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Self-Loathing Meaning

Self-Loathing Meaning

Do you ever feel like “I hate myself”? It must feel terrible and frustrating. Self-hatred can limit what you can achieve in your life. In addition to that, it can also ruin your mental health leading to anxiety and depression. Dealing with all of this can be overwhelming.

In order to deal with self-loathing, it is very important to know about its symptoms and from where it originates. What are its triggers, and how it can affect your life? Based on that, we can plan how to overcome this feeling of self-loathing.

This article is all about the self-loathing meaning; you will be able to know about some symptoms, causes, and tips to overcome this feeling. So let’s get started:

Self-Loathing definition

self-loathing meaning is self-hatred. If you are looking for a proper self-Loathing definition, here it is for you:

“Self-loathing is that underlying feeling that we are just not good: not good enough, not good at this, not good at that, not good at – or for –much of anything.  It can be subtle; we may habitually compare ourselves to others, for instance, constantly finding fault with ourselves and putting ourselves down, with no real awareness that there is anything amiss. Or, we may listen intently to our critical inner voice while it scolds and berates us, telling us how embarrassing, stupid, or insensitive we are, refusing to challenge it even while we suffer from it.”

Self-Loathing symptoms

Self-loathing is a terrible feeling. But sometimes, you do not even realize that you are living with feelings of self-hatred because there are not obvious negative thoughts. Here are some self-loathing symptoms for you to have a better understanding of self-loathing:

All or none

Our life is neither completely black nor completely white (completely bad or completely good). But you see your whole life as bad or good without thinking about shades of grey. When you make normal human mistake, you will feel like your life is falling apart and your life is over.

Negative thoughts only

You might be having a good day, nothing bad happened, but there was a minor inconvenience that could be ignored still you choose to think about that. You ignore all the positive things that happen and kept on worrying about that little inconvenience. So you always focus on negative things instead of positive ones.

Emotional reasoning

All you do is not think with your mind but with your emotions. You state your emotions as facts. In case you feel terrible, or like a failure, you feel that your emotions should reflect reality. You think that there must be something wrong with you.

Seeking outside approval

One of the major self-loathing symptoms is that you always seek for outside approval. You want to validate self-worth from others. What you think about yourself, your opinion for yourself, everything changes based on evaluation by others, what they think about you and how they feel.

Accepting compliments is not easy.

Another thing that you can take as a symptom is that when someone says good things about you, you discount it. You think they were just trying to be nice. Accepting compliments is troublesome for you. Instead of  accepting these compliments graciously, you just brush them off.

Try to fit in

You feel like some outsider and try to fit in. You think that people do not like you and cannot understand why do they want to spend time with you. It makes you wonder why people really like you.

You often feel jealous.

You feel jealous sometimes too. So, you cut them out of your life to feel better or to deal with the situation you are facing in your life.

Positive connections scare you.

You might push your friends and potential partners away from you. It is because of the fear that you might get too close to them, and it will not end good. You fear that people will leave you, and you will end up alone.

Self-Loathing depression

Self-Loathing depression is real, but what is the cause behind it. If you feel self-hatred, you might ask yourself, why do you feel this way? Knowing the answer immediately is not possible; it will take some time. But here are some causes of self-loathing depression:

Inner critic

If you feel like hating yourself, chances are you have a negative inner critic who puts you down always. This inner critic will compare you with others and will make you feel like you are not that good. Your inner critic might say the following things:

  • “Who do you think you are to do that?”
  • “You are never going to succeed no matter how hard you try.”
  • “You’re going to mess this up, just like you mess up everything else.”
  • “Why would a person like that like you, there must be an ulterior motive.”
  • “You can’t trust anyone; they are just going to let you down.”
  • “You might as well eat that dessert; you’re just going to end up eating too much anyway.”

The more you listen to your inner critic the more power it will have over you. You might also start projecting your insecurities onto other people.

Bad Life Experiences

From where did that negative inward critic come? It is not reasonable that you fostered that sound in your mind without help from anyone else. Maybe, this negative inner critic emerges from poor encounters in the past. These can be your poor experiences as a child with your family, harassing, bullying from so called friends or colleagues, or even the result of an awful relationship.

Childhood experiences

Did you grow up with guardians who were rude and critical? Or maybe you had a parent who appeared to be anxious, tense, or angry and who caused you to feel like you have to walk on eggshells? Assuming this is the case, you might have figured out how to be calm, quiet, and blur out of the spotlight. Poor childhood experiences or traumas like maltreatment, disregard, being over-controlled, or being condemned would all make your inner negative critic voice stronger and more powerful.

Awful past Relationships

A negative inner voice is not always because of childhood trauma. On the off chance that you were seeing someone who was engaged in similar kinds of behaviors, it can also create a negative inner voice. This may even incorporate a work relationship with some colleague or director with an inclination to make you feel inferior and bad about yourself or a narcissistic ex partner. Any kind of relationship can possibly establish a negative vibe to you and make a negative internal sound that is difficult to shake.

