May 25, 2026 • 46 mins
Being your own harshest critic can feel productive, protective, even familiar, but over time, it becomes less of a motivator and more of a cage. In this episode, we explore the psychology of self-hatred - where it begins, how it becomes a deeply ingrained, and what it actually steals from us over time.
We explore:
• How early experiences shape the inner critic
• Why self-hatred can feel protective
• The myth of cruelty as a motivator
• The neural pattern of self-hatred
• The role of self sabotaging
• 6 practical tips to build a better relationship with yourself
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Our favourite sources:
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8341.2011.02044.x
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167211410246
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0033904
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here. Back for another episode.
Not much chit chat this morning, guys, not much small talk,
because we have a big episode, a big episode on
something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, which
is how normalized it has become to actively hate yourself
(00:49):
and how almost hated you are online in person, in
the real world. If you say or show that you
love yourself, how in the world did we get here?
Why does that make any sense? And to perhaps get
a little bit conspiratorial on your who is benefiting from this,
Who is benefiting from this system of self loathing? Who
(01:10):
set this all up so that self hatred is the
status quo and self love is the thing that is
seen as sinful or bad. It just seems to me
a little bit ridiculous, And I also personally think it's
keeping a lot of us stuck in places that we
don't want to be I've been saying this so much
(01:30):
on the podcast recently, in so many different episodes, you
can't hate yourself into a successful life. And I thought,
you know, there's only so many times I can say
that before I just do a full frickin episode on it.
And today is that day. We're gonna look at the
science and the psychology that proves you cannot hate yourself
(01:53):
into a successful life. And yeah, essentially just dissects where
your self hates comes from and why it's lying to you.
You know, it's not going to make you humble. It's
not going to make you more successful. Because of that humility.
You cannot bully yourself into being better, even if it
(02:14):
gets momentary results. It is not a long term motivational
force the way that we tend to think it will be.
This is a big episode today. We have a lot
to explore. I really particularly want to drill into the
origins of this feeling and of this like psychological self loathing,
(02:36):
and then also of course provide some evidence based strategies
to eliminate that mindset, especially if you were in your twenties,
because if there was going to be a time in
your life where you really needed to have a deep
sense of self belief, it would be this time, It
would be right now. So I feel like if you
are struggling with self doubt and self loathing that has
(02:57):
become insidious and is bleeding into everything that you're doing,
this is the perfect episode for you. Without further ado,
let's talk about why hating yourself will get you know
where you want to be, and of course the alternative
stay with us. Let's start here, why does it feel
(03:19):
easier to hate ourselves rather than love ourselves like instinctually?
Why Why does it feel easier to dismiss a compliment
or to be self deprecating in front of other people,
Or why does it feel easier to focus in on
all the things we dislike about our bodies and dislike
(03:40):
about our personalities and dislike about our work ethic rather
than the things that we like that doesn't come from nowhere?
And the best evidence that this is an external influence
first and foremost that becomes internalized. The best evidence for
this is being around children. Right, being around kids and
(04:00):
seeing that before the age of four or five, children
have no concept that there is something about themselves that
could be unlikable. Like that is not even something that
enters their consciousness. They don't even they don't even think
about it. But then it's almost like there comes a
(04:20):
point where a switch gets flipped, a switch gets turned.
My friend actually she has two kids, one who is
three and one who was eight. I was watching them
the other day and we were doing like arts and craft,
and like, the younger one is just like scribbling, she's
having fun and like doesn't really care like exploring, and
(04:42):
the eight year old was like, this one isn't good,
Like this one is bad. My art is bad, Like
I have to start over again. And just like the parallel,
like the juxtaposition between these two people was like quite striking.
So where does this come from? When does this self
loathing first hit? Psychology will tell us that a lot
(05:03):
of self hatred starts as a form of adaptation. When
we're young. We don't yet have like a fully formed,
stable sense of self, so we often borrow our reflections
and borrow our sense of identity from other people who
we spend a lot of time around. Parents, teachers, siblings, peers.
(05:25):
They kind of help us build the first draft of
how you understand yourself by offering suggestions but sometimes also
offering criticism, and also by displaying self criticism towards themselves.
This is what we call This first sense of self
is what we call the evaluative self. We learn about
(05:46):
what it means to be human by seeing what others
are doing, thinking about what others are doing, copying other
people's behaviors, and also comparing our own behavior or our
own little lives to we see around us. At some
point we become aware that there is an audience. We're
not always performing for the same audience, though we become
(06:09):
aware as children there is an audience. Some of our
childhood audiences were a lot meaner. Some of our parents
weren't very nice. Some of our peers weren't very nice.
Some of our teachers weren't very nice. If those early
environments are warm, you often learn that mistakes are survivable
and that your worth will remain intact even when you
get things wrong, even when you're not perfect. You're happy
(06:32):
to explore, You're happy to bounce back, You're happy to
you just are resilient. Like I think about my friend's kid. Right, Yeah,
she didn't like her art, but just because she didn't
like it when it was compared to like the idea
of somebody else's picture right, not because her parents were
like screaming at her that she was terrible at everything
she does like she didn't like it. From a comparative sense.
(06:55):
For some people, though, like their environment, like the inner
critic was always external. It was a highly critical, rejecting, humiliating, unpredictable, cruel,
completely disengaged person who was like speaking things in their
ear telling them they were terrible. Children are watching so closely,
(07:18):
they are listening so closely, and they internalize the tone
of our own language, not just towards them, but towards
ourselves as well. Research has consistently found that higher self
criticism and self hatred as an adult, if you have
more of those things as an adult. It's greatly associated
with early memories of parental rejection or conditional affection from parents,
(07:43):
but also from favoritism, from favoritism from teachers, from childhood bullying,
basically just harmful experiences that occurred right as we were
forming our valuative self. For example, there was a two
thousand and six study published in the Journal of Effective Disorders,
and it looked at the impact of childhood verbal abuse
(08:05):
on how adults view themselves. They analyze the data of
like six thousand people, and they found that heavy or
high levels of criticism and discipline and like non purposeful discipline.
Experiencing that as a child has a really significant impact
on the development of things like adult depression and adult anxiety.
(08:30):
Research has described the role of self criticism in these
studies as basically a full mediator. So this basically means
that the verbal abuse didn't directly cause the depression, but
it causes a child to develop a self critical brain
because of course they're going to believe what an adult
(08:51):
says about them. They're the role model, they're the adult,
and that self critical brain is what drives some parts
or a lot of parts of adult depression. A similar
story is definitely seen in terms of pure experiences as
well when we're kids, when we are teenagers, this weird
(09:15):
social pecking order can emerge as people kind of like
fight to promote their evaluative selves and to feel good
about themselves. Like, the main way that we feel good
about ourselves as children and teenagers is in reference to
other people, and so to feel better, we often have
to resort to criticizing others, bullying, making remarks jokes, feeling
(09:39):
a sense of superiority, that sort of thing. Of course,
that's not always the case, but it's very, very prevalent,
and that definitely reinforces the self hatred of the person
being targeted. For sure, it also reinforces the hatred of
the person doing the targeting, Like there is a reason
that as teenagers, when we are insecure, we feel the
need to diminish somebody else, and it means that, like
(10:01):
every person in this situation feels terrible. This is why
self hatred can feel so intimate, because it starts so
so young. Someone else's voice, when heard enough times, with
enough authority or emotional force, can stick with us and
form part of who we think we are eventually, like,
(10:24):
if this criticism becomes loud enough, it no longer needs
somebody else to be present, Like we inherently believe that
yes we aren't that talented, Yes we aren't that attractive,
Yes we aren't that smart, Yes we aren't somebody that
others want to be around, because we're hearing it from
maybe a parent, we're hearing it from teachers, We're hearing
it from peers. And then something even more complicated happens
(10:48):
self hatred starts to feel useful because it feels so normal.
Sometimes I don't know, we end up hating ourselves as
a form of self protection, thinking that, you know, if
I criticize myself enough, if I criticize myself before anybody else,
can I get to feel prepared. If I make fun
(11:09):
of myself first, I'm in control of the humiliation instead
of waiting to be surprised by it. That is why
self hatred can feel so oddly comforting, because it is familiar.
