why do we HATE ourselves???

[lightthecandle]

I just want to get to the root of we so many people including myself hate themselves? and why people with circumstances ALOT worse, live happier, healthier lives?

I'm just asking because honestly, there was never a point in my life where I truly loved myself, and I'm in my 20s. I just want to love myself so that I can share my love with other people for example my lil sis, whom I'm so jealous of . and I want a boyfriend, but I know I'm not ready for one yet, because I hate myself so much, and they say you need to love yourself before you can be in a relationship

[sweetmotion]

I don't know maybe it's easier to hate ourselves than to see the beauty in us.

I understand that so much. I never really loved myself. I always tried to find love in other ways: boys, food, drugs.
Now I am sick of fake joy. I want to be in peace with myself and my choices.

[m18pak]

Because you feel like nobody ever wanted you, and nobody ever will. You feel like there is something wrong with you.

[dulaney0330]

Good question!

More often than not, individuals who hate themselves grew up in a dysfunctional family and/or were bullied throughout the school years. More often than not, individuals who hate themselves may have personality predispositions that make them more prone to depression, pessimisim, and worry. More often than not, individuals who hate themselves learned at an early age that me= inadequate and inferior.

For example, I was abused by my father and emotionally neglected by my mother. I was raised by my mother who was battling her own issues of self-esteem and depression. The effect of abuse, divorce, poverty, neglect, and bullying took its toll on me. As a child, I soon learned that I was this huge burden to the world and that I was not precious or worthwhile. Instead of protection, I was abused. Instead of love, I was neglected. Instead of acceptance, I was alienated. Instead of safety, I had all these reasons NOT to trust.

Perhaps you can relate. Perhaps you did not receive the love that you should have. Maybe you were also abused and treatly poorly. Whatever the reason for your self-hatred, you probably equate yourself to inadequacy and inferiority. Life is one big mess...one big struggle and no hope in sight.

How can we love if we were never loved? How can we feel a sense of self-love and acceptance if we only received condemnation and alienation? These are some deep and painful questions to ask oneself but it only shows how difficult it can be to overcome the things of our past.

For me, I had to discover WHY I hated myself so much. And then I had to figure out a way to help myself. One of the most difficult things to do in life is to empathize with oneself after years and years of self-hatred and disapproval. To empathize with oneself means to forgive, to love and to protect! When you empathize, you accept and kindly address negative feelings and thoughts...not condemn or disapprove of them. This is hard work for someone struggling with self-hatred!

Perhaps, try to self-empathize. Here, I will give an example:

I do not consider myself an incredibly smart person and I have often hated myself for this. I wanted to feel worthy and by feelign worthy meant being smart. For years, I doubted my ability to learn and I put myself down for being "stupid."

However, with self-empathy I tell myself, " For many years, you suffered from untreated depression and anxiety. It interfered with your schoolwork. You were always anxious going to school and this really hurt you academically. So, while it would be nice to be this super smart person, you have to realize that you are catching up because of all those lost years. You are doing the best you can. You do not have to the smartest or brightest...that is simply your low self-esteem talking."

It can be difficult, at first, to exercise self-empathy because of this great need to constantly self-destruct. But with time, it will become easier.

I hope this helps a little bit. Overcoming self-hatred is definitely a tough job and give yourself credit for persisting!

Best wishes

[renegadelightworker]

The reason that we hate ourselves mostly has to do with conditioning, the condition that your mind is in is due to what you were tricked into believing as you were growing up. We were taught to look away from ourselves and at someone or something else as the example of who we are supposed to be but when our spirit doesn't resonate with that then the natural outcome is a feeling of not good enough or hate.

We are raised on comparison; our education is based on it; so is our culture. So we struggle to become other than who we are.
-J. Krishnamurti

We are wonderous beings all that is needed is to remember that!

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by lightthecandle

I just want to get to the root of we so many people including myself hate themselves? and why people with circumstances ALOT worse, live happier, healthier lives?

I don't know about others, but I know about myself.

I hate myself when daily I'm not doing the things I know I should be doing, when I'm doing the things I should avoid, when I'm not living my life on a day to day basis according to my values and my beliefs.

I love myself when daily I'm doing the things I know I should be doing, in terms of health, physical exercise, goal pursuit, learning, Personal development and when I'm living my life on a day to day basis according to my values and beliefs.

[Spartan]

Do you hate yourself? Or do you hate your situation and inability to change it?

You are right to be jealous of your little sister if she is living a life you desperately want. You probably share at least half of her genetics, so it's only natural that you compare yourself to her. And you are right to want a boyfriend even when you feel like there is no hope of geting one, or you aren't ready for one. Nature has selected genetics that make us constantly yearn for someone to procreate with.

I think that the reason why so many people hate themselves is because they feel powerless, powerless to change their life situation and powerless to achieve the goals they desperately want to achieve.

I feel powerless about some things, but I try not to lose hope - because I know that things must change eventually.

Society has evolved so much, but we haven't evolved with it. Things are much more complicated than they were thousands of years ago, or even decades ago. So it is harder to get the things we want.

[thoughtfull]

Your word choice " root " could be the clue , what we think of ourselves is what we believe about our selves . Our beliefs start in our child hood , they are our collected experiences good and bad that form our self image . If there's more bad than good that image suffers , we become disappointed and unhappy .

Self love is more about acceptance , if we will not accept ourselves we can not love ourselves .

[torilink]

Originally Posted by seeker5

I don't know about others, but I know about myself.

I hate myself when daily I'm not doing the things I know I should be doing, when I'm doing the things I should avoid, when I'm not living my life on a day to day basis according to my values and my beliefs.

