Life can get so tasking with the challenges of making a living or even meeting up with expectations. Unsurprisingly, a person may battle with inner demons that come in the form of dislike or hatred for themselves. This can be seen in signs like having negative thoughts, neglecting personal healthcare, and tearing yourself down.
While these feelings are felt by people from different walks of life regardless of sex, faith, or status, studies show that several factors including self-esteem issues, feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy, trauma, depression, and drug abuse can cause self-hatred.
Some of these signs may be subtle, others may be more pronounced. Knowing these signs is not enough as we also have suggestions for dealing with self-hatred.
Ways To Know You Hate Yourself
1. Neglecting Self-care
Keeping up with personal grooming is a sure way of living a quality life. However, self-hatred may likely make you neglect to take care of yourself. This is seen in your importance to doctor’s appointments, checkups, hygiene, and general body grooming.
It can also manifest in refusing to sleep well, take a break, or rest.
Neglecting your general well-being may be subtle and unnoticeable yet it can lead to disastrous outcomes like self-harm. This may be caused by the desire to punish yourself.
2. Making Comparisons with Others
You always feel that the grass is greener on the other side. No wonder, you get so envious of others that you compare yourself to them and begin to hate yourself. You may wonder how the hate is instilled. Explanations about comparison and self-hatred show that it starts from preconceived notions over some time. You may hate yourself because you don’t see yourself as near the person you are comparing yourself to.
It may be because they have achieved some feats or taken a decision that is paying off while you are nowhere close.
3. Having Negative Thoughts
Sometimes we experience feelings of inadequacy but when you always hold onto the angle that things will go wrong, you fail to see any positive. As a result, you likely cringe or withdraw into yourself while holding onto the thoughts that you are not good enough.
It gets so bad that you isolate others because you don’t want them to show your love.
4. Tearing Yourself Down
Though self-criticism can be good for growth, concentrating on all your flaws and putting yourself down all the time is a sign of self-hatred. You are so hard on yourself that you don’t tell yourself well done and find it difficult to forgive yourself when things go wrong.
Due to this inability to forgive yourself, you end up being your worst judge.
5. Feeling Ashamed of Oneself
Self-confidence is an important factor when it comes to how we treat ourselves. Considering that lack of it makes you question every step you take in your life. You begin to look down on yourself and your achievements.
It seems everything in life is not working in your favor and your situation is worse.
This makes it hard to relate with others as you will see them as better than you.
6. You Fear to Dream Big
Your feeling of worthlessness contributes to the fear of not wanting to dream big. As humans, it is healthy to have plans for every day as well as dreams to achieve.
This may be because of past rejection or even the fear of failure due to a lack of experience or confidence. As a result, self-hatred makes you halt anything that gives you hope.
You may even convince yourself that it is pointless to dream when it will fail.
7. Allowing Other People’s Opinions Crush You
You always want to fit in with others and you begin to allow their opinions and criticism to get at you. As a result, you fake everything about yourself and only project what you think they want.
If they criticize you, you hold onto it and start hating yourself for not meeting up with their expectations.
See Also: Songs About Believing In Yourself – 20 Best Songs To Get Through Any Moment
Ways to Deal with Self-Hatred
Identify Your Triggers
Triggers are things that make you go down the long corridor of self-hatred and to stop this, identifying such is important. You can start by observing your thought process and becoming mindful of how you see such things.
Accepting that you want to be better comes naturally when you learn to think beyond these triggers.
Have a Positive Self Worth
How you think about yourself is an important factor in how you treat yourself. To deal with self-hatred, you should think positively about yourself and accept that you have strengths and weaknesses just like any other human being.
You must also learn to push any idea that you are not good enough to the back burner and see the best in every opportunity. This goes a long way in boosting your self-esteem.
Be Compassionate To Yourself
There is a general belief that people who do not love themselves cannot love others. This is to say that when you love something or someone, you put effort, time, and care into seeing that thing or person better.
To show love to oneself, learn to love yourself no matter the wins and losses you encounter. Also, have realistic expectations that would help you take care of your general well-being and passions.
Do things like preparing a good meal for yourself, taking a bubble bath, resting, going on holiday, and keeping the doctor’s appointment.
Interact with Others
Socializing is a great way of dealing with self-hatred because it allows you to share your feelings with others. Even if you don’t, it offers you the opportunity to surround yourself with positive-minded individuals.
Seek For Help
Asking for help does not make you a lesser human, instead, it shows that you want to be better. A therapist is a go-to person as they have the experience and training to handle these situations.
Once you realize a deep hatred for yourself, do not hesitate to talk to someone. This can be counselors in school, work, or someone reliable. So long as you are not battling these harmful thoughts alone, you are definitely on the track to shut the door on self-hatred.