Bullying

Is it true that you were bullied by other students at work, at school, or in any other relationship? Indeed, even transient associations with others can have a long-lasting effect on your self-esteem and influence your confidence. If you wind up having flashback recollections of apparently unimportant occasions from quite a while ago are traumatizing you, it may be the case that bullying has impacted you it can affect your mental health for a long time. Assuming your critical inner voice will replay the expressions of bullies , this is an indication that you have more profound work to do to get rid of these past memories. Rather than tolerating the domineering bullies’ words at face value, you’ll need to investigate their significance and how this is relatable with your current circumstance in case you want to overcome self-loathing.

Accidents

Have you ever encountered traumatic events in your life like an actual physical attack, a terrible car accident, or a big loss? Provided that this is true, this may leave you pondering, “why me?” that can develop into sensations of disgrace or regret, especially in case you feel like it was somehow your fault and you are the one to blame.

Self-Loathing after drinking

Self-Loathing after drinking is very common. It is because alcohol stimulates some neurotransmitters and suppresses others. Initially, it feels really good, but after some time, feelings of depression occupy your mind. Among these feelings of depression, self-hatred is very common.

How to overcome feelings of self-loathing?

Getting over self-loathing is not easy because you doubt yourself. You think you are not good enough and cannot do anything good. But if you have made up your mind, nothing can stop you. There are a few actions and steps that you can take to overcome self-loathing. Above all, keep in mind that you should never blame yourself about your feelings but how you act in the future depends on you. So you have to make positive changes in your life to make it better.

Journaling

Journaling is the best thing you can do if you want to overcome self-loathing. Write a journal to record how you spent your day, how do you feel about what happened. Keenly observe all the events that happened that day, figure out why certain emotions are triggered. It will help you being aware of the main causes of self-loathing. Journaling regularly can help you identify certain patterns, and you will be more aware of how your emotional patterns are shifting. Research has suggested expressive writing, for example, done while journaling, can help in reducing stress.

Challenge your negative thoughts

Now you are aware of how you feel and why specific emotions  are triggered, this is time to identify thoughts you experience while facing these negative events. You need to ask yourself about these thoughts, whether these are based on reality, or engage yourself in thoughts distortions. Try to stand up against your inner bully by countering your negative inner voice with valid arguments. If it is difficult for you to build a strong inner voice of your own, imagine taking a role of a stronger person like your ideal admired person or a friend. Use their voice to respond to the critical voice in your head.

Self-Compassion

Hating yourself is not going to help you, but what will actually help you is showing yourself compassion. It will not be easy, but with practice, you can do this. You have to look at a situation in a different light. Think about the good things that you have accomplished so far and end this black or white thinking.

If something bad happened, is it the end of the world? Obviously not, you will get a lot of opportunities in the future to improve your mistakes. You can be kinder and nicer to yourself, and this way, you can open yourself to more positive emotions. Compassion focused therapy can help you improve your self-esteem and reduce self-hatred, as the research suggested

Be around positive people.

There are people who make you feel bad; you need to stop hanging out with them. Be with people who make you feel good about yourself, who bring positivity to your life. If you do not know many positive people in your life, join a support group. If you have no idea where you can find these support groups, try searching on social media, and you get what you want.

Meditation

Detaching yourself from your negative thoughts is not always easy; if you are finding it difficult too, don’t worry; it is normal. What really can help you is meditation. Meditation helps in shutting off the negative thoughts you have in your mind. It is more like a muscle; the more you practice, the easier it will be for you to quiet your mind. You will become stronger.

Seek professional help

Your mental health is very important; if you have tried your best to make it better and still there is no improvement, it is never too late to seek help from a professional therapist. You can shift your mindset yourself, but with the help of a therapist, it will be quicker and easier. The therapist can help you own your trauma and deal with it in the best possible way. GET HELP NOW

Self-care

Instead of getting yourself involved in self-destructive behaviors, you need to focus on self-care. This means you have to take care of not only your mental health but also your physical health by doing things that make you feel better. Eat healthy, exercise regularly, get enough sleep and try to spend less time on social media. All these things will help you getting peace of mind and live a healthy life.

Self-Loathing Reddit

Here are some self-loathing Reddit suggestions for you:

“The one thing that made me feel much different about myself was when I realized that all the things I criticized myself about I kept also seeing in other people. I started noticing that even though other people had some of the same faults, people still liked them. If other people don’t see it as a problem, I shouldn’t beat myself up over it. Some people will like you, and some won’t; If you feel better about yourself, everything else will fall into place. My situation is a bit different, but I hope it helps you.”

