmful. Now, there’s a simple thing I do when I find myself doing this, which is... Counting the blessings.

Now that we know how judgment creates self-hate, it’s time to change our perspective. Counting my blessings; really focusing on what’s actually great about my life and about the present moment is an effective way to mitigate my dissatisfaction and take the burden of ‘wanting more’ and ‘not enough’ off of my shoulders. Self-hate basically is an extreme and destructive form of dissatisfaction.

Things aren’t only not good enough; they’re dreadful! At least, so we think. I notice that when I just let go of this ‘neediness’ then I can suddenly see all the good things about my life and about myself and that I actually need much less than my mind thinks. Ancient philosopher Epicurus believed that happiness is the main goal of human existence. And to be happy, we need to appreciate the small pleasures in life.

Isn’t the fact that I have food and a roof over my head something to be delighted about? And if so, how about all the other things I have, like friends, family, and a nice YouTube channel? These are blessings that I often take for granted. Another lesson from Epicurus is that we often forget that what we are currently dissatisfied with, we once deeply desired in the past. When I started this channel, for example, I remember that reac...