Self-love and Self-Hatred

Sitting with you @BlueBay You're very worthy of love, even if your biological mother was not able to give it to you. Please remember to reach out to your supports if you're feeling distressed, be gentle with yourself

Hi @BlueBay

I hear you - and it wasn't your fault that you were abused - you were not stupid - you were and still are a victim and no one asks or deserves to be treated the way you were treated

It's a pity about your mother - she has problems she will not likely ever acknowledge or remotely even own to herself that she has - like my mother - they are what I call hard cases - because they think they are okay and they are not

Little children are so vulnerable - so helpless - and I remember my mother's fears - they might have been founded on something but when I grew into adulthood I found they were unfounded - and the things she should have worried about - she didn't

And now I see this kind of thing - lack of true and comforting mother-love - as something so necessary and open and honest I am surprised I lived my whole life without it - and so many others do to - and I am amazed.

What is self-love? - it's an honest, open and sincere emotion - not at all romantic - it's a mature state of being - aware of ourselves - our faults and our best-self, our defeats and our victories. We can look at ourselves and know we may not have got to whatever we planned for ourselves as young people but we got somewhere - we got to wherever we are today.

I wrote a novella - a short novel - called The Stupid Chicken - it's about the Ugly Duckling's mother. It's about my mother who had no idea what it was she had in her nest and there was dissension between us for over 70 years and it was caused by her because I would not tolerate her behaviour. It was hard when I was a small child and I suffered for it - but I stood my ground and yet it took me most of my life until I could see what I did - and was punished for which was just sticking up for myself - was worth it.

My story - my life - is different - but it didn't exactly fill me with joy when I was small and helpless but I grew up and grew away from my mother but any contact with her was frought with snide comments and outright nastiness - and on my side I became satircal after spending years in a state of non-argument but pretty sure I had an argumentative look on my face that she couldn't stand.

It look me a long time to see I was a worthwhile person but I don't know if I hated myself - but I doubted myself which is bad too.

You've got time BlueBay - I know it's hard to get past the abuse - and the anger - and your mother - and I don't know which comes first but something must - I know you don't want to feel like this for your whole life.

My life has been so much better since I got past it - it was worth the years alone and the battle

Yeah - it's really hard when you are shoved aside by your own mother

Dec

Thanks for your imput @Gazza75

That's a very insightful account of your life - we can go on pretty well until something really smacks us in the face and makes us rethink everything and after the breakdown of your relationship with someone you really cared about

And it does sound as if the strength of it was on your side and she cared less - that would make you very very hurt and vulnerable - I understand

I am divorced too - there were strong reasons for us to break up - I am the better for it alone in the world - I enjoy my own company and feel I have been successful with my life - and my ex has been married to his current wife for a long time - longer than we were married but I really have no idea of how that is - and that is a good thing

But there are circumstances in life that are really hard - I believe we grow through them if we have a firm base to begin with - or maybe this is when the questions and the growing starts

Thanks again

Dec

@Owlunar- thanks for your thoughts and feedback. For me, with the ex, it just caught me completely by surprise as I thought everything was alright. At the time she was 1000kms away at uni, she came back to break up and that was the end of it. I tend to think its when the questions and learning starts.

I've really began to question myself and society in the last year or so since I had my own little meltdown or manic episode. Its been a time of reflection that I've never undertaken before. I'm still coming to terms with it all.

I tend to think your better off knowing how things are with the ex. I kept up with mine for a few years, but, there was nothing positive in it for me other than knowing she was alive. I pretty much stopped bothering.

I resonate so much with what @Razzle wrote. It is hard not to blame yourself for what has happened to us but I think I have very much gotten to the point now where I lay that blame solely at the feet if the perpetrators. Being a child is just that - you have no control or even idea how to stop the abuse - all you know at that age is it must be your fault and so often we are told that no-one can know or worse that no-one would believe us anyway. It makes it nearly impossible to love oneself because everything in our lives is so centred on hate. Even understanding that that has been our past does not lead to self love however - it is so hard to love oneself when so much of life has been consumed with hate.

Self love though - to me - is about concentrating on the things we can control and knowing ourselves really well. If we are comfortable within ourselves then we can find those things that we love about ourselves also. That is such a hard thing to do though when our whole lives have been tainted with shame, guilt, violence and abuse.

I don't think it is too hard to find things we like about ourselves but I do think it is a constant battle to not let the self-hate parts of our minds take over. It is so much harder to see and feel the positives when there is a continual battle going on in our minds.