Because we take what other people have said about us,
we become so normalized and comfortable around it. We begin
to feel like, well, if we do it before them,
(11:32):
then we can make this thing useful. This is one
of the biggest myths about the inner critic, that if
you stopped tearing yourself apart, you would become lazy, you
would become indulgent, you would become complacent, unambitious, you would
become morally kind of soft. And there is this kind
of cultural admiration for harshness, especially when it is directed inwards,
(11:56):
that we actually tend to confuse with discipline like we
act like being emotionally brutal with ourselves is evidence that
we are willing to push ourselves that we are willing
to push our ego aside, and therefore we must be
a good person. We must be a hard working person,
we must be a worthy person. Psychologically, that makes sense,
and it makes sense why people end up here, end
(12:18):
up in this state of just like constant self loathing
without even realizing it. If you grew up in environments
where you know your parents were also harsh towards themselves
as well, not just towards you or harsh to each other,
you know you also have a higher chance of internalizing
self hatred as a normal part of life. For example,
if you had a mother or a father who was
(12:40):
always criticizing or complaining about their body as a way
to force themselves to stick to diets, which I feel
like is a lot more common than we realize, and
I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Your mind
then learns that hatred equals motivation, and motivation equals progress.
We need hatred to make ourselves do the things and
(13:00):
stick to the things that we said we were going
to do. Here's the thing, and this may sound like
I'm like, I'm about to contradict myself, but stick with me.
Self hatred actually can act as a very potent immediate
motivator initially because it activates the brain's threat response and
it uses shame or frustration or rage as a force
(13:25):
for change, essentially creating a very high pressure, panic driven
need to avoid perceived inadequacy. So initially, being motivated by
self hatred might actually get you to act. It might
actually get you to do certain things, but it has
a dual function in one way, like, yes, it may
(13:47):
get you to the start line, but as soon as
you are ready to start or as soon as you
are halfway through the race, that self hatred that you
relied upon to motivate you suddenly becomes the thing that
is going to make this all about self punishment, and
it's suddenly going to become the thing that's going to
make you feel like you are not capable. There is
no off switch use self hatred for motivation. It will
(14:09):
eventually demotivate you because inherent in your self hatred is
this feeling that you are not worthy, you are not capable.
This hard thing that you are trying to do, you
actually can't do it. So on the surface, it might
seem that like self criticizing voice is helping you improve,
but actually that same inner voice has a much deeper,
(14:30):
more profound, more wounding impact because it's simply it's just
not sustainable. And we know by now that that same
self hatred will fuel burnout, it will fuel anxiety, it
will have long term negative impacts. There's this really fascinating
twenty twenty two study that measured levels of self hatred, perfectionism,
(14:52):
and stress in two hundred and twenty students in the UK,
and this study found that self hatred is one of,
well is actually the main driver for perfectionist tendencies. People
are rarely perfectionists because they like themselves. They're perfectionists because
they're searching for this final and elusive piece of proof
(15:14):
they actually deserve to be here, and that creates an
intense and great deal of stress and pressure. In this way,
self hatred works. In this way, self hatred works the
same way as any maladaptive coping mechanism. For example, if
you drink a lot to counteract social anxiety, yes, you
may feel more confident in the moment, but the next
(15:36):
day this only fuels your anxiety more and it actually
doesn't do anything to improve your baseline level of confidence.
The same can be said for self hatred. Again, it
may get you to over prepare for one presentation, it
may get you to push yourself harder in one workout,
(15:59):
or it may get you to obsess over getting better
for one assignment or one exam. But as a long
term strategy, it erodes the very capacities that you need
the most to succeed in the long term, like confidence,
like curiosity, like resilience, self trust, and also the ability
(16:20):
to recover after setbacks. Self criticism is actually consistently associated
with diminished goal progress across almost all research, diminished feelings
of self efficacy, diminished feelings of preparedness. One of the
best examples of this was five studies done by researchers
at the University of Massachusetts that found that people who
(16:43):
motivated themselves through self criticism and through self hatred actually
moved slower towards their goals. By contrast, people who had
self oriented standards and who had and set goals because
they wanted to prove that they could do it, because
they wanted to prove their own self belief, or because
(17:05):
they genuinely enjoyed what they were doing. This was a
much greater predictor of goal progress. The people who had
self hatred as well. They may have shown more initial progress,
but often tape it off because it's not a sustainable motivator.
And this is really important to remember. Although you know
our self hatred is disguised as having high standards, it's
(17:28):
not the same thing. Like high standards occur because you
believe you deserve to be elevated, self hatred occurs because
you believe that you're destined not to be who you
want to be. So we can't confuse them and think
that they're the same thing. We can't think that I'm
just I'm just putting pressure on myself because I really
(17:49):
think that I'm capable and more, I'm just putting pressure
on myself because this is just like the way that
I've always done things. There's probably a reason why you
have to keep relying on self hatred, and you have
to keep relying on this short term, really intense kind
of motivator because you haven't built any of the actual
long term reserves and sense of self worth that would
allow you to achieve your goals efficiently, effectively and to
(18:13):
the level that you would want them to, like to
the level that you want for yourself. So let's take
a short break here. Then we're gonna get into how
we can counteract this. Like we kind of know now,
Like it's pretty clear self hatred isn't gonna work. What's
the alternative? Because it actually might not just be self love.
(18:33):
I think it's gonna be and I know that it's
gonna be something a little bit more complicated, So stay
with us. We lose a lot when we hate ourselves
because we implicitly feel less deserving, we implicitly feel less capable,
and we implicitly feel less lucky. Now, obviously having a
(18:56):
little bit of humility is great and is very very important,
and I think also allows us to not seem like
an asshole. But when it is just pure self hatred,
that quickly turns into unconscious self sabotage. I did a
whole episode on self sabotage, like way back when I
(19:17):
first started the podcast, so I may need to do
a little bit of a refresh. But self sabotage is
essentially when we protect ourselves from possible failure by creating
excuses to not try, by delaying a decision, by rejecting
ourselves before anyone else gets the chance to do it
for us because we unconsciously believe their rejection is inevitable anyways.
(19:43):
Now it might be that you say to yourself, you know,
I won't apply for that job because I probably I'm
not going to get it anyways, because I'm not worth it.
Like I'm not going to go talk to that person
because they're probably never going to be interested. I'm not
going to post that thing, post the content that I
care about, launch the business, launch the course, ask like,
(20:05):
do anything that I actually think is important, because then
I would have to find out that I didn't deserve
it all along. Then I would be embarrassed, then I
would be judged when it failed. That is how self
hatred creates bad luck by stopping us from trying. Research
from the University of Rochester shows that self sabotaging comes
(20:25):
with real psychological cost over time. It reinforces maladjustment, It
reduces competent satisfaction, meaning that we are never happy even
when we do succeed, because we always think that it's
some kind of fluke, and it's linked to negative mood,
substance abuse, and just lower overall intrinsic motivation because you
(20:48):
never try as well. Even if you do succeed, we
think that it's a fluke. But often in the situations
where we don't because we never try, you never gather
the new evidence that those critical thoughts about yourself are wrong,
and so the old negative belief stays unchallenged. You do
not learn that maybe they would have said yes. You
do not learn that maybe you were ready for that
(21:10):
new role, but maybe people do really like you. Maybe
there was an amazing opportunity on the other side of
you just asking that question. The only truth that remains
true and that is reinforced when you self sabotage because
of self hatred, is that your inner critic is helpful.
(21:31):
Is that it is useful and it was correct after
all because look, you failed. Look nothing happened. See it
was trying to protect you. That was going to be
the outcome all along. At least you didn't embarrass yourself
in the process. I think the other cost of self hatred,
other than just the fact that you always lose, is
that it consumes an unbelievable amount of time, honestly, more
time than we probably have in our busy life. If
(21:53):
you're constantly hypervigilant and monitoring how you've sound, how you look,
come across, perform, or are being like perceived and you are,
You're just using so many attentional resources that could have
gone into actually living. When your attention is trapped in
self surveillance, you stop being in your own life, you
(22:16):
stop actually being present, and you just start performing the
second guessing alone, literally second guessing. It doubles every second
you would normally spend just thinking and acting. Another thing
to be cautious of is that self hatred can leak outwards.
We've spoken a lot about, you know, the individual cost
of this, like inner critic, but shame has a way
(22:40):
of becoming very relationally toxic. When people are so wrapped
up in this chronic like self contempt and self hatred,
they may become more irritable, more defensive, more comparative, and
I think it's safe to say more likely to project
onto others because we're more likely to feel threatened by
(23:01):
the traits we see in those around us, and we're
more likely to feel threatened, especially by the traits that
we've taught to punish in ourselves. So we see somebody
who really likes themselves and we think, well, why can't
I do that why don't I have that opportunity, I'm
going to hate them for it. A really interesting study
published in twenty fourteen actually looked at the way that
both guilt and shame manifest in social outcomes, and what
(23:24):
they found was that actually, whilst guilt can feel more
pro social behaviors, shame was more associated with maladaptive social patterns.
