How do I stop hating myself?

the best thing you can do is try to write down all the things in life that make you smile and happy then try to focus on these things, if you are feeling so upset with yourself it may be worth making an appointment with you GP although not always the most sypathetic people they may be able to reccommend someone you csn talk to. If you have a close friend confide in them. The worse thing you can do is wallow.

This crosses into doctor territory. Really, you need to have a chat with your GP.

Make a list of the things you hate.

Try to note why you hate those things.

Take this list to your Dr. and see what they have to say about it. Some things you can affect yourself, you know those ones right off and other things you’ll need help with. Take the help.

@Neizvestnaya hadn’t thought about doing the list the other way round, that makes it a good starting point for the doctor.. double lurve

you are all telling me the same things, that everyone else has been telling me. I wish it were that simple.

Why do you feel like this??? :-/

@lostsoul: It’s not simple, very few things are. The want to be numb is most people’s first route out of feeling depressed but it doesn’t work well. You can pop all the pills you want and drink as much booze as you can hold but nothing outside of where you lay down to pass out will change. The people who care about you will become drained, exasperated, angry and depressed after awhile if you don’t help yourself get started on crawling out of your rut. Have you considered joining a support group? I hear they work well for those who actually attend and make the efforts with their loved ones.

@lostsoul – why is it so hard? Not being snotty, I promise! Please, why can’t you go to a doctor, a school counselor, someone with access to resources that can help you?

I have dealt with depression and have felt this same way. Not wanting to care any more, hating who I am, how I look, what I did. The only thing that helped was taking the first step towards help.

I’m sorry you are feeling this way. Are you using drugs and alcohol? Are you out of work? Are you going through puberty? Are you homeless? Are you being abused? Are you an abuser? Have you attempted suicide? There needs to be more information about your situation to clarify. Even a doctor can’t help you if you just say “I’m sick”. It would simply be a shot in the dark.

Are you afraid to be seen as a typical failure of some kind? Is that why you can’t ask for help more directly? That has been my problem.

Decide whether there is any basis in reality for what you are thinking about yourself; try making two lists, one of things you like about yourself, and the other of things you do not like about yourself ( get a friend to help you and be fair to yourself, there are things for both lists )! Take the list of things you don’t like and pick one ( this should be something relatively easy to change ). Concentrate on changing that one thing until you have succeeded. Then pick another from the list. I think you will find that most of those things you disliked to intensely tend to disappear as you work through your list.

When you hit a stopping point on your list of dislikes, switch to your list of likes. Try to expand this list by doing things that would make you proud of yourself. Start small and work upward.

This process can be a lot of fun and a real eye-opener, if you let it. Good luck, and let me know how you’re doing!

Counseling, counseling counseling. I know that’s a pat answer, but it 1977 it saved my life literally, I was suicidal and twice since it has pulled me out of a deep funk. Good luck!

Easy. Start loving yourself!

I have so many things to do these years. I have to work and make money. I have to take care of my pets. I have to make my girlfriend happy. I don’t even have time to hate myself

@lostsoul I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. It’s not a nice place to be. There’s no way around this without looking inside yourself. You’re the only one who has the answers as to why you’re feeling this way and how to change those feelings. It’s hard.
It seems like you’re feeling very low and I’d tend to agree with the above suggestions about seeing a counsellor/talking to your gp.
I think you should give @CaptainHarley‘s suggestion a go.

Go and get a copy of Self-Parenting. Read it and follow the instructions. It is excellent at breaking down your negative self talk.

Tell yourself that you are a good person, and you deserve to feel better about yourself.

make yourself do it even if you don’t believe it at first.

It sounds like there’s a can of worms waiting to be opened here — Why are you angry with everything and everyone? You’ve admitted you do care and caring is good. As content sounding as being a numb zombie sounds, I’ve seen it before in people and I’m here to tell you, it isn’t worth it.

I think part of being a caring, loving, happy person is being sometimes angry, discouraged, depressed and down. You wouldn’t know otherwise without experiencing the bad with the good. It’s really just a new challenge for you to overcome.

Every now and then I feel the same way – lost, discontent or dissatisfied with myself and I dont really know where to turn, what to do or how to resolve any of my issues. I just try to stick to and comfort myself with the things that I do have, reinvent myself, keep myself busy or make some new goals. Usually, I find myself only going through a dreary phase and just try to look forward to the future.

It’s hard to diagnose a condition with vague symptoms.

You’re right, @lostsoul. It’s not that simple, but talking to a doctor is a good first step. I encourage you to take that first step.

@lostsoul you put relationships under topics and that you can’t stop caring, did you just go through a bad break up?

no. I don’t know why I put relationships… maybe because the relationships I have with my friends are dwindling, for I have been so angry / sad.

@lostsoul
Please elaborate if you want solutions.

Yes, tell us what has happened that you feel so badly? Was it a particular event? Something you did? Or, something mean someone has been telling you? Sounds like you might be lonely, that can be very depressing. How old are you?

don’t ever hate your best friend.

I will tell you that you are not alone. Many people go through depressions and understand how you feel. I don’t know what happened in your case, or why exactly you feel like this. If you are in your teens and your friendships are changing and you feel lonely, I suggest getting a job if you don’t have one. Generally adults are way better than teens to help you out of a bad time in my experience. At work you can be with people of all ages, new faces, make some money, help people, I think you will feel better.

I do think you should seek therapy, but until you do so I suggest using this technique from mood therapy. Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. In the first column, make a list of the reasons you hate yourself. Skip spaces to leave room for the second column, where you answer back each of the reasons. I think you might find the book Feeling Good to be of some help. Don’t be put off by the lame title. The book goes into depth about the way we tend to beat up on ourselves and how CBT can be used to help us to stop this type of behavior.