I choose now (mostly) to leave the past in the past as it is nothing I can change. What I can change is how I think about myself and not let the constant negativity in my own mind take over. A big part of that has been laying the blame where it belongs - with those that perpeptuated the violence and not at my own feet. My past certainly has moulded me into the person I am but it does not define me - and that is me working more towards self-love than self-hatred.

@Razzle

Maybe the things you do that are healing may not have instant effect, but if even a tiny part of you thinks it is good then I would keep at it. All the mini moments add up. One day your mind may allow itself to be flooded by your healing energies. Somehow that can release a lot of hurt.

@Gazza75

Sorry to hear of your break up, but I love your contributions on the forum. Hi!

@BlueBay

I cant say any more. I just hope your experience with grand daughter shows you glimmers of what it might be like.

@Razzle you were just at a little girl, and couldn't stop it,

could you?

Shecouldn't stop it,

and it broke her,

and she so desperately needs you to please come back to her...

Hi @Appleblossom, I enjoy your contributions as well 🙂 The breakup hurt a lot at the time, but, it was a long time ago now and I'm well and truly over it.

@Razzle - I can only admire your spirit and strength in sharing your experiences with us and hope it gives you some release from the passed.

hi @Dec and others on the thread. @Gazza75 @AK100 @Appleblossom

For me self-love has been a full-time job at times and in the 'too hard basket' at other times.

@Razzle I was abused a lot as a child and have no connection to my child self, it's like it happened to a different person. I did protest @Razzle , I got furious and enraged while I was being abused, I screamed for it to stop, for hours. My mother's particular pleasure was for her to provoke me into a rage and then keep me there sobbing and screaming for hours for her to stop. She enjoyed it. She was a sadist and it happened thru all my developmental years. Now I'm middle-aged and have a rage/psychotic/nightmare, very debilitating, mental illness. So my point is, don't feel bad that you didn't say "no" and don't feel bad that you didn't scream "stop" and don't feel bad that you didn't get angry and try to make it stop. Because I did all those things and it only fed my mother's pleasure and no-one believed me. I learned not to tell anyone because no-one believed me. Child abusers are such artful manipulators, a child has no power to stop them. And for my troubles I now have a rage problem & a psychotic illness.

Self-love was totally foreign to me. I did a 30 day, self-love, online course with a life coach a coupla years back. She was American and used the f-bomb which I liked because I had a lot of rage and used the f-bomb a lot! The course was confronting in that it was mainly about taking responsibility for my own well-being. My mother neglected to feed me or dress me in weather-appropriate clothing. She never took me to the doctor. So now as an adult I have all these responsibilities that are foreign to me - go to the doctor, buy yourself a warm winter coat, spend money on nutritious food. It's a lot! The course also focused on accepting the whole you, warts and all, and forgiving yourself for your short-comings, mistakes & messes. That is the harder part as I tend to just see those as weaknesses and flaws. It's hard. I still struggle with dental care & going to the dentist. It's a lot of responsibility.

These days, for self-love/self-esteem, I do like to rely on my friends for positive feed-back. I know it goes against the grain of self-love to look to others for validation & worth but there it is. I've worked really hard after 7 years of mental illness-induced isolated to build a group of friends and build family bonds to have supportive & enjoyable people in my life. And I do like it when they support me, celebrate me, need me...that's what tells me I am lovable and good.

@Zoe7 @AK100 @Appleblossom

I hear what you are saying, and I know how I feel about “her” is totally irrational, that no one in their right mind would feel like that toward an abused child. I think the problem is that as an adult I can see what “she” should have done, I can see those threats were empty and “she” just had to speak up.

Its almost like to stop myself from being angry at everyone else and hating everyone else - or just hating me - I can direct it all at “her”.

There is so much I dislike about myself now, things I know I react badly to but should react differently to, and I can blame it all on “her”. I can’t stand anyone touching me, particularly touching my hair. Occasionally my husband will walk behind be and massage my shoulders - I say nothing, he enjoys doing that, but I hate every second of it. Getting a massage voucher as a gift would be my worst nightmare. I have longish hair, and occasionally he’ll stroke it - and I tense up so much I feel like I’m going to snap in half. This is the kind of stuff that should feel natural and pleasurable, but my reactions are all wrong, and that makes me feel bad. And I blame “her” for it because she didn’t stop it happeneing way back then. I know “she” is me, but I do look at her as a seperate person.

Maybe I’m not making any sense, trying to connect to her feels all too hard, I’ve tried, and I know I’ll try again. Sometimes I need someone to blame, and it’s just easier for it to be “her”