So things like aggression, withdraw, judgment not because people wanted
to be these things. They didn't want to do these things.
They don't want to be that person. Nobody wants to
(23:45):
be that person. It just felt necessary to protect themselves
and to protect the inner critic from having to admit
that maybe it was wrong, maybe there was a better
way of living that wasn't just hating ourselves into existence.
So it just doesn't. It never stays internal, like a
feeling is heavy and harsh as self hatred is going
(24:07):
to show up in friendships, it's going to show up
in work, It's going to show up in how generous
you are, how understanding you can be. It's going to
show up, yeah, especially in no situations, because we begin
to think, well, you know, if I'm killing myself, if
I'm holding myself to such a higher standard, how come
others aren't doing the same thing? Like, how come they
don't feel the shame and the sadness and like the
(24:29):
anger that I feel about myself? How come they feel
good about themselves? And we don't want to rethink that
key metric or key part of our identity that self
hatred is helpful or useful. We just judge other people
for not having it. So this is what we need
to be careful of, and it's why I keep reinforcing
that again, hating yourself isn't just counterintuitive to your goals
(24:52):
and your progress, it's counterintuitive to your happiness. And the
thing that I be most scared of is that the
older we get, the more it becomes a neural pattern, right,
because repeated mental habits over time become easier to repeat.
At a basic neuroscientific level, learning of any kind, including
(25:16):
learning how to hate yourself, just involves repetition. What we
repeat is what sticks. This has an actual term in psychology.
It's called long term potentiation, and it refers to a
persistent strengthening of synaptic connections that are used commonly together,
meaning that certain pathways become more efficient over time. So
(25:38):
when you repeatedly interpret yourself through through a lens of loathing.
When you constantly replay embarrassing situations and say this is
proof that I am not worthy and that I'm embarrassing,
or when you constantly are scanning your body or your
identity for what's wrong with you, or you're picking apart
(25:59):
your appearance in the mirror, you are practicing a style
of self relation that becomes neurally reinforced and recognizable, and
it therefore makes it easier for the brain to jump
to these critical conclusions again and again rapidly in the
long run, until you don't know anything more or better
(26:20):
or different about yourself. And this is where the concept
of negative self referential processing comes in. This is a
cognitive bias where people disproportionately focus on, interpret events through
and recall negative information about themselves and about the world
around them because they've essentially trained their brain to do
(26:43):
that for them. This is why this is so important
to discuss like in your twenties. Yes, this may begin
in childhood, but this is the critical time when you
get to interrupt this literal, neural pathway of self criticism.
There are certain neuroimaging studies which highlight where this is
most evident. They can literally see patterns of self hatred
(27:04):
in like the medial prefrontal cortex in the posterior singular cortex,
both areas of the brain that are involved in emotional
regulation ideas about the self autobiographical memory. This is where
these patterns sit and become strong. Research has found that
these areas light up significantly when people think negatively about themselves.
(27:29):
This is where your self hatred is stored, and this
is where those narratives become bigger and bigger and bigger
over time if you do not interrupt them. Recent reviews
further refine this understanding by showing that these patterns involve
broader brain networks too, So this is where it starts.
It starts in specifically the prefrontal cortex, but then it
(27:52):
begins to move out and touch everything. For instance, there
was also in the same study I think, increased connectivity
between the fault mode network and the salience network, which
may explain why internal negative thoughts feel so intrusive and
important and hard to break and so subconscious over time. Again,
(28:13):
I really just want to stress this repeated engagement in
negative self talk becomes the standard way that we think
not just about ourselves, but everything. It gets neurally represented
in very significant brain regions that influence how we see others,
(28:34):
influence how we see how goals influence how capable we are,
and that becomes a lot harder to escape the alder
we get. So, how exactly are we going to start
unlearning this? Because I feel like that's a very I
feel like I've just thrown a lot of negativity at you,
and you're probably sitting there being like, well, I guess
I'm screwed because this is just who I am, and
(28:56):
I've always had these thoughts about myself. I'm just a
pessimistic person. I don't think that's true. I think you've
been trained to feel that way. I think you've been
trained to think that is normal, and trained to think
that that is your status quo or how you just are. Again,
nobody is born hating themselves, like literally giving that child example. Again,
(29:18):
at some point you switch over, but you can also
rewire those patterns over time. I think it's so worth saying, like, again,
you are capable of change. All that information I've given you,
like may lead you to believe that once this is entrenched,
it is permanent. We know scientifically that is also not
(29:42):
the case. As much as we see evidence so showing
up in our minds and showing up in how we
treat ourselves, we also see evidence of people unlearning it.
You can unlearned self criticism at literally any stage in
your life. I literally read this amazing op ed piece
a couple of weeks ago from this woman who was
like eighty two way things, and she was talking about
how only at eighty years old did she know what
(30:04):
it felt like to like herself, Like that was the
first time she ever was like, I think I might
like myself. And she's never looked back eighty that was
the first time. So you're probably in your twenties, maybe
your thirties. You have heaps of time, and I think
it literally goes to show as serious as I'm speaking
about this, it is also reversible. The first thing to
really ask yourself is who does this voice actually serve?
(30:30):
Because you now know for sure it doesn't serve you. Right,
you have all the evidence that this isn't benefiting you.
I'm not asking where did it come from? That is
an important, an important question, but not the question we're
asking right now. I'm not asking why does it sound
so convincing? I'm asking who does it actually serve in
(30:50):
this state and moment in your life? Does it help
you become more honest? Is it helping you become more connected?
Can you give me any evidence that self hatred has
gotten you anywhere? Or does it keep you small? Obedient, ashamed, hypervigilant, pologetic,
easy to control? Because despite how convincing and real these
(31:10):
voices are, they're often just evidence again of how our
brains have been trained to please, train to make others comfortable,
not how we actually should be. And if that voice
is not serving you, you actually don't need to listen
to it. You don't need to keep treating it as gospel.
You can start relating to it as a reflex. Every
(31:34):
time you hear that self hatred kind of bubble up,
you have to say to yourself, like, this is not factual,
This is just a bad lesson that I was taught.
This is just incorrect information I was taught. I know
better now. The second thing is just to get super rational.
Look outward again, try and find just one example, just
one of self hatred actually helping somebody realize their dreams
(31:58):
and enjoy their dreams. Honestly, I have been like racking
my brain for weeks trying to think of an answer.
The only thing I can ever come up with is
people who like who present self hatred as something that
I actually had to overcome and they now reflect on,
not something that helped them. I think a lot about
like the people in Sir Random It and Biggest Loser,
(32:19):
who like hate themselves, get on the show, lose the weight,
still hate themselves. Literally. Just think of the most inspirational
person who you admire more than anybody in the world.
Did that person you most admire hate themselves into becoming
who they are? Do you know anyone whose life genuinely
improved over time because they maintained a running commentary of
(32:46):
disgust and humiliation and self loathing about themselves? Has it
ever made anybody more creative, more open hearted, more resilient,
more talented? Like, if you can find evidence for it,
I would love to know, but I just don't think
there is any Self hatred survives partly by pretending again
(33:08):
to be practical and self serving, and that's how it
persuades us to keep it around, because it will keep
you humble, it will keep you polite. It will keep you,
it will keep people liking you. But you can still
be humble and polite and not hate yourself. It's just
called self awareness, So challenge it on those same practical grounds.
(33:28):
Self hatred makes a practical argument. You need me to
be a good person, you are saying to it. Actually, no,
I don't. I don't have any evidence you've actually helped me.
I have heaps of evidence that self love has helped me,
but no evidence for you. And I know that I
can continue being all the things I want to be
without needing to rely on you. I know this is
(33:50):
such a commonly said phrase, but you cannot hate yourself
into loving yourself, and you cannot hate yourself interchanging all
of the psychology says it. All the motivation psychology motivational
architecture will say the same thing. The third step is
to give the little mean voice a name and an identity.
We spoke about this in our loving Yourself will make
(34:11):
You More Attractive episode, which is honestly a great companion
episode to this one. If you're enjoying this EPP, you
can listen to that one after. And it sounds silly,
but giving that voice a name, giving that horrible, nagging,
mean voice, a name that tells you that you're embarrassing
and you don't look gray, and you're not smart enough.
Calling it Kevin, calling it Sarah, calling it Brian, whatever,
(34:33):
allows you to separate yourself from the thoughts that you're having.
