I hate myself. What do I do now?
First, it is important to acknowledge that there are a lot of factors
that can negatively influence how productively we can work on
ourselves. If the feeling is in the forefront of your mind right now,
take a step back and look at your self care situation? For example:
- Have you eaten recently? Hunger (even if you can't feel it) can
gravely affect your mood which can leave you in a poor condition to
make productive decisions. Eat, if you can help it. - Do you feel clean/comfortable? Feeling dirty or living in a
messy room can affect you similarly a great deal. Showering would
be a good start.
I don't expect you to fix everything right off the bat but do try to
work on these things, as they will allow you to more efficiently work
on what actually makes you hate yourself.
What is it you hate about yourself, specifically?
Here, the goal is to first articulate specific traits (personality,
looks) in concrete terms, because the self is not a monolith. It's
dangerously easy to conflate aspects of yourself with your identity,
making things concrete allows us to actually work on them.
Setting goals
Once you got a list of things, it makes sense to critically examine
what you can do right now. If things were easy (bear in mind,
"simple" and "easy" are not the same), you would have already solved
things. You are probably aware of whatever burdens you for a while,
as such, it's important for us to know:
- Which of these things do you consider mutable/immutable?
- What have you tried in the past?
These will help us try remove things you dislike about yourself.
However, there is a flip side to this: some people are more concerned
about lacking good aspects rather than having bad ones.
- What traits you find desirable (for example in others) do you lack?
- What things do you feel you lack? To what end do you wish to have them?
The first serves as an inspiration outside of yourself, while the
second one is important to make sure to distinguish means from
ends. We can get stuck wasting time working to acquire means to an
end that is accomplished more effectively in a different way. Of
course, self loathing can also be simply a result of the environment,
in which case very little of the above applies. Here are some common
goals people frequently wind up with:
- quitting habits
- changing aspects (weight,hrt,muscles,voice,mindset)
- changing environment (moving,changing jobs)
- fulfilling needs (making friends,making money, dating)
Learning to feel better
Even as things improve, there is a crucial thing to work on that is
more insidious in nature, getting used to not hating yourself. Humans
tend to get better at things they practice frequently. Self loathing
is no exception. You will need to actively catch yourself thinking
self destructive thoughts and challenge them. Stuff like gratefulness
exercises are about letting yourself feel a sense of accomplishment
when you make progress. Otherwise you will wind up in situations like:
I can't be happy until I have achieved X, but I can't bear to be
unhappy for the time it will take to accomplish it.
This is dangerous, as it saps you of the energy you need to make
progress. Being content with the rate at which you make progress is
NOT complacency.