There’s lots of well-intended answers. I will also join the choir that says, aside seeking therapy on your own, find a therapy solution that works for you. Seeing your Dr is a good idea, getting a referral from him even better (he is not specialized, but he can do a quick assessment).

Now onwards to independent self-therapy. I can share my method and experience. So far tried and true.

I had to first understand where my self-loathing came from. In my case it was mostly environmental, specifically my father – who believes/believed in tough love. His theory that you should never give in, never show weakness, shape your children with tough love – be critical of them at all times etc. Without too many descriptors this continued itself as a ‘voice’ that always negatively judged anything I did as insufficient. Too imperfect, and not worthy. It left behind a trace of a system that “did his work for him”. And although I now understand through his personality – that he intended well, I have softened my attitude toward him – and the effects of our interaction.

The other bit is a potential and not negligible genetic pre-disposition to at least dysthymia from my mother’s side of the family. My dad’s on the high neuroticism scale – a disposition I also have to deal with and soften down on purpose.

In all cases you have to do the above analysis. It’s always genetics + epigenetics (env. influences on gene expression) + environment. There’s respective reasons for your specific situation.

Now, there’s two ways of dealing with this and I recommend the simultaneous route. Dealing with the symptoms (behavioral), behavior and brain networks directly in terms of procedural thought patterns – and then dealing with the deeper network connections and associations with arising thoughts (cognitive) .

No matter what health professional you will choose to help you – you are the one that will be doing the neural changes / work. We don’t yet have any reliable ways of doing that for you. So, prepare yourself for a step-based change system. It helps a lot to have someone else keep track of your progress especially while going through the middle of the ‘pain’ source-areas.

A lot of the above has to do with the past, and who you are now. As you may beginning to understand, you’re not fully responsible for who you are. And as such you really should not feel guilty about it. You do share responsibility, but in comparison to the other forces it’s fairly small – though not negligible. Put your mental energy focusing on who you want to become – over which you may have some power. You can affect your future behaviors to get closer and closer to that goal. Environmental factors will still affect you, and even genetic (health issues etc). But this is what it is, it’s better to be alive. Life’s not perfect, why should you be? You can try to become perfect, you’ll never reach it – but trying is what matters. Focus on that. Who you are, is not who you want to be – this is likely your biggest clash. It’s fine, nobody is. Except for few that reach a very high level of acceptance, and have given up on the chase. They just will what they want to become, and accept the outcomes but with some improvement.

I hope you find the above helpful. I’d be willing to provide support over skype or similar usable electronic medium. Not free, it’s something I’m working on. I’m not however a replacement for your choice of a health professional. Only another modifier. Should you consider it, you can find my details on http://phoebusg.com – all the best.

You say you want to be numb, you want to stop caring, and you are mad at everything and everyone. What happened to you?

Get a pen and a few pages of paper. Write down any word that comes to mind, even swear words or phrase or whatever. Keep going until you cannot write anymore. I don’t really want to reveal why to do this until you’ve done it. Do it now and let me know when you have finished.

This is another example of someone who says they want help but won’t lift a finger. At least four different people asked her to elaborate but wouldn’t. She needs to grow up. No one’s going to save you. And if you’re not even in your own corner, who is there to save anyway?

@SeventhSense Maybe she came to the conclusion that the help she needs isn’t going to come through a computer screen. You can’t expect people to articulate what of themselves they can barely understand.

edit: also, there could be private conversations going on.

@zophu
True maybe so but regardless, recovery is not for the weak. Whatever your case you condition, disorder or mental illness one must work on their own behalf even with guidance.
No one can do it for you. The illusion is that someone can or will. They can only offer suggestions and support.

What you need to determine is why you hate yourself. Is it the way you look? Is it the lack of education? Is it your lack of strength? Is it your appearance? These are things that you can change, with a bit of effort. you need to grab yourself by the shoulders and shake yourself.

Everybody goes through those things at some stage of their life so you are not alone with o those thoughts. you have to determine what your strengths and weaknesses are and how you can improve or use them to your own advantage.

<—stopping following

@SeventhSense I recently realized that myself, but only after being given an unconditional hand up.

Throughout my childhood, everyone in my life adopted the mentality of, “help yourself, then maybe we’ll help you a little. . .” Year after year went by, nothing. Surprise! When a kid is severely depressed, they can’t pick themselves up. I actually had to get old enough to realize this, and go out and search for an “unconditional hand up.” I found one, and had to do it on my own, but I shouldn’t have had to.

The tendency of holding the weak responsible for their weakness is justified to an extent. But it is abused, feverishly, by those who are deeply afraid they can not change. “And why? They shouldn’t have to!” Wrong. You do have to change, and the people in your life partially determine how you change. And you can’t always choose who’s in your life.

Eventually you’ll run into someone who doesn’t have a “stop following” option. And their weakness will be your weakness no matter how much you deny it. The acceptance of weakness is a part of strength.

I say these things because you show the “burn the weak” tendency that stagnant cultures use to weed out the people that might cause them to change (die). Maybe it used to be a functional model, but this world is too connected for anyone to be free of responsibility for the weakness of others.

I’m reading too much into what you said, and projecting on to it, but knowing what I know now about weakness would have helped me greatly if I had learned it earlier in my life and I wanted to share what your notions made me think.

@zophu
I think you had to go through what you went through to get the help you needed.

Maybe this can help.

Write down on a piece of paper all of the things that you like about yourself and all of the good things about yourself. If you are having a hard time doing that, ask people who know you what they like about you. Write it down on paper and than hang it up in your bathroom mirror. Every time you look in the mirror, you will be reminded of all of the great things about you.