A Survival Story from Self-Hatred to Self-Love

While self-hatred is rarely talked about as a story of survival, I can tell you from my own experience, as well as those I have worked with, surviving self-hatred often feels like a life or death matter.

Working through self-hatred is so challenging for those around you because it is invisible. Others can’t see the threat of your harsh inner critic that is waiting to pounce on you the moment you seemingly do something wrong, disappoint another, or in some other way demonstrate (yet again) you aren’t enough to be worthy of love, joy, success, or sometimes even life.

Strangely enough, the self-hatred can even be invisible for the person experiencing it.

You see, being emotionally sensitive, your gift is that you pick up on your environment. You literally can feel the environment’s energy, whether it is working or if something is off with it. Because you can pick up on this energy and others can’t, you make it your responsibility to correct the environment – to get it working again.

For those who aren’t emotionally sensitive, they can’t image what is happening for you.

First, you feel an immense pressure to get your own emotions in check, as you know your all-over-the-board feelings are difficult for others. And if that wasn’t enough, you feel responsible for how others feel.

Now you are carrying a burden no one can bare and it is invisible to most – even you! You are being set up to fail because, of course, you can’t control how others feel.

This is how the self-hatred plans it’s sneak attack. Typically, it wasn’t one major mistake I made that would set the blood of self-hate to run through my veins. There was an invisible build up of my wrong-doings. Unfortunately, my wrongness could be both made up or real. If someone wasn’t responsive, my imagination would assume it was because I did something to upset them. If someone was visibly upset, it was clearly my fault, regardless if they pointed the finger at me or not. My belief was I could have prevented it. I should have known better.

These countless inner faults start to stack up, one after another. Eventually the damn you’ve tried to build to stop the pain aimed at yourself has no other choice but to burst. That is when a seemingly small event turns into crushing self-hatred.

Sometimes the self-hatred shows up as a thought such as “Why am I even here. I wish I were dead.”

The other, more “milder” forms of self-hatred, I eventually had to overcome were:

• My super harsh self-judgment
• Thinking I was a bad or severely messed up person
• Second-guessing myself, because I trusted other people’s opinions more than my own
• Wishing I was different than who I am

Wherever you are on the spectrum of self-hatred to self-love

A. I’ve been there
B. There is a way out
C. The way out is to start questioning the hate

Being ESP, you’ve just assumed it is all your fault. You’ve trained yourself, unknowingly, to sit there and take the abuse of your ego. So the next time your ego wants to put you down, ask yourself: “Is this 100% true?” or “Is there evidence this isn’t 100% true?”

What you want to do is to start training your sensitivity to look for what is good and right rather than what is bad and wrong about yourself.

Keep in mind this is 1 step of a series of steps to re-wire your self-hatred to self-love.

The longer the self-hate has been a part of your life, the more attention you need to give to loving yourself. What I know without a doubt is the attention and energy you give to you is a demonstration of great love. Believe in the power of love to overcome over any darkness!