“I know this sounds like a ridiculous idea, but I’m telling you first hand it works if you let it. Your eyes take in everything, even if you aren’t focusing on it. Buy a pack of post-it Note- any color Write short positive notes to yourself and put them all over the place, the mirror, the cabinets in the kitchen, the visors in your car. You don’t have to focus on them, but it seems in (I also do this with some of my homework to help me remember names and dates). The other thing I’ve been through some pretty negative times on that self-hate road is to try to focus on the things I Do like. It’s hard..really hard, but it can help over time.”

“The only thing that helped me get rid of my self-hate was realizing that it was nothing more than a bad habit. Self-hate was something I slipped into as a coping mechanism whenever things seemed overwhelming, or things didn’t go my way. After I came to these realizations, I made a conscious decision not to do it anymore. If I find my thoughts going there, I remind myself that it’s a bad habit that I want to break.”

“I know how you feel, man. I was going through the same thing. Then one day, I said to myself, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to do something different. I went and started Salsa dancing classes. 6 months later, my life was very different and much more interesting, and 12 years later, I’m happier than I have ever been. It keeps my mind occupied, my body exercised, I make a little money through it, and I’m swimming in ladies. All win.”

“Be fair to yourself, man. If you can’t stop thinking about a number of negative things, then think about the number of positive things about your life that is going well, also. (“I’m overweight, and it’s making me uncomfortable, but on the upside, I’m enjoying the breezy weather I’m having.” etc.) The environment is important for personal growth, dude, and inner environment even more so.”

“I [; honestly don’t think you can get rid of it, man, sorry about that. But you can learn to stop believing what it says. If you think about it, the there only thing which gives these thoughts any power is you believing and becoming scared of them. When you hear the voice, just listen to what it has to say, don’t cut it off or get scared. Then once you’ve done that, literally tell him to GO FUCK HIMSELF. I find this works sometimes.”

“Go outside and take a 30-minute walk. Count your breaths. Listen to some crickets chirp and freeze your ass off if it’s cold outside. When you get back inside, you can do whatever it is you typically do but with the benefit of some fresh air, which I’ve found helps clear a lot of hazy thoughts.”

“I asked myself when did I become so narcissistic that I sincerely thought people gave a shit about me and my flaws. I always hated myself and had a problem with going out/doing things I wanted because of the fear people would look at me and think to insert whatever mean insult my brain made me believe that day. I’m still working on it, but it’s helped me so far.”

“I look at it as rewiring or reconfiguring your brain very slowly and over the course of a long time. Challenge those nasty thoughts that have been allowed to exist for too long. Is it just your anxiety/depression etc. talking? Probably. Would you let someone say those things about someone you love? Fuck no! Reflect on the times you were hard on yourself and realize why. If you start to identify those patterns, soon you will be able to challenge them as they come, and in time you’ll fend them off before they’re even allowed to take root. Mind yourself.”

“I’m still not a big fan of myself, but it’s gotten better. Over the past ten years of my life, I met enough people to learn that they liked a certain quality about me. For me, it was my voice. Eventually, you can cement in your head that something, even if it’s just one thing, about you is good and start to take pride in it. This isn’t a final conclusion, but finding one good thing about yourself is a huge step to overcoming self-hate. Once you realize that not everything about you is worthless garbage, it gets a little better.”

“I faked loving myself until I actually did start to love myself. Also, one thing that helps is to behave with yourself like you would with your child. You wouldn’t tell your kid they’re a useless little dumb fuck that everyone hates, would you? You would encourage them, help them and comfort them. Behaving like that with myself is now instinct, and I’ve only started doing this about two years ago.”

“The power of pride. Think about things you’re better at than others at. Work on them. Don’t judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree. Don’t judge a monkey on how well it can hold its breath underwater. Take those things you’re good at and find a way to enjoy doing them. That’s all I can give. Sorry if it’s not the best advice.”

“I suppose you really need to work on whatever it is that is causing you to hate yourself. A counselor/trained person is really who you need to help you work on that. Other than that, going forward, trying to find something to do that you can be proud of yourself for would help. Plenty of people find some comfort/peace in turning negative experiences/events into something positive.”

“Separated myself from the people who were encouraging or contributing to myself-hate. I.E., people who constantly put me down told me I couldn’t achieve something. This included people who did nothing to lift me up when I needed it. My “friends” dropped in numbers significantly, but the people I was left with were good people and positive for me to be around. Then I began to focus on finding the things in life that make ME happy. No more doing things solely for the sake of others. Focusing on me helped me build confidence, and my close group of friends kept me positive and focused.”

Conclusion

If you want to live a happy life, want to have love in your life, you must start loving yourself. Feelings of self-loathing can have a terrible effect on your life. So this was all about the self-loathing meaning; I have tried my best to share useful information with you; I hope you will find it helpful.

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