Addressing Self-Hatred and Low Self Esteem | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Tips
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes explains how self-hatred works as a threat response in your brain and offers concrete steps to counter it: list traits you dislike, trace where they came from, then find one action to address each. She also recommends identifying five qualities you value in friends and looking for those same qualities in yourself.
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Foreign, everybody, and I hope you had an absolutely fabulous weekend. Today we are going to be talking about coping with self hatred. And of course, I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. When we talk about self hatred, we want to focus first on the part of that phrase hate. What is hate? Hate is anger. When we hate someone, we are angry at them. For some reason, we feel threatened by them. So we're putting up this power barrier. When we hate ourselves, we are also similarly angry about something. We're feeling threatened in some way and this is a way to theoretically protect oursel. When we feel hate, it represents the activation of our HPA axis, our threat response system. So we want to ask oursel why is it, why am I feeling threatened right now? What is going on? So the first thing we need to do is pay attention to our triggers. What is it that triggers our feelings of self hatred? Is it kind of an ongoing thing? You wake up, you look in the mