In this post: How to move past self-hatred, 9 things you can do to love yourself, how to start reaching your full potential.
As someone who had spent probably the majority of my life hating myself, I had pretty much accepted that it was just the way it was going to be for me. Some people are the way they are and that’s it, right? Doesn’t matter what they do, that’s just how it is and no matter what they try, they can’t seem to change.
Well, I’m here as proof that, no, that is not the case. I have finally stopped hating myself and you can too.
Sure, I still get annoyed at myself from time to time and occasionally catch myself using words like ‘idiot’ and ‘dumbass’ in my self-talk, but I no longer want to beat myself up and possibly do something even worse.
What was the key to this change, you ask? Well, it was probably the combination of a lot of little actions rather than one ‘silver-bullet’ action (‘cause trust me, I tried a lot of them!). But I think, for the most part, the change really started to come about when I realised that my self-hatred was in no way serving me, or anybody else, and I committed to myself that I was going to work towards a more productive mindset. One where I treasured myself instead.
That’s all well and good, I hear you say, but it’s a bit vague for me to apply in my own life. That is why we are going to dive a bit deeper so that YOU CAN make the change as well. Read on!
Psst: I also created a Self-Love Journal with 31 journal prompts to guide you on your own self-love journey using the power of journaling. Click here to grab it now!
Why is loving yourself good?
First I want to start with why loving yourself is a good thing to do. For a long time, I thought that if I loved myself, I would be seen as being ‘stuck-up myself’ and a big egotist.
Who wants to come across as an in your face ‘I can do no wrong’ type of person, am I right?!! But as it turns out you CAN love yourself without being this type of person and there are plenty of reasons why you would want to love yourself including…
- You will be happier in yourself
- You will be more resilient
- It is easier to love others when you love yourself
- You will be more confident to pursue your goals (and less likely to self-sabotage)
- You can achieve remarkable things when you value yourself because you can tap into your full potential
- It frees up your mind to focus on other things (rather than thinking about how you hate yourself so much)
- You will have a quiet inner strength
I hope this helps you to see that loving yourself is a great idea and something worth working on.
Related post: What Is Self-Love And What It Isn’t
Why do we feel self-hatred?
Before we take a look at what actions are going to help move you away from self-hatred, let’s look at how it may have come about in the first place, to give you an understanding of how it developed for you.
Doing this helped me to realise that how I felt towards myself was largely as a result of past experiences, factors external to myself, negative perceptions I had, and current detrimental day-to-day behaviour towards myself. When I broke it down like this I could see that, with time, I could work through putting the negative stuff behind me and move forward in a more positive way.
My guess is that it will be the same for you too and that even if you feel like a ‘bad person’ now, you can change things moving forward and start to see yourself in a better light once you’ve done the work needed to heal old wounds.
Reasons for self-hatred can include one or many of the following:
- Not valuing who you are as a person
- Beating yourself up for mistakes
- Feeling inferior to others
- Getting bullied by others
- Blaming yourself for something bad that happened in your life
- Not getting consistent love and encouragement (especially while growing up)
- Feeling like you are a burden on society
- Having people criticise you in negative ways and taking it to heart
- Feeling like you don’t contribute anything worthwhile
- Negative self-talk
- Feeling like it would be egotistical to love yourself
Identify which ones you feel contributed to your self-hatred and take a deep breath as you reflect on the fact that these reasons are either external to you OR result in your behaviour/perception towards yourself. They are not you and so you CAN move past them.
How can I move past self-hatred?
Using what you learnt above, think about which of the below actions can help you to move past your current behaviour patterns and replace them with ones that encourage and build self-appreciation and worth. Please know that the actions I list here are not the only methods that could work, but they are ones that I have found helpful in my own journey.
Get professional help:
Mental health professionals can help you to:
- Deal with any past experiences that are causing feelings of hatred.
- Guide you through changes in your behaviour towards yourself.
- Learn how to deal with criticism coming in from external sources and shield yourself from its’ effects.
Use journaling:
Journaling is a great tool to work through root causes and talk yourself up before you face your day (think of it as giving yourself a pep talk).