It's just a thought. It's not true when the thought appears,
the self hating thought. Attributing it to something that almost
feels outside of you, almost feels like another character that's
coming in and interrupting the vibe and like getting in
(34:53):
your way creates cognitive distancing. It means that you can
rationally examine the thought because it doesn't hold as much
self truth as if it was coming from you, all
about you, absolutely true. Instead of fusing with the critical
voice and those words that seem to just like appear unconsciously,
(35:14):
naming it and giving it an identity just gives you
some control. It gives you enough distance to choose whether
you want to listen to it, to ask whether this
voice is actually yours, or whether it is a bully
or a panicked younger version of you, or a perfectionist
teacher or a cruel parent who got in your head
(35:36):
way too early for you to have any say in it.
I think something that also helps us have more empathy
is to remember that this voice often the reason it
appears is to protect us. It is trying to keep
us safe. It's trying to encourage us to act in
ways that avoid judgment or avoid external criticism. So a
nice practice for this is, yes, call out the voice,
(35:58):
give it a name, be like, you're a bully, Miranda,
You're a bully, Brian. But also, I know this may
sound counterintuitive, thank the voice a little bit as well.
The reason that it came up, the reason that it's here,
the reason that it started was because it thought it
was helping you. It thought that it was a way
that it could prevent you from being judged or making mistakes.
(36:19):
If it was harsh on you first, then you know
the world wasn't going to be harsh on you second
or at all. So thanking it, appreciating it, saying like,
you've done your job, now it's my turn. I can
handle it from here. Also, as a way of relating
to your voice is something that is, yeah, a bit
of a bully, but also trying to do its best,
(36:41):
meaning that you can kind of move past it, meaning
that you can kind of put it to rest. You
don't need this coping mechanism anymore. As we've said, you've
got all the evidence you need now that it's not
as helpful as you think, but also that you can
be wise, smart, humble, kind, all those things. You can
(37:02):
prevent yourself from embarrassing yourself through self love rather than
just self hatred. So we're going to take one more
short break here before we get right back into it.
If you want to stop hating yourself or stop normalizing
self hatred, this may be the hardest thing in the
(37:24):
episode to do, but you've got to stop hanging around
people who think that putting you down is normal, or
who think that talking about how much they hate themselves
is an appropriate conversation, especially when they almost like expect
you to contribute. We've spoken a lot about what you
(37:45):
need to do internally. Your external environment also matters. Obviously,
it's super normal to talk about our insecurities with our
friends and to get support, but obsessing over your insecurities
collectively that any resolution, almost as a form of social bonding,
is not normal. And friends who think putting you down,
(38:07):
especially physically, is fun or banter, I don't know who
hurt you. That's not something that friends are meant to do.
I had this particular friend who was so incredibly insecure
that she would almost include me in her insecurity and
in her self deprecating comments she made about herself. If
she saw like a really beautiful girl, if we were
(38:30):
out together, she would be like, oh my god, me
and you could never look like that, or like wow,
we could never pull that off. Or we'd go shopping
and she'd be like, well, people like us can't wear that,
people like us can't shop at those stores. And it
would make me feel like absolutely horrenous about myself, so
(38:51):
much so that even after I had mentioned it a
few times, she didn't stop. But I just had to
stop going out with her in those particular ways and
in those environments, like I didn't want to normalize that
way of thinking about myself. I loved her, I still
do love her deeply, but that kind of attitude was
not one that I needed any more of. I don't
(39:14):
need to be included in your self hatred like at
that point I had enough of my own. There are
some people that you know, for whatever reason, will always
I don't think this was her intention. This is separate.
But there are some people who will always put you down,
whether it's insecurity on their behalf or some other part
of themselves they're not comfortable with. They will involve you
in their own self hatred because it feels less lonely
(39:38):
and it feels more normal. Sometimes entire relationships seem to
be held together by mocking disguised as honesty, and not
just mocking each other, but others, strangers, mutual friends in
those spaces. This is why self hatred feels so normalized,
(40:01):
right because self respect saying actually I really like myself
and I really think that person looks great, and maybe
we shouldn't talk like that can sometimes feel arrogant or
like you're embarrassing them, so we stay quiet. We get
used to being nasty to ourselves. We almost adopt a
nastier persona as a way of gaining social approval. There's
also this weird social ritual we see all the time
(40:23):
where like, somebody insults themselves and then you feel obligated
to insult yourself in return, as if like self rejection
is how we maintain that closeness. You just don't have
to participate, You just not say anything someone else's self
loathing does not require you to join in that is
(40:43):
that does a lot of damage, more than I think
we can afford in a society that wants us to
hate ourselves constantly. How our friends treat us, how they
treat themselves is really psychologically powerful. There's an osmosis, there's
a transference that happens when we are close to somebody
emotionally where we can feel their pain and we can
(41:06):
feel their self hatred and it is reflected onto us.
And again that's not to say like cut off everybody
who isn't as far ahead and they're like self love
journey as you are. But just be aware of it,
keep tabs on whether it's infiltrating you, and don't be
afraid to just not participate or be just say I'm sorry,
but that's not what I feel and I don't talk
(41:29):
about myself like that, And I don't think you deserve
to think those things about yourself either. So maybe this
is a good place to start. Maybe our friendship can
be like a self loathing free zone. And I know
that can be a very awkward conversation because sometimes it
can feel like holier than now or like you're scolding
them yeah, maybe you will feel like that. Maybe that's
(41:49):
how they will interpret it as well. But I think
it's worth having boundaries around the language that people use
with you as a way to also maintain boundaries around
them life language that you use with yourself, especially considering
everything we've spoken about today and how important it is.
The fifth thing I would suggest is also just keep
(42:10):
an ongoing list of what you like about yourself and
add to it as much as possible every day, if
not once a week, to almost aggressively prove to yourself
you are worth liking and you are worth feeling proud of.
This list tip uses like this simple attentional trick that
what we focus on expands. Think of it like when
(42:31):
a biased researcher looks only at evidence that like confirms
their hypothesis. That is what I want you to do.
When we're in the mindset of self hatred, Like that's
what's happening in reverse. We only pay attention to the
negative evidence, and we think that that must mean it's
the truth, and that that must confirm everything that our
(42:51):
inner critical voice is saying missing like fifty percent of
the picture. Flip it, reverse it. Instead, try to create
a really deliberate, ongoing set of reasons or pieces of evidence.
Why you are amazing, why you care about yourself, why
you are a productive person, Why you deserve to feel
(43:13):
proud of your achievements, why you look amazing, Why people
like you. It should be like the small, granular details
that make you who you are. You make people feel
less awkward, You are observant, You make people laugh. Dogs
always seem to want to be near you. I feel
like that one's an amazing one. You keep your word,
You're a good friend. That really forces us to focus
(43:35):
back in on everything that society has kind of said
we don't get to acknowledge, because if we were to
acknowledge that, we would be arrogant, we wouldn't be humble,
we would be we would just be I don't even know.
Like again, once you interrogate this a little bit further,
you kind of realize how deeply impractical it is. Like
(43:57):
it doesn't actually work. It doesn't actually make us life ourselves,
It doesn't actually make us better people. Who is it benefiting.
It's benefiting people who get to sell us things, get
to sell us products, get to sell us surgeries that
stem from a socially conditioned self hatred and it benefits
people who like it when you are small and don't
(44:20):
stick up for yourself. So I think that's kind of
all I have for this episode. I think I have
a few more things, but like I feel like I
need to do a part two. I hope this is
just as much as it's been a ranty episode, been
kind of informative and persuasive that you need to get
more serious and you need to be more spooky about
interrupting your thoughts of self loathing because they are not
(44:44):
a an accident or be harmless. They deeply infiltrate what we
think we deserve, how we behave, how we motivate ourselves,
and how we connect with others, and if we're not careful,
especially during this mormentive period of our lives, they can
become the entire basis of our self belief, meaning that
(45:06):
the older we get, the harder it comes to reverse.
Not impossible, but the harder it becomes. And eventually we
kind of sit around and survey our lives and realize
all the things I've missed out on have come from
the fact that like way back when, when I was
a kid, somebody said I didn't deserve to like myself,
and I thought that they were true despite all the
other evidence, that I have every reason to like myself,
(45:29):
and that even the reasons that I have not to
like myself aren't as important as the reasons that I
do have. So I think that's all we have time for.
I hope that if you've made it this far, you
enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend if you
think that, I don't know, if you think they can relate,
I don't know, if you think that they could benefit
from some of the research and some of the things
(45:50):
that we discussed. Remember that if you are listening to
the episode, you can also watch it on Netflix. And
if you are listening and you've made it this far,
leave a little leave a little love heart emoji down
below so that I know that you are a loyal listener.
