Knowing Self-Loating Understanding, Hate For Yourself

Illustration (Liza Summer/Pexels)

JAKARTA - Self-Loathing, also known as self-hathamphetamine, is a deep and widespread feeling of dissatisfaction or hatred for oneself. People who hate themselves are often involved in harsh self-criticism, struggle against feelings of worthlessness, and feel trapped in the cycle of negative thinking. This mindset can greatly affect a person's mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.

Hate for oneself is often the result of complex and deep-rooted psychological factors. Hate for oneself can stem from various experiences and influences:

1. Early Life Experience

Critical Care or Negative Social Feedback: Children growing up in an environment with parents being too critical, negligent, or abusive may internalize negative messages about themselves. It is repeatedly informed that they are "not good enough" or that their efforts are inadequate can cause feelings of shame and self-hating in adults.

Teman Sebaya suppression and rejection: Ditindas or ostracized by peers over the years can instill feelings of worthlessness and self-confidence. Repetitive rejection or social exclusion reinforces the idea that there is something inherently "wrong" with that person.

2. Trauma

Emotional, Physical, or Sexual Violence: Trauma, especially experienced as a child, can cause shame and blame themselves. Individuals may start to believe that they deserve violence or that something is wrong with them.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD): Traumatized victims may develop negative beliefs about themselves, blame themselves for the trauma or the consequences. This often causes hatred for oneself and self-care avoidance.

3. Unrealistic Perfexionism and Hope

People who set standards are impossible or believe that they should always be perfect tend to hate themselves. When they fail to achieve this unrealistic goal, they criticize themselves harshly, thus deepening their feelings of inability.

4. Social comparison

Continuously comparing yourself with others, especially in the current era of social media, can exacerbate feelings of incapacity. Seeing the success and appearance of others can make a person feel underprivileged and incapable, triggering hatred for oneself.

5. Mental Health Condition

Depression: Characteristics of depression are negative self-perceptions, where individuals view themselves as disabled, worthless, or unloveable. Depression can distort a person's thoughts, making them more vulnerable to hatred for themselves.

Anxiety: chronic anxiety can make individuals very aware of the shortcomings and mistakes they feel, leading to obsessive self-criticism and feelings of inability.

The first step to overcome self-hatism is to recognize a negative mindset as a trigger. These thoughts are often automatic and may feel like objective truth, but they are cognitive distortions that can be challenged and changed.

Here are some general patterns that need to be considered:

1. Think Multi-or-Not At All

It's also known as "thinking black and white." People get involved in this pattern of seeing themselves or their actions as perfect or total failures. For example, if you make mistakes at work, you may think, "I'm totally incompetent," rather than admitting that everyone makes mistakes.

2. Excessive generalization

Over-generalization occurs when you make a broad negative conclusion based on one incident. For example, if you fail in one test, you may think, "I always fail in every way," even if that's not true.

3. Mental filtering

This pattern involves focusing solely on the negative aspects of a situation and ignoring positive things. For example, after receiving performance reviews with feedback that are mostly positive but there is one thing that needs to be improved, you may be obsessed with criticism and ignoring praise.

4. Positive Disqualification

In this pattern, you reject experience or positive achievement by telling yourself that it is "not important" or just luck. This allows for a negative self-image to survive, although there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

5. Imagine bad things

Imagine bad things involves imagining the worst possible outcome of a situation and considering it an unavoidable thing. For example, after making a small mistake, you might think, "This will destroy everything. My life is over."

6. Give a label

labeling involves labeling yourself negative based on your behavior. For example, if you make a mistake, you may label yourself as a "stupid" or "fail," rather than admitting the error as an event that doesn't define you.

Hate yourself can feel very heavy and make you segregate, but this is not an irreversible condition. By recognizing a negative mindset as the cause of hatred for yourself. You can develop a more loving and balanced view of yourself.

Remember, healing takes time, but with compassion for yourself, cognitive restructuring, awareness, and behavioral changes. You can gradually be free from the cycle of hatred for yourself and move forward.