Self-hate used to be the source of my drive, will, and determination to become someone else. The only problem? Hate eventually runs out. The good news though? Love always finds a way in.
So, you find yourself thinking, I wish I could be someone else, a lot, huh?
I know what you mean. My desire to be someone else started very young. I’m sure my earliest self-hate-fueled memory is from at least six or seven years old.
I’ve always had a gap in between my two front teeth and I realized early on that no one else in my family had one. No one on the shows I watched did and all the other kids at school seemed to have perfect smiles, in comparison to my gap-toothed one.
So, naturally, I thought it was a defect that made me less than others, which set me up for many years of wishing I could just be someone else.
When I was a girl, all I wanted to be was my Mom. As I approached puberty I just wanted to be my older sister.
As a teenager, I wished so badly that I could just be Lizzie McGuire or any of the other Disney Channel characters I watched in shows growing up.
I actually never wanted to be myself until I finally realized that, all I’ll ever be is me.
Once that realization really settled in, I started thinking, so, what do I do with that? How can I live my life and make my dreams come true, when they are all centered on becoming someone else?
When you’ve lived your entire life wishing, hoping, and trying to be anything but yourself, how the hell do you move forward when at the end of the day, all you’ll ever be is you?
In this space, I want to offer some insights from my own journey, but please remember that all I can do is share my experience.
Take what resonates with you & leave the rest. If you find yourself having really dark thoughts, please seek the help you need from a licensed professional.
How to Change your Perception of Yourself & Make Peace with Who you Are
You first need to strip back all of the layers of self-hate. That’s the hardest part. Then you will have the room to start to remember who you are.
For me, that was the strength that I saw in my mother.
The beauty I saw in my sister.
The unashamed self-expression I saw in all my tweenage Disney shows.
These were all elements of myself that I could see easier in those around me than I could myself.
So start by looking at the people you wish you could be. What exactly about them do you wish you could emulate?
Odds are, you already are those things, you just need to remember that and start to see yourself as the person you want to be because all you’ll ever be is exactly who you are.
I Stopped Living off Self-Hate & Chose to Love Myself Instead
Letting go of the self-hate, is again, the hardest part. That’s because, if you’re anything like me, that self-hate has been the fuel for most of your life.
You may have accomplished many dreams and goals because of it. I know I certainly did.
It was terrifying for me to think of how I’d be able to continue chasing after my dreams if I didn’t hate myself every step of the way. I thought if I loved myself, I’d never move forward because I would no longer have the fuel to push me.
Unfortunately, I lived in that mental spiral for many years, not sure how to stop operating off of self-hate but also, not sure how to love myself.
So, when you turn down self-hate, what else will drive you? How will you move forward not making decisions based on who you wish you could be but based on who you are?
For me, it took close to a decade to really turn down self-hate & I’m still working on it. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you can learn from me and choose self-love over hate, much sooner.
Check Out: 15 High-Vibe & Inspiring Self-Love Quotes for Instagram to Uplift You
My self-hate stemmed from many things. My appearance was definitely the catalyst for most of my toxic thoughts though.
I was too fat, too short, too ugly, too gap-toothed, and on and on.
I started getting into fashion and style because I felt like, if I could cover up my body with beautiful clothes and sparkling jewelry, no one would see the hideous ogre that I thought I was.
I could just, blend in.
I was really good at school, always pushing to get the highest grades and be loved by all my teachers. Hoping that if I could keep achieving, no one would see the facade I was hiding behind.
In college, I lost all the weight. I finally looked how I thought I should. I dove in head first to a new toxic playground, diet culture masked as healthy living.
I had made it. I was leaner, smarter (because ya know, college), achieving, traveling. I was becoming someone else. But, I was completely terrified and still fueled by self-hate.
The terror came from reaching these goals and feeling like I was finally becoming the person I always wished I could be, while deep down, I still felt so hollow and broken.
I was afraid that becoming the person I wished I could be would mean I’d feel like this forever. Worthless, less than, and never good enough.
Something wasn’t adding up. I’m achieving all the things, and yet I still feel like a piece of shit. Maybe it’s time to start letting go of these thoughts that keep bringing me down.
These thoughts that never let me live in the moment. That keep me from genuinely enjoying my life.
Have they helped me to move closer to the idea of me I always wished I could be? Yes. But do I feel like this is really me? The answer was a resounding, no.
Something had to change, I knew it but I didn’t like it.
Change is Hard in the Beginning, But Always Worth it in the End
I’d say from the age of six years old until around twenty-six, I operated off of self-hate most of the time.