You can also follow us on substack. I'm going to
post the full transcript of this episode if you want to,
(46:14):
I don't know, absorb it in a different format. And
you can also follow us on Instagram as well. If
you want to contribute your thoughts about self hatred as
a complex, your thoughts about society or self hatred over there,
But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle
to yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here. Back for another episode.
Not much chit chat this morning, guys, not much small talk,
because we have a big episode, a big episode on
something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, which
is how normalized it has become to actively hate yourself
(00:49):
and how almost hated you are online in person, in
the real world. If you say or show that you
love yourself, how in the world did we get here?
Why does that make any sense? And to perhaps get
a little bit conspiratorial on your who is benefiting from this,
Who is benefiting from this system of self loathing? Who
(01:10):
set this all up so that self hatred is the
status quo and self love is the thing that is
seen as sinful or bad. It just seems to me
a little bit ridiculous, And I also personally think it's
keeping a lot of us stuck in places that we
don't want to be I've been saying this so much
(01:30):
on the podcast recently, in so many different episodes, you
can't hate yourself into a successful life. And I thought,
you know, there's only so many times I can say
that before I just do a full frickin episode on it.
And today is that day. We're gonna look at the
science and the psychology that proves you cannot hate yourself
(01:53):
into a successful life. And yeah, essentially just dissects where
your self hates comes from and why it's lying to you.
You know, it's not going to make you humble. It's
not going to make you more successful. Because of that humility.
You cannot bully yourself into being better, even if it
(02:14):
gets momentary results. It is not a long term motivational
force the way that we tend to think it will be.
This is a big episode today. We have a lot
to explore. I really particularly want to drill into the
origins of this feeling and of this like psychological self loathing,
(02:36):
and then also of course provide some evidence based strategies
to eliminate that mindset, especially if you were in your twenties,
because if there was going to be a time in
your life where you really needed to have a deep
sense of self belief, it would be this time, It
would be right now. So I feel like if you
are struggling with self doubt and self loathing that has
(02:57):
become insidious and is bleeding into everything that you're doing,
this is the perfect episode for you. Without further ado,
let's talk about why hating yourself will get you know
where you want to be, and of course the alternative
stay with us. Let's start here, why does it feel
(03:19):
easier to hate ourselves rather than love ourselves like instinctually?
Why Why does it feel easier to dismiss a compliment
or to be self deprecating in front of other people,
Or why does it feel easier to focus in on
all the things we dislike about our bodies and dislike
(03:40):
about our personalities and dislike about our work ethic rather
than the things that we like that doesn't come from nowhere?
And the best evidence that this is an external influence
first and foremost that becomes internalized. The best evidence for
this is being around children. Right, being around kids and
(04:00):
seeing that before the age of four or five, children
have no concept that there is something about themselves that
could be unlikable. Like that is not even something that
enters their consciousness. They don't even they don't even think
about it. But then it's almost like there comes a
(04:20):
point where a switch gets flipped, a switch gets turned.
My friend actually she has two kids, one who is
three and one who was eight. I was watching them
the other day and we were doing like arts and craft,
and like, the younger one is just like scribbling, she's
having fun and like doesn't really care like exploring, and
(04:42):
the eight year old was like, this one isn't good,
Like this one is bad. My art is bad, Like
I have to start over again. And just like the parallel,
like the juxtaposition between these two people was like quite striking.
So where does this come from? When does this self
loathing first hit? Psychology will tell us that a lot
(05:03):
of self hatred starts as a form of adaptation. When
we're young. We don't yet have like a fully formed,
stable sense of self, so we often borrow our reflections
and borrow our sense of identity from other people who
we spend a lot of time around. Parents, teachers, siblings, peers.
(05:25):
They kind of help us build the first draft of
how you understand yourself by offering suggestions but sometimes also
offering criticism, and also by displaying self criticism towards themselves.
This is what we call This first sense of self
is what we call the evaluative self. We learn about
(05:46):
what it means to be human by seeing what others
are doing, thinking about what others are doing, copying other
people's behaviors, and also comparing our own behavior or our
own little lives to we see around us. At some
point we become aware that there is an audience. We're
not always performing for the same audience, though we become
(06:09):
aware as children there is an audience. Some of our
childhood audiences were a lot meaner. Some of our parents
weren't very nice. Some of our peers weren't very nice.
Some of our teachers weren't very nice. If those early
environments are warm, you often learn that mistakes are survivable
and that your worth will remain intact even when you
get things wrong, even when you're not perfect. You're happy
(06:32):
to explore, You're happy to bounce back, You're happy to
you just are resilient. Like I think about my friend's kid. Right, Yeah,
she didn't like her art, but just because she didn't
like it when it was compared to like the idea
of somebody else's picture right, not because her parents were
like screaming at her that she was terrible at everything
she does like she didn't like it. From a comparative sense.
(06:55):
For some people, though, like their environment, like the inner
critic was always external. It was a highly critical, rejecting, humiliating, unpredictable, cruel,
completely disengaged person who was like speaking things in their
ear telling them they were terrible. Children are watching so closely,
(07:18):
they are listening so closely, and they internalize the tone
of our own language, not just towards them, but towards
ourselves as well. Research has consistently found that higher self
criticism and self hatred as an adult, if you have
more of those things as an adult. It's greatly associated
with early memories of parental rejection or conditional affection from parents,
(07:43):
but also from favoritism, from favoritism from teachers, from childhood bullying,
basically just harmful experiences that occurred right as we were
forming our valuative self. For example, there was a two
thousand and six study published in the Journal of Effective Disorders,
and it looked at the impact of childhood verbal abuse
(08:05):
on how adults view themselves. They analyze the data of
like six thousand people, and they found that heavy or
high levels of criticism and discipline and like non purposeful discipline.
Experiencing that as a child has a really significant impact
on the development of things like adult depression and adult anxiety.
(08:30):
Research has described the role of self criticism in these
studies as basically a full mediator. So this basically means
that the verbal abuse didn't directly cause the depression, but
it causes a child to develop a self critical brain
because of course they're going to believe what an adult
(08:51):
says about them. They're the role model, they're the adult,
and that self critical brain is what drives some parts
or a lot of parts of adult depression. A similar
story is definitely seen in terms of pure experiences as
well when we're kids, when we are teenagers, this weird
(09:15):
social pecking order can emerge as people kind of like
fight to promote their evaluative selves and to feel good
about themselves. Like, the main way that we feel good
about ourselves as children and teenagers is in reference to
other people, and so to feel better, we often have
to resort to criticizing others, bullying, making remarks jokes, feeling
(09:39):
a sense of superiority, that sort of thing. Of course,
that's not always the case, but it's very, very prevalent,
and that definitely reinforces the self hatred of the person
being targeted. For sure, it also reinforces the hatred of
the person doing the targeting, Like there is a reason
that as teenagers, when we are insecure, we feel the
need to diminish somebody else, and it means that, like
(10:01):
every person in this situation feels terrible. This is why
self hatred can feel so intimate, because it starts so
so young. Someone else's voice, when heard enough times, with
enough authority or emotional force, can stick with us and
form part of who we think we are eventually, like,
(10:24):
if this criticism becomes loud enough, it no longer needs
somebody else to be present, Like we inherently believe that
yes we aren't that talented, Yes we aren't that attractive,
Yes we aren't that smart, Yes we aren't somebody that
others want to be around, because we're hearing it from
maybe a parent, we're hearing it from teachers, We're hearing
it from peers. And then something even more complicated happens
(10:48):
self hatred starts to feel useful because it feels so normal.
Sometimes I don't know, we end up hating ourselves as
a form of self protection, thinking that, you know, if
I criticize myself enough, if I criticize myself before anybody else,
can I get to feel prepared. If I make fun
(11:09):
of myself first, I'm in control of the humiliation instead
of waiting to be surprised by it. That is why
self hatred can feel so oddly comforting, because it is familiar.
Because we take what other people have said about us,
we become so normalized and comfortable around it. We begin
to feel like, well, if we do it before them,
(11:32):
then we can make this thing useful. This is one
of the biggest myths about the inner critic, that if
you stopped tearing yourself apart, you would become lazy, you
would become indulgent, you would become complacent, unambitious, you would
become morally kind of soft. And there is this kind
of cultural admiration for harshness, especially when it is directed inwards,
(11:56):
that we actually tend to confuse with discipline like we
act like being emotionally brutal with ourselves is evidence that
we are willing to push ourselves that we are willing
to push our ego aside, and therefore we must be
a good person. We must be a hard working person,
we must be a worthy person. Psychologically, that makes sense,
and it makes sense why people end up here, end
(12:18):
up in this state of just like constant self loathing
without even realizing it. If you grew up in environments
where you know your parents were also harsh towards themselves
as well, not just towards you or harsh to each other,
you know you also have a higher chance of internalizing
self hatred as a normal part of life. For example,
if you had a mother or a father who was
(12:40):
always criticizing or complaining about their body as a way
to force themselves to stick to diets, which I feel
like is a lot more common than we realize, and
I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Your mind
then learns that hatred equals motivation, and motivation equals progress.