I love myself when daily I'm doing the things I know I should be doing, in terms of health, physical exercise, goal pursuit, learning, Personal development and when I'm living my life on a day to day basis according to my values and beliefs.

I would say that you do not "Hate" yourself. You are over identifying with thoughts. Those thoughts of "I should", when you hold beliefs that are in conflict with your actions, then you have inner conflict because your self concept isn't in alignment with your actions.

You are not the thoughts that swirl about in your brain - they rise and fall, come and go, nag and bother, preach and console.... and that part of you that is aware of all those thoughts coming and going in the mind is who you truly are.

you are in a state of alignment when you hold beliefs that match your actions - but they are still just thoughts arising in the brain, better thoughts but thoughts just the same.

It is nice to get to a point where none of the thoughts cause you happiness or sorrow - and it becomes a choice to feel content & in acceptance, regardless of what thoughts are rising in the mind at that moment.

[vapourmile]

Originally Posted by lightthecandle

I just want to get to the root of we so many people including myself hate themselves? and why people with circumstances ALOT worse, live happier, healthier lives?

I'm just asking because honestly, there was never a point in my life where I truly loved myself, and I'm in my 20s. I just want to love myself so that I can share my love with other people for example my lil sis, whom I'm so jealous of . and I want a boyfriend, but I know I'm not ready for one yet, because I hate myself so much, and they say you need to love yourself before you can be in a relationship

How can you hate yourself? What is it you have an opinion of?

[Fullcrum]

There are probably many reasons.

I think that it's a lot of social conditioning. Telling you to be miserable now and wait for a happy ending, a reality reinforced in stories and movies.

There is also the thing about many of us never growing out of childish behavior. For instance, kids are often rewarded for whining and telling on others (getting attention and retribution, respectively). It builds ego.

Ultimately, we hate ourselves because of a negative mental concept. In fact, a positive mental concept is still a mental concept. And reality does not consist of mental concepts. No concept could ever encompass the vastness of reality and make you realize the vastness without experiencing it yourself.

Really, if you want to stop hating yourself, let go of your thinking. There are many ways to do it, like focusing on your breathing, doing other things to refocus you on the present moment, or even just positive thoughts.

[robc]

Originally Posted by lightthecandle

I just want to get to the root of we so many people including myself hate themselves? and why people with circumstances ALOT worse, live happier, healthier lives?

I'm just asking because honestly, there was never a point in my life where I truly loved myself, and I'm in my 20s. I just want to love myself so that I can share my love with other people for example my lil sis, whom I'm so jealous of . and I want a boyfriend, but I know I'm not ready for one yet, because I hate myself so much, and they say you need to love yourself before you can be in a relationship

how many adults much older than yourself ask the same question and never get the assistance to finding out the reason why.

Self-hate is dangerous and it's so pervasive, most everyone is affected by some form of self-hate (from the least amount of self-hate to a gross exaggeration of self-hate).

One thing to start at, you are fine the way you are.
Once you can accept yourself as you are, you will find that self-hate doesn't have as much material to work against you with, your ego won't have the ammunition it needs to allow you to continue hating yourself (or at least as much).

You're a good person, love yourself very much.
Religious or not, god placed in you an incredible amount of potential. You really are capable of a whole lot more than you're currently doing now in your life. He also didn't intend you or anyone else on this planet to live miserably and waste the life you have in your hands right now.

Press forward daily, look for areas of personal growth, see the good in things instead of focusing on just the negative. Get used to being positive, set up a list of all the good things in your life and read it everyday when you wake up, set yourself up into positive alignment with the good things in life and remember that you are a great person and you should definitely love yourself.

If you don't love yourself very much, you risk damaging any relationship you get into. Love yourself and you will be able to love other people properly, you will treat them the way you would want to be treated and you will treat yourself the way you want to be treated (very important).

Is there anything specific in your life which is pulling you down and making you feel unhappy, negative and poor about yourself & current condition? Let us know.

Take it easy and have a good day!

[The Cloud]

You hate yourself because you think that you are worse than other people. When you judge yourself against others, somebody always loses.

[DayInTheLife]

We don't hate ourselves.

The problem is that we don't know who we are. We form some ugly, unsatisfactory image out of the thoughts and opinions we have of ourselves, and then we wish it were different.

So we do a little more thinking and we convince ourselves that we just need to add or subtract something to this image to make it something we love. Maybe find a loving girlfriend or boyfriend; or maybe just lose some excess weight... yes, then that image will be acceptable... right.

We look for others to confirm that our image is acceptable. We want compliments, love, affection, respect, fame, etc, to convince us that we should accept our opinions of ourselves.

We have to know the difference between our self image (which is always changing and will never be satisfactory) and our selves.

Only when you are able to identify your long-held opinions of yourself, and understand that those are exactly what you are NOT, will you begin to know who you are.

And trust me, once you glimpse it you will not be able to hate it if you tried.

[Lauxa]

My latest theory is that we "hate" ourselves to stop ourselves from examining uncomfortable truths.

For instance, if I go into a social situation and do not perform according to what I would like, I'll end up with the "I hate myself" mantra running through my head on the way home. This prevents me from analysing the mistakes (and good points) that occurred and masks some uncomfortable emotions.

This brings sense to the idea that you have to accept something before you can change it.

I have also realized that I don't really "hate" myself (despite what the voices in my head say). I know this because I don't hate other people and I don't consider myself worse than other people so it would make no sense that the only person I would hate should be myself. Knowing this doesn't always help though...

Finally, because of my posture experiment, I believe that some of the problem is due to improper body positioning.