It came naturally to me, most likely because I had two parents who modeled self-hate-induced behaviors in front of me.
Probably because they had parents who modeled that for them growing up and such is the vicious cycle that can be carried on from generation to generation.
So, I knew it was time to change but knowing something and actually doing anything about it, is a different story.
After I graduated from college and entered the workforce, I knew that self-hate was toxic but I didn’t think I had the time to really focus on healing myself, let alone, loving myself.
I needed to get a job, pay off these student loans and ya know, be an adult and stuff.
So, that’s what I did. I shoved the mixed feelings on my self-perception, way down.
And instead, focused on building a career and then eventually the dream of having my own business.
I thought to myself, yes, this is the best use of my time and energy. Everyone has to work, so let’s go all in and make it happen.
I’m just not going to entertain the negative thoughts as much but also, I’m not really going to think about how I’ve been surviving off of self-hate up until this point.
Surely, it’ll be fine.
I was twenty-three, living in a town in the middle of Minnesota, where I’m most definitely NOT from. Trying to start my career as a fashion designer and stop surviving off of self-hate.
Simple right?
Girl, I was so wrong.
First, if you take nothing else from this article, just note: if you are severely fucked up about your self-worth, and esteem and have lost virtually all confidence in yourself, it’s probably not a good idea to move halfway across the country, to work in a town where you know no one, are a racial minority and have really no one to lean on or talk to.
Please, learn from me. Don’t do it, babe.
The experience was not all bad. The work was fun and I learned so much about my industry and gained new contacts and experiences.
That job took me to China and showed me how the fashion industry works and further piqued my interest in sustainable fashion. So, not all bad.
BUT, my mental health and self-worth were in the toilet and I can honestly say, looking back, that held me back from fully embracing the opportunities and experiences that were offered to me at that time.
I second-guessed everything I did. This is when the self-hate was quickly replaced by the feeling of not being good enough.
Which is pretty much the same thing but expressed in different ways. I was no longer focused on hating how my body looked, although I still wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.
Instead, my mind framed it as, I’m just not qualified enough, smart enough, or talented enough. This company is going to realize that so I need to self-sabotage and get the hell out of here before they realize I’m a fraud.
You might also enjoy: 6 Transformative Self-Love Habits to Practice Now
This went on for many years, at many companies until my brain was like, lightbulb: you aren’t good enough to work for anyone else and be successful, so obviously, you should start your own business.
Oh honey, do you see how toxic living with a core of self-hate can be? I hope that is what is coming across as you read this.
So, long story short, I chose to continue the patterns of self-hate and not feeling good enough, instead of stopping to take care of myself.
I didn’t think I deserved to be taken care of. As a child, I took care of everyone else. Especially my two younger siblings.
It came naturally to me and I wanted to be helpful to my family. I saw my mother’s pain and how hard it was on her to have to take care of everything on her own.
So, I stepped into the role of caretaker for others and learned how to shove my needs to the side.
It wasn’t until 2019 that things changed. I was 28 years old and that spring, I was diagnosed with PCOS. A medical term for a series of symptoms that cause a hormonal imbalance in women, which ends up being the main cause of infertility, at least it is for me.
The doctors told me that essentially, self-care could go a long way to help me. Things like moving my body more, and eating foods that wouldn’t cause my body to stay perpetually inflamed.
In my mind, I basically heard that I needed to start taking care of myself in order to have a baby. This shook me to my core. The self-hate literally caused a physical reaction and was no longer something that I just struggled with mentally.
And then a month later, my baby sister died. She was nineteen years old.
I had taken care of her from the moment my parents brought her home from the hospital.
Now, she was just gone. I was fucked and I knew it.
Everything had changed. The future I had once seen so clearly, was now a blank, dark hole.
I opened up the floodgates of self-hate once again.
Like I said, Love Always Finds a Way In
At this point in my life, I no longer just felt hollow and broken. I was hollow and broken.
I didn’t care what happened to me anymore. I didn’t want to think about a future without my sister there. I couldn’t fathom bringing a baby into a world that now felt so empty for me.
I threw out all the progress I had made and for the next two years, I was just in pain. In every sense of the word.
My heart felt as though it had literally cracked in half. My body was so tense, inflamed, and weak. I did what daily tasks I had to do because I’m an adult but I was operating on full auto-pilot.
For me, the idea of self-love or any love at that time just seemed impossible.
All along, my husband was by my side. We found each other on a dating app at the beginning of 2016 and have basically been inseparable ever since.