We need hatred to make ourselves do the things and
(13:00):
stick to the things that we said we were going
to do. Here's the thing, and this may sound like
I'm like, I'm about to contradict myself, but stick with me.
Self hatred actually can act as a very potent immediate
motivator initially because it activates the brain's threat response and
it uses shame or frustration or rage as a force
(13:25):
for change, essentially creating a very high pressure, panic driven
need to avoid perceived inadequacy. So initially, being motivated by
self hatred might actually get you to act. It might
actually get you to do certain things, but it has
a dual function in one way, like, yes, it may
(13:47):
get you to the start line, but as soon as
you are ready to start or as soon as you
are halfway through the race, that self hatred that you
relied upon to motivate you suddenly becomes the thing that
is going to make this all about self punishment, and
it's suddenly going to become the thing that's going to
make you feel like you are not capable. There is
no off switch use self hatred for motivation. It will
(14:09):
eventually demotivate you because inherent in your self hatred is
this feeling that you are not worthy, you are not capable.
This hard thing that you are trying to do, you
actually can't do it. So on the surface, it might
seem that like self criticizing voice is helping you improve,
but actually that same inner voice has a much deeper,
(14:30):
more profound, more wounding impact because it's simply it's just
not sustainable. And we know by now that that same
self hatred will fuel burnout, it will fuel anxiety, it
will have long term negative impacts. There's this really fascinating
twenty twenty two study that measured levels of self hatred, perfectionism,
(14:52):
and stress in two hundred and twenty students in the UK,
and this study found that self hatred is one of,
well is actually the main driver for perfectionist tendencies. People
are rarely perfectionists because they like themselves. They're perfectionists because
they're searching for this final and elusive piece of proof
(15:14):
they actually deserve to be here, and that creates an
intense and great deal of stress and pressure. In this way,
self hatred works. In this way, self hatred works the
same way as any maladaptive coping mechanism. For example, if
you drink a lot to counteract social anxiety, yes, you
may feel more confident in the moment, but the next
(15:36):
day this only fuels your anxiety more and it actually
doesn't do anything to improve your baseline level of confidence.
The same can be said for self hatred. Again, it
may get you to over prepare for one presentation, it
may get you to push yourself harder in one workout,
(15:59):
or it may get you to obsess over getting better
for one assignment or one exam. But as a long
term strategy, it erodes the very capacities that you need
the most to succeed in the long term, like confidence,
like curiosity, like resilience, self trust, and also the ability
(16:20):
to recover after setbacks. Self criticism is actually consistently associated
with diminished goal progress across almost all research, diminished feelings
of self efficacy, diminished feelings of preparedness. One of the
best examples of this was five studies done by researchers
at the University of Massachusetts that found that people who
(16:43):
motivated themselves through self criticism and through self hatred actually
moved slower towards their goals. By contrast, people who had
self oriented standards and who had and set goals because
they wanted to prove that they could do it, because
they wanted to prove their own self belief, or because
(17:05):
they genuinely enjoyed what they were doing. This was a
much greater predictor of goal progress. The people who had
self hatred as well. They may have shown more initial progress,
but often tape it off because it's not a sustainable motivator.
And this is really important to remember. Although you know
our self hatred is disguised as having high standards, it's
(17:28):
not the same thing. Like high standards occur because you
believe you deserve to be elevated, self hatred occurs because
you believe that you're destined not to be who you
want to be. So we can't confuse them and think
that they're the same thing. We can't think that I'm
just I'm just putting pressure on myself because I really
(17:49):
think that I'm capable and more, I'm just putting pressure
on myself because this is just like the way that
I've always done things. There's probably a reason why you
have to keep relying on self hatred, and you have
to keep relying on this short term, really intense kind
of motivator because you haven't built any of the actual
long term reserves and sense of self worth that would
allow you to achieve your goals efficiently, effectively and to
(18:13):
the level that you would want them to, like to
the level that you want for yourself. So let's take
a short break here. Then we're gonna get into how
we can counteract this. Like we kind of know now,
Like it's pretty clear self hatred isn't gonna work. What's
the alternative? Because it actually might not just be self love.
(18:33):
I think it's gonna be and I know that it's
gonna be something a little bit more complicated, So stay
with us. We lose a lot when we hate ourselves
because we implicitly feel less deserving, we implicitly feel less capable,
and we implicitly feel less lucky. Now, obviously having a
(18:56):
little bit of humility is great and is very very important,
and I think also allows us to not seem like
an asshole. But when it is just pure self hatred,
that quickly turns into unconscious self sabotage. I did a
whole episode on self sabotage, like way back when I
(19:17):
first started the podcast, so I may need to do
a little bit of a refresh. But self sabotage is
essentially when we protect ourselves from possible failure by creating
excuses to not try, by delaying a decision, by rejecting
ourselves before anyone else gets the chance to do it
for us because we unconsciously believe their rejection is inevitable anyways.
(19:43):
Now it might be that you say to yourself, you know,
I won't apply for that job because I probably I'm
not going to get it anyways, because I'm not worth it.
Like I'm not going to go talk to that person
because they're probably never going to be interested. I'm not
going to post that thing, post the content that I
care about, launch the business, launch the course, ask like,
(20:05):
do anything that I actually think is important, because then
I would have to find out that I didn't deserve
it all along. Then I would be embarrassed, then I
would be judged when it failed. That is how self
hatred creates bad luck by stopping us from trying. Research
from the University of Rochester shows that self sabotaging comes
(20:25):
with real psychological cost over time. It reinforces maladjustment, It
reduces competent satisfaction, meaning that we are never happy even
when we do succeed, because we always think that it's
some kind of fluke, and it's linked to negative mood,
substance abuse, and just lower overall intrinsic motivation because you
(20:48):
never try as well. Even if you do succeed, we
think that it's a fluke. But often in the situations
where we don't because we never try, you never gather
the new evidence that those critical thoughts about yourself are wrong,
and so the old negative belief stays unchallenged. You do
not learn that maybe they would have said yes. You
do not learn that maybe you were ready for that
(21:10):
new role, but maybe people do really like you. Maybe
there was an amazing opportunity on the other side of
you just asking that question. The only truth that remains
true and that is reinforced when you self sabotage because
of self hatred, is that your inner critic is helpful.
(21:31):
Is that it is useful and it was correct after
all because look, you failed. Look nothing happened. See it
was trying to protect you. That was going to be
the outcome all along. At least you didn't embarrass yourself
in the process. I think the other cost of self hatred,
other than just the fact that you always lose, is
that it consumes an unbelievable amount of time, honestly, more
time than we probably have in our busy life. If
(21:53):
you're constantly hypervigilant and monitoring how you've sound, how you look,
come across, perform, or are being like perceived and you are,
You're just using so many attentional resources that could have
gone into actually living. When your attention is trapped in
self surveillance, you stop being in your own life, you
(22:16):
stop actually being present, and you just start performing the
second guessing alone, literally second guessing. It doubles every second
you would normally spend just thinking and acting. Another thing
to be cautious of is that self hatred can leak outwards.
We've spoken a lot about, you know, the individual cost
of this, like inner critic, but shame has a way
(22:40):
of becoming very relationally toxic. When people are so wrapped
up in this chronic like self contempt and self hatred,
they may become more irritable, more defensive, more comparative, and
I think it's safe to say more likely to project
onto others because we're more likely to feel threatened by
(23:01):
the traits we see in those around us, and we're
more likely to feel threatened, especially by the traits that
we've taught to punish in ourselves. So we see somebody
who really likes themselves and we think, well, why can't
I do that why don't I have that opportunity, I'm
going to hate them for it. A really interesting study
published in twenty fourteen actually looked at the way that
both guilt and shame manifest in social outcomes, and what
(23:24):
they found was that actually, whilst guilt can feel more
pro social behaviors, shame was more associated with maladaptive social patterns.
So things like aggression, withdraw, judgment not because people wanted
to be these things. They didn't want to do these things.
They don't want to be that person. Nobody wants to
(23:45):
be that person. It just felt necessary to protect themselves
and to protect the inner critic from having to admit
that maybe it was wrong, maybe there was a better
way of living that wasn't just hating ourselves into existence.