Just the act of writing things down can help us to see things more clearly and work through the emotions they bring up more effectively than if we just keep everything swirling around in our heads.
Related post: What Is Journaling (Plus 10 Ways It Can Make You Happy)
Replace negative self-talk with positive words:
Negative words can tear us down and when we are talking to ourselves this way, we are only damaging our self-worth. Instead, become your own cheerleader and best friend! Use your words to build yourself up.
Related post: Turn Around Your Negative Self-Talk
Stop beating yourself up:
Everyone makes mistakes all the time it is just part of life :-/ Instead, remember all the things you accomplished with or without mistakes.
Got your teeth brushed without choking – win!
Okay, that is possibly just a little overboard, but my point is that we often forget just how much we achieve each day when we are beating ourselves up for any mistakes.
Forgive yourself for past mistakes:
Following on from the last point, we also often hold a lot of resentment towards ourselves for past mistakes we’ve made and it doesn’t do us any favours. As much as we’d sometimes like to, we can’t change the past, we can only learn from what has happened.
Decide to forgive yourself so that you can move on and make the most of your life from this moment on.
Bust negative perceptions about yourself:
Do you have any beliefs about yourself that stop you from loving yourself? Something like you’re not smart enough to amount to anything much because you dropped out of school, or that you’re never going to be able to earn enough to live a comfortable life because you’re terrible with money…
Often, these types of beliefs are holding you back from seeing yourself in a positive light, but they’re just your perception of yourself rather than reality. You can overcome past experiences or behaviours if you bust these perceptions and start to believe in yourself instead.
That’s when you can work towards reaching your full potential by finding ways you can do things rather than finding excuses of why you can’t.
Find support:
Reach out to find supportive communities to be a part of where encouragement and positivity thrive and develop supportive friendships and boost each other up with kind words.
On the flip side, distance yourself from anyone who is consistently negative or abusive towards you (or others – you don’t want to support that crap!).
If you can’t distance yourself physically, work on distancing yourself mentally by imaging an invisible shield coming up in front of you when they say anything hurtful.
Related post: How To Protect Yourself From Negativity And Be More Positive
Use those feelings to your advantage:
Use your feelings of dissatisfaction towards yourself to work out what impact you DO want to have in the world.
How do you want to contribute/give back?
These can then form the basis of goals you can create and work towards to achieve more fulfilment and satisfaction from your behaviours.
Related post: The Top 3 Ways To Learn Your Core Values
Learn to love who you are right now:
I’ll admit, this one seemed crazy to me at first, I thought surely I needed to drastically change myself before I could love myself. It can take time, but learning to appreciate that you are amazing just as you are is possible and worthwhile.
Everything you need to be is already inside of you.
You are unique and special just by being here. It also doesn’t hurt that you can achieve incredible things in life too!
–
So to recap, here are 9 things you can do to move from self-hatred towards self-love:
- Get professional help
- Use journaling
- Replace negative self-talk with positive words
- Stop beating yourself up
- Forgive yourself for past mistakes
- Bust negative perceptions about yourself
- Find support
- Use those feelings to your advantage
- Learn to love who you are right now
Hopefully, this post has shown you that not only is it possible to develop a healthy, loving relationship with yourself, but there are also plenty of benefits to be had by doing so. Keep reminding yourself of this: it IS possible to overcome self-hatred and move towards a more productive relationship with yourself. Myself and many others are proof of it!
I really want to encourage you to start your own journey towards creating the changes needed to live a happier life. The first step is to decide to take action to make the change. It won’t happen by itself, but it can happen and will if you commit to yourself.
To help you get started on your own self-love journey, I’ve created an 80-page Self-Love Journal with 31 journal prompts to guide you through your own self-love journey. Click here to grab it now!
Let me know what action you will take today to build your self-worth and then report back as to how you get on!
All the best,
Sarah xo
Did you enjoy this post? Please share the goodness by pinning the image below!
If you are currently feeling severe self-hatred and/or depression, please know that you can get through this, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. If you are feeling suicidal or on the edge of reason, please reach out right now by contacting family, friends or by using one of the contacts here. Know that others have overcome these dark feelings and are now living lives full of joy. I want that for you too, so please have hope and start your own journey to happiness xo