His love for me is what started to chip away at my force field of self-hate. If he could love me when I feel too fat, too ugly, unsuccessful, hollow, and broken, then maybe, I could love me too.
In the summer of 2021, around two years after my sister’s death, I started to notice the effects of my self-hate on my husband. The way I was discarding myself, was now starting to hurt him.
I wasn’t giving my all to anything, including our relationship and I knew it. He was grieving too, I just chose not to see it.
I wanted to feel my pain more because I thought I deserved it more than his love.
He’s always been very much a mirror for me. Something that I never had before I met him.
So, when he was diagnosed with his own hormonal imbalance that was triggered by unhealthy lifestyle habits, I knew it was time to either leave so I wouldn’t keep bringing him down with me or we both needed to make a change.
I had to decide. Do I want to be alone and continue living on auto-pilot, hating myself and never truly living again? Or, do I want to finally start healing?
I had already lost so much, I didn’t want to lose him too. The answer was simple, it’s time to take care of yourself, it’s time to choose self-love first.
My love for him demanded that I give myself that love too. Like I said, he’s my mirror and love always finds a way in.
I’ve been working on integrating more self-love into my life since then. It hasn’t been very long and my mind and body are more adept at leaning on self-hate than love, but I’m getting there.
The first step for me was wanting to see a future, for myself. I had to decide that there could be a life that was worth living, even if it was different than the one I had originally planned for.
When the darkness starts to creep in again, I give myself the grace and the space to sit with that feeling for a moment. Then I let it go.
If you’re still with me, I’d like to offer some ideas on what to do when you find yourself in a self-hate spiral.
These are all habits that have helped me and that I still use today:
1. Feel Your Feelings
- If you are feeling a certain way about yourself, allow yourself to feel it and then let it go.
- Feelings come and go, so don’t dwell on them.
- You can learn more about your emotions from Christie Inge, I know I sure am.
2. Put Yourself in Positive Situations
- Put yourself in situations that are beneficial to you.
- For me, this means doing things that get my creative juices flowing:
- So, I started this blog and my YouTube channel, where every week I am creating something new for myself while helping other people.
- This puts me in a zone of positive energy flow instead of the stalled negativity I had been living with before, just sitting on the couch, angry scrolling on social media.
3. Move Your Body in a Way that Feels Good
- I need to be reminded of this one every day because exercise and movement are not something that I naturally want to do but I know it’s good for my PCOS, and mental health and that I always feel so much better afterward.
- Find ways to incorporate movements in your life that are for fun, not punishment. For me, that looks like taking a walk with my husband early in the morning, dancing in my living room, or stretching while my dogs crawl all over me and shower me with kisses.
4. Add Healthy Foods to Your Plate
- Don’t worry about stripping anything away. So, if you love to eat fast food every day, maybe start adding a fresh side salad or some roasted vegetables to your plate. Eat that first before you dig into the rest of your meal.
- This has helped me so much with my relationship with food, coming from a lifetime of stringent diets. I eat what I want for the most part but I always start off with a healthy portion of vegetables first and once you start doing this, you’ll want to start making more and more healthy choices with what you put in your body. The Glucose Goddess and her book have really helped me recently with making some of these healthier changes. I highly recommend it if you are dealing with things like PCOS or Diabetes.
5. Work on your Mindset
- Most importantly, find a way to heal the conversation that is happening in your mind.
- I had to learn that just because I think a thought, doesn’t make it true. This is where things like therapy, meditation, and sometimes medication come into play.
- I personally am still working on this part. My goal is to work up the courage to start therapy, I’m not there yet but I know that is the next step in my healing journey to help end this cycle of self-hate.
It’s hard to change so don’t try to make all of these changes at once. It won’t happen overnight.
I know from experience that if you try to change too much all at one time, the overwhelm will stop you in your tracks and you’ll revert back to an auto-pilot, self-hate mode.
Do what you can, when you can. Each small step will still move you forward. You are rewiring yourself to rely on grace, compassion, and love instead of hate, pain, and regret.
It’s going to take time but that’s the whole point. You deserve to take that time for yourself.
I didn’t use to believe that I was enough. I used to wish that I could be anyone else than who I am.
Life had other plans though. I now know that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be and that I am exactly who I am supposed to be.
I hope this part of my story will help you to start seeing yourself as worthy, just as you are. Life is too damn short to spend another moment wishing you could be someone other than who you are.
You are divine, valuable, loved, and completely enough, just as you are. Trust me.