So it just doesn't. It never stays internal, like a
feeling is heavy and harsh as self hatred is going
(24:07):
to show up in friendships, it's going to show up
in work, It's going to show up in how generous
you are, how understanding you can be. It's going to
show up, yeah, especially in no situations, because we begin
to think, well, you know, if I'm killing myself, if
I'm holding myself to such a higher standard, how come
others aren't doing the same thing? Like, how come they
don't feel the shame and the sadness and like the
(24:29):
anger that I feel about myself? How come they feel
good about themselves? And we don't want to rethink that
key metric or key part of our identity that self
hatred is helpful or useful. We just judge other people
for not having it. So this is what we need
to be careful of, and it's why I keep reinforcing
that again, hating yourself isn't just counterintuitive to your goals
(24:52):
and your progress, it's counterintuitive to your happiness. And the
thing that I be most scared of is that the
older we get, the more it becomes a neural pattern, right,
because repeated mental habits over time become easier to repeat.
At a basic neuroscientific level, learning of any kind, including
(25:16):
learning how to hate yourself, just involves repetition. What we
repeat is what sticks. This has an actual term in psychology.
It's called long term potentiation, and it refers to a
persistent strengthening of synaptic connections that are used commonly together,
meaning that certain pathways become more efficient over time. So
(25:38):
when you repeatedly interpret yourself through through a lens of loathing.
When you constantly replay embarrassing situations and say this is
proof that I am not worthy and that I'm embarrassing,
or when you constantly are scanning your body or your
identity for what's wrong with you, or you're picking apart
(25:59):
your appearance in the mirror, you are practicing a style
of self relation that becomes neurally reinforced and recognizable, and
it therefore makes it easier for the brain to jump
to these critical conclusions again and again rapidly in the
long run, until you don't know anything more or better
(26:20):
or different about yourself. And this is where the concept
of negative self referential processing comes in. This is a
cognitive bias where people disproportionately focus on, interpret events through
and recall negative information about themselves and about the world
around them because they've essentially trained their brain to do
(26:43):
that for them. This is why this is so important
to discuss like in your twenties. Yes, this may begin
in childhood, but this is the critical time when you
get to interrupt this literal, neural pathway of self criticism.
There are certain neuroimaging studies which highlight where this is
most evident. They can literally see patterns of self hatred
(27:04):
in like the medial prefrontal cortex in the posterior singular cortex,
both areas of the brain that are involved in emotional
regulation ideas about the self autobiographical memory. This is where
these patterns sit and become strong. Research has found that
these areas light up significantly when people think negatively about themselves.
(27:29):
This is where your self hatred is stored, and this
is where those narratives become bigger and bigger and bigger
over time if you do not interrupt them. Recent reviews
further refine this understanding by showing that these patterns involve
broader brain networks too, So this is where it starts.
It starts in specifically the prefrontal cortex, but then it
(27:52):
begins to move out and touch everything. For instance, there
was also in the same study I think, increased connectivity
between the fault mode network and the salience network, which
may explain why internal negative thoughts feel so intrusive and
important and hard to break and so subconscious over time. Again,
(28:13):
I really just want to stress this repeated engagement in
negative self talk becomes the standard way that we think
not just about ourselves, but everything. It gets neurally represented
in very significant brain regions that influence how we see others,
(28:34):
influence how we see how goals influence how capable we are,
and that becomes a lot harder to escape the alder
we get. So, how exactly are we going to start
unlearning this? Because I feel like that's a very I
feel like I've just thrown a lot of negativity at you,
and you're probably sitting there being like, well, I guess
I'm screwed because this is just who I am, and
(28:56):
I've always had these thoughts about myself. I'm just a
pessimistic person. I don't think that's true. I think you've
been trained to feel that way. I think you've been
trained to think that is normal, and trained to think
that that is your status quo or how you just are. Again,
nobody is born hating themselves, like literally giving that child example. Again,
(29:18):
at some point you switch over, but you can also
rewire those patterns over time. I think it's so worth saying, like, again,
you are capable of change. All that information I've given you,
like may lead you to believe that once this is entrenched,
it is permanent. We know scientifically that is also not
(29:42):
the case. As much as we see evidence so showing
up in our minds and showing up in how we
treat ourselves, we also see evidence of people unlearning it.
You can unlearned self criticism at literally any stage in
your life. I literally read this amazing op ed piece
a couple of weeks ago from this woman who was
like eighty two way things, and she was talking about
how only at eighty years old did she know what
(30:04):
it felt like to like herself, Like that was the
first time she ever was like, I think I might
like myself. And she's never looked back eighty that was
the first time. So you're probably in your twenties, maybe
your thirties. You have heaps of time, and I think
it literally goes to show as serious as I'm speaking
about this, it is also reversible. The first thing to
really ask yourself is who does this voice actually serve?
(30:30):
Because you now know for sure it doesn't serve you. Right,
you have all the evidence that this isn't benefiting you.
I'm not asking where did it come from? That is
an important, an important question, but not the question we're
asking right now. I'm not asking why does it sound
so convincing? I'm asking who does it actually serve in
(30:50):
this state and moment in your life? Does it help
you become more honest? Is it helping you become more connected?
Can you give me any evidence that self hatred has
gotten you anywhere? Or does it keep you small? Obedient, ashamed, hypervigilant, pologetic,
easy to control? Because despite how convincing and real these
(31:10):
voices are, they're often just evidence again of how our
brains have been trained to please, train to make others comfortable,
not how we actually should be. And if that voice
is not serving you, you actually don't need to listen
to it. You don't need to keep treating it as gospel.
You can start relating to it as a reflex. Every
(31:34):
time you hear that self hatred kind of bubble up,
you have to say to yourself, like, this is not factual,
This is just a bad lesson that I was taught.
This is just incorrect information I was taught. I know
better now. The second thing is just to get super rational.
Look outward again, try and find just one example, just
one of self hatred actually helping somebody realize their dreams
(31:58):
and enjoy their dreams. Honestly, I have been like racking
my brain for weeks trying to think of an answer.
The only thing I can ever come up with is
people who like who present self hatred as something that
I actually had to overcome and they now reflect on,
not something that helped them. I think a lot about
like the people in Sir Random It and Biggest Loser,
(32:19):
who like hate themselves, get on the show, lose the weight,
still hate themselves. Literally. Just think of the most inspirational
person who you admire more than anybody in the world.
Did that person you most admire hate themselves into becoming
who they are? Do you know anyone whose life genuinely
improved over time because they maintained a running commentary of
(32:46):
disgust and humiliation and self loathing about themselves? Has it
ever made anybody more creative, more open hearted, more resilient,
more talented? Like, if you can find evidence for it,
I would love to know, but I just don't think
there is any Self hatred survives partly by pretending again
(33:08):
to be practical and self serving, and that's how it
persuades us to keep it around, because it will keep
you humble, it will keep you polite. It will keep you,
it will keep people liking you. But you can still
be humble and polite and not hate yourself. It's just
called self awareness, So challenge it on those same practical grounds.
(33:28):
Self hatred makes a practical argument. You need me to
be a good person, you are saying to it. Actually, no,
I don't. I don't have any evidence you've actually helped me.
I have heaps of evidence that self love has helped me,
but no evidence for you. And I know that I
can continue being all the things I want to be
without needing to rely on you. I know this is
(33:50):
such a commonly said phrase, but you cannot hate yourself
into loving yourself, and you cannot hate yourself interchanging all
of the psychology says it. All the motivation psychology motivational
architecture will say the same thing. The third step is
to give the little mean voice a name and an identity.
We spoke about this in our loving Yourself will make
(34:11):
You More Attractive episode, which is honestly a great companion
episode to this one. If you're enjoying this EPP, you
can listen to that one after. And it sounds silly,
but giving that voice a name, giving that horrible, nagging,
mean voice, a name that tells you that you're embarrassing
and you don't look gray, and you're not smart enough.
Calling it Kevin, calling it Sarah, calling it Brian, whatever,
(34:33):
allows you to separate yourself from the thoughts that you're having.
It's just a thought. It's not true when the thought appears,
the self hating thought. Attributing it to something that almost
feels outside of you, almost feels like another character that's
coming in and interrupting the vibe and like getting in
(34:53):
your way creates cognitive distancing. It means that you can
rationally examine the thought because it doesn't hold as much
self truth as if it was coming from you, all
about you, absolutely true. Instead of fusing with the critical
voice and those words that seem to just like appear unconsciously,
(35:14):
naming it and giving it an identity just gives you
some control. It gives you enough distance to choose whether
you want to listen to it, to ask whether this
voice is actually yours, or whether it is a bully
or a panicked younger version of you, or a perfectionist
teacher or a cruel parent who got in your head
(35:36):
way too early for you to have any say in it.
I think something that also helps us have more empathy
is to remember that this voice often the reason it
appears is to protect us. It is trying to keep
us safe. It's trying to encourage us to act in
ways that avoid judgment or avoid external criticism. So a
nice practice for this is, yes, call out the voice,
(35:58):
give it a name, be like, you're a bully, Miranda,
You're a bully, Brian. But also, I know this may
sound counterintuitive, thank the voice a little bit as well.
The reason that it came up, the reason that it's here,
the reason that it started was because it thought it
was helping you. It thought that it was a way
that it could prevent you from being judged or making mistakes.
(36:19):
If it was harsh on you first, then you know
the world wasn't going to be harsh on you second
or at all. So thanking it, appreciating it, saying like,
you've done your job, now it's my turn. I can
handle it from here. Also, as a way of relating
to your voice is something that is, yeah, a bit
of a bully, but also trying to do its best,
(36:41):
meaning that you can kind of move past it, meaning
that you can kind of put it to rest. You
don't need this coping mechanism anymore. As we've said, you've
got all the evidence you need now that it's not
as helpful as you think, but also that you can
be wise, smart, humble, kind, all those things. You can
(37:02):
prevent yourself from embarrassing yourself through self love rather than
just self hatred. So we're going to take one more
short break here before we get right back into it.
If you want to stop hating yourself or stop normalizing
self hatred, this may be the hardest thing in the
(37:24):
episode to do, but you've got to stop hanging around
people who think that putting you down is normal, or
who think that talking about how much they hate themselves
is an appropriate conversation, especially when they almost like expect
you to contribute. We've spoken a lot about what you
(37:45):
need to do internally. Your external environment also matters. Obviously,
it's super normal to talk about our insecurities with our
friends and to get support, but obsessing over your insecurities
collectively that any resolution, almost as a form of social bonding,
is not normal. And friends who think putting you down,
(38:07):
especially physically, is fun or banter, I don't know who
hurt you. That's not something that friends are meant to do.
I had this particular friend who was so incredibly insecure
that she would almost include me in her insecurity and
in her self deprecating comments she made about herself. If
she saw like a really beautiful girl, if we were
(38:30):
out together, she would be like, oh my god, me
and you could never look like that, or like wow,
we could never pull that off. Or we'd go shopping
and she'd be like, well, people like us can't wear that,
people like us can't shop at those stores. And it
would make me feel like absolutely horrenous about myself, so
(38:51):
much so that even after I had mentioned it a
few times, she didn't stop. But I just had to
stop going out with her in those particular ways and
in those environments, like I didn't want to normalize that
way of thinking about myself. I loved her, I still
do love her deeply, but that kind of attitude was
not one that I needed any more of. I don't
(39:14):
need to be included in your self hatred like at
that point I had enough of my own. There are
some people that you know, for whatever reason, will always
I don't think this was her intention. This is separate.
But there are some people who will always put you down,
whether it's insecurity on their behalf or some other part
of themselves they're not comfortable with. They will involve you
in their own self hatred because it feels less lonely
(39:38):
and it feels more normal. Sometimes entire relationships seem to
be held together by mocking disguised as honesty, and not
just mocking each other, but others, strangers, mutual friends in
those spaces. This is why self hatred feels so normalized,
(40:01):
right because self respect saying actually I really like myself
and I really think that person looks great, and maybe
we shouldn't talk like that can sometimes feel arrogant or
like you're embarrassing them, so we stay quiet. We get
used to being nasty to ourselves. We almost adopt a
nastier persona as a way of gaining social approval. There's
also this weird social ritual we see all the time
(40:23):
where like, somebody insults themselves and then you feel obligated
to insult yourself in return, as if like self rejection
is how we maintain that closeness. You just don't have
to participate, You just not say anything someone else's self
loathing does not require you to join in that is
(40:43):
that does a lot of damage, more than I think
we can afford in a society that wants us to
hate ourselves constantly. How our friends treat us, how they
treat themselves is really psychologically powerful. There's an osmosis, there's
a transference that happens when we are close to somebody
emotionally where we can feel their pain and we can
(41:06):
feel their self hatred and it is reflected onto us.
And again that's not to say like cut off everybody
who isn't as far ahead and they're like self love
journey as you are. But just be aware of it,
keep tabs on whether it's infiltrating you, and don't be
afraid to just not participate or be just say I'm sorry,
but that's not what I feel and I don't talk
(41:29):
about myself like that, And I don't think you deserve
to think those things about yourself either. So maybe this
is a good place to start. Maybe our friendship can
be like a self loathing free zone. And I know
that can be a very awkward conversation because sometimes it
can feel like holier than now or like you're scolding
them yeah, maybe you will feel like that. Maybe that's
(41:49):
how they will interpret it as well. But I think
it's worth having boundaries around the language that people use
with you as a way to also maintain boundaries around
them life language that you use with yourself, especially considering
everything we've spoken about today and how important it is.
The fifth thing I would suggest is also just keep
(42:10):
an ongoing list of what you like about yourself and
add to it as much as possible every day, if
not once a week, to almost aggressively prove to yourself
you are worth liking and you are worth feeling proud of.
This list tip uses like this simple attentional trick that
what we focus on expands. Think of it like when
(42:31):
a biased researcher looks only at evidence that like confirms
their hypothesis. That is what I want you to do.
When we're in the mindset of self hatred, Like that's
what's happening in reverse. We only pay attention to the
negative evidence, and we think that that must mean it's
the truth, and that that must confirm everything that our
(42:51):
inner critical voice is saying missing like fifty percent of
the picture. Flip it, reverse it. Instead, try to create
a really deliberate, ongoing set of reasons or pieces of evidence.
Why you are amazing, why you care about yourself, why
you are a productive person, Why you deserve to feel
(43:13):
proud of your achievements, why you look amazing, Why people
like you. It should be like the small, granular details
that make you who you are. You make people feel
less awkward, You are observant, You make people laugh. Dogs
always seem to want to be near you. I feel
like that one's an amazing one. You keep your word,
You're a good friend. That really forces us to focus
(43:35):
back in on everything that society has kind of said
we don't get to acknowledge, because if we were to
acknowledge that, we would be arrogant, we wouldn't be humble,
we would be we would just be I don't even know.
Like again, once you interrogate this a little bit further,
you kind of realize how deeply impractical it is. Like
(43:57):
it doesn't actually work. It doesn't actually make us life ourselves,
It doesn't actually make us better people. Who is it benefiting.
It's benefiting people who get to sell us things, get
to sell us products, get to sell us surgeries that
stem from a socially conditioned self hatred and it benefits
people who like it when you are small and don't
(44:20):
stick up for yourself. So I think that's kind of
all I have for this episode. I think I have
a few more things, but like I feel like I
need to do a part two. I hope this is
just as much as it's been a ranty episode, been
kind of informative and persuasive that you need to get
more serious and you need to be more spooky about
interrupting your thoughts of self loathing because they are not
(44:44):
a an accident or be harmless. They deeply infiltrate what we
think we deserve, how we behave, how we motivate ourselves,
and how we connect with others, and if we're not careful,
especially during this mormentive period of our lives, they can
become the entire basis of our self belief, meaning that
(45:06):
the older we get, the harder it comes to reverse.
Not impossible, but the harder it becomes. And eventually we
kind of sit around and survey our lives and realize
all the things I've missed out on have come from
the fact that like way back when, when I was
a kid, somebody said I didn't deserve to like myself,
and I thought that they were true despite all the
other evidence, that I have every reason to like myself,
(45:29):
and that even the reasons that I have not to
like myself aren't as important as the reasons that I
do have. So I think that's all we have time for.
I hope that if you've made it this far, you
enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend if you
think that, I don't know, if you think they can relate,
I don't know, if you think that they could benefit
from some of the research and some of the things
(45:50):
that we discussed. Remember that if you are listening to
the episode, you can also watch it on Netflix. And
if you are listening and you've made it this far,
leave a little leave a little love heart emoji down
below so that I know that you are a loyal listener.
You can also follow us on substack. I'm going to
post the full transcript of this episode if you want to,
(46:14):
I don't know, absorb it in a different format. And
you can also follow us on Instagram as well. If
you want to contribute your thoughts about self hatred as
a complex, your thoughts about society or self hatred over there,
But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle
to yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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