self hate and self hope

Self hate is something that I struggle with and have struggled with for as long as I can remember. Self hate is broad but it can be narrowed down to a voice in your head that is usually referred to as “the inner critic”. This voice can vary in aggressiveness, from giving you smaller remarks to downright wanting you to be wiped off the face of the earth, which is ironic when it’s main purpose, is to keep you alive.

This voice like everything else has its roots in childhood, where we swallow other peoples (our caregivers) attitudes towards us. What we swallow is not necessarily their behaviour but what we perceive that behaviour to mean. To a parent, failing to comfort their child might simply mean that they are tired, or had a bad day at work, while for the baby it might mean “I’m unlovable”. There is no point in arguing what is “the right perception” because there is no such thing, we all have our subjective realities and a baby’s perspective is much different than a grown person’s, that doesn’t make it invalid. The problem in this scenario arises when we are not able to convey to the baby that it is not their fault, it is not that we don’t love them, but that we fell short of our own expectations of ourselves as parents. Now this makes things complicated because in a parents weaker moments this is exactly what they are not able to convey.

So we have a child that is convinced it is unlovable. To cope with this we can either accept we are unlovable, which is too much to bear as it threatens our entire existence, or we can internalize this attitude of the caregiver, that way we are on the same page as them and therefor safe. If we are crying and our caregivers give us the attitude of this being a burden on them and they wishing we could just shut up, to stay close to them, we internalize this same attitude. And we then see how this voice is born. Next time we cry we hear this voice “shut up, just suck it up, no one’s gonna love a crybaby”. And if we just leave all of this unspoken, we are often completely unaware it’s happening.

So we grow up, and there are many times where our caregiver(s) are not able to caretake us they way we would’ve needed, and where instead of owning that they blame or shame us for our feelings. As a result this voice, the inner critic, expands to all kinds of areas and becomes a big entity within our consciousness. It’s there to tell us to stay in line, to make us acceptable to our caregivers, to ensure our survival. And it doesn’t just say what you’re parents directly told you in terms of disapproval, it also internalizes all the times they said nothing, did nothing, failed to comfort you, seemed busy or preoccupied, gave you looks or sighs, or simply weren’t there.

The result of all this is a seemingly viscous, angry inner voice that tells you you are a terrible person, you suck at your job, you should just go die, you’re pathetic, you don’t deserve love, and all kinds of things. And we can be more or less aware of what it’s saying, sometimes we just get the feeling or the attitude in our bodies. And it creates a lot of pain. It feels like living with the enemy in your own head. Never safe from criticism, never good enough, never whipped hard enough. So you work harder - doesn’t work. You try to hide from it - doesn’t work. You plead, please let me be, which just seems to anger it more. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

Eventually, you begin to hate it back. Why is it so hard on you? Why can’t it leave you alone? You now have this inner world at war. These parts criticising and fleeing each others rage and hate. Until very recently I strongly disliked this part I refer to as the inner critic. Even if I on a theoretical level understood that it is trying to keep me alive, it didn’t feel like that, it felt more like it was trying to kill me. Until I talked to it.

You see, what we fail to see when we begin to hate this part back, is that we are projecting onto this part the feelings that were not possible to express in childhood, not towards ourselves, but towards our parents. Feeling anger towards or hating our parents was absolutely not an option if we wanted to stay safe, so we directed this anger inwards instead, towards ourselves. This inner critic has merely adopted what it perceived to be our parents feelings about us. So the potential hate or dislike we feel towards our inner critic, may just be the same hate or dislike we felt towards our parents in those moments when they failed to meet our needs. And this is when it gets interesting, because upon talking to this part, I found out that beyond the anger it feels about me not living up to my own standards (my caregivers standards), it feels anger for being disliked or hated back. To it, it is loving me. Sure, not in the softest of ways but it did what it did because it had to, and this is how it thinks I will stay alive and get what I need. How I will get the approval of other people. It is helping me. So when I inevitably start hating this part, it in turn feels deeply unappreciated, alone and mistreated. I let it speak through me:

“Why am I helping you? I am so tired! I never get anything back, I work tirelessly for you, you are alive because of me and you hate me? I am completely alone, I have never felt understood ever. You make me the bad guy always. If anyone feels unlovable it is me, but I deal with it, and I get to work so that you won’t have to feel that way. I am so tired.”

Hearing this part speak I realized I’ve been completely identified with this other part of me, the one that feels criticized, that I never stopped to think about how “my inner critic” is feeling. It is hurting, bleeding really, working so hard to try and keep me safe the only way it knows how to. And I either hide from it, dismiss it, or outright curse it out. Of course it would feel angry and hurt. No wonder the anger escalates. I felt regret and sadness well up in me as I listened, and I could genuinely tell this part I was sorry. What happened next was an internal kind of alchemy, where “my inner critic” softened upon being heard felt and understood, and it could see that the way it’s going about keeping me safe is in fact not working so well anymore. It started crying and burst out:

“Why have I hated myself my whole life if it doesn’t work? If it doesn’t get me anywhere? I feel so tricked. I put my life into this. This is how I learned to do it. I don’t know anything else. I’m sorry.”

Feeling deep compassion for what this part was saying, I saw for the first time, that I had mistaken the tactic this part used for the part itself. I made the part itself bad, much like parents make the child bad or wrong instead of separating doing bad and being bad. This part has used this tactic, and it is not even a strange one. Knowing what we know about childhood and our dependency on our caregivers, it’s the only thing to do if you can’t get help from the outside world. You do what you can to stay alive emotionally. For the first time, I saw this part clearly. A hurt, burdened aspect of myself, so isolated and so starved for love. And most importantly, so so strong. I saw the incredible strength this part has, how it is such a fighter, a survivor, a true warrior. I was moved and humbled, and I felt a deep love and compassion for this part wash over me. We are not enemies, we are the same. We feel the same things (hurt, anger, isolation) - locked in a war against each other - for what? Fighting for relief thinking it will come from a win, when really, relief is felt in the embrace of each other.

This is what happens, when we open up to really hear these parts or people, when we open up to understand their perspective, it’s never unreasonable. It’s never shocking. From their point of view and their experience, everything they do makes perfect sense and is never anything malicious. They orient themselves in the hurt as best as they can, just like the rest of us. And imagine with the strength this part possesses, all the wonderful things it can accomplish. If we together can find a better tactic for it, to help meet our needs, imagine what it can do for the world. It was never about getting “the inner critic” to be quiet, it was about me understanding it. Listening to it, showing appreciation for it’s intention and how hard it has fought for me. And as a result of that, a change of direction. A change of tactics on behalf of both parts. But most of all, it was and is, about love. It’s about ending the war not by winning, but by embracing what I think is my enemy and seeing that we are really, one and the same.