Self-hate. Self-loathing. Low self-esteem. Lack of confidence. Insecurity. Self-consciousness. Shame.
So many words and phrases for the human experience of not really liking ourselves. Did I miss any? That was just off the top of my head. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a phrase or word that really captures it for you…
Self-hate is a complex topic, but right off the bat I have two suggestions.
Build self love through “right action”
The first is to stop doing things that make you feel worse about yourself, and do more of the things that make you feel proud. No, this doesn’t magically solve the problem, but it’s an important component to the solution. Eliminating self hate is generally a long process that involves working with not only your actions, but your thoughts, feelings, and deep down core beliefs from childhood and earlier life experiences. But changing up your actions can be low-hanging fruit.
Do you feel better when you exercise daily and feel worse when you don’t? Exercise.
Do you feel proud when you eat healthy foods and reasonable amounts? Do it.
Are you glad when you’ve reached out to well-adjusted friends or potential friends and decreased contact with people who you can’t connect with and feel nourished by, no matter how hard you try? Make the adjustments.
Are you more peaceful when you avoid additions like alcohol, caffeine, drugs, porn, social media, excessive screen time, and other vices? Abstain.
And work on coming up with healthier (for you) alternatives that aren’t addictions, or at least have fewer and milder downsides.
Ideally, work on being peaceful and content with less stimulation. How? Practice. Meditate. Remove the dopamine highs, feel the new level of anxiety from not having the “nipple” du jour, and bring yourself back up to your baseline of contentment without the fix. Then take it a little higher.
How? Get quiet. Tune into your body and breath, and play around. When you feel more anxious, note that and do less of it (you’re probably thinking something stressful). When you feel lighter and more relaxed, do more of that (you’re probably not thinking and are grounded in the present, or are thinking something pleasant or constructive).
Love your effort over your results
The second thing I’d recommend is to let go of measuring your self-worth by the outcomes of your efforts, and start measuring it by the efforts themselves. There might be days when you do everything right, and you still feel like crap. That’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay. But it’s okay. I mean, you deserve full self-worth points, even though none of the seeds seemed to take hold in the soil. Although they did take hold, they are just late germinators. You can’t take all the right actions and not get any result, but the result might have a delay to it. Don’t worry, just keep at it. Odds are the next harvest tomorrow will be double the bounty.
And give yourself partial credit. If you did your morning meditation and ate well but missed your workout and drank too much later, you still get meditation and healthy eating points. Rarely do any of us win every battle of the day. If we win more than the status quo, that’s a win overall.
As you gradually prove the self-hate gremlin in your mind wrong with repeated actions of self-nurturing, you might notice old difficult memories surfacing. These are old traumas that haven’t felt safe crawling out of the trauma well until now. They have sensed that you are showing yourself love, and they want some of that love, so they can heal. Keep going. It’s not a sign that you’re doing it wrong, to the contrary. Your psyche is automatically introducing a new level of challenge that you are ready for. It helps to have trusted friends, or mentors to talk with. Regardless, you don’t have to do anything, other than remain calm and non-judgmental about it. Watch the thoughts, and be agnostic about them. Perhaps challenge them with truth or reframe them, but don’t work too hard at this. Notice the feelings, particularly how they feel in your body. Allow them, which might be unpleasant. Don’t resist. Be a relaxed screen they can pass through and dissipate into the ether. Watch them pass over time.
This process will tire you, but that is what recovery is for. Sleep and rest, regain your strength, and rinse and repeat. You can’t know the timeline of how long it will take until the self-hate is minimized to your satisfaction. Maybe months, maybe years, maybe a decade or two. It depends on the level of (intergenerational) Karma there is, and how efficient and swift your changes are (not something to judge, since you are doing the best you can).
But, you will notice progress. Not every day perhaps, but over time a trend of self-confidence and healthy pride will emerge. You’ll find yourself feeling more grateful for what you have and who you are. You’ll take more pleasure in the smaller things, and be proud that you can squeeze so much juice out of such small fruit. You’ll have this ability to share with others. People will be more drawn to you, for who you are. You will be more drawn to you for who you are. You will start to think, “I like this me person!”
And there will be relapses too, but they’ll become smaller and shorter lived with time. We never become perfect. But we can become at peace with the imperfections, which are relatively small.
Enjoy the journey; the destination is not so important. A step toward it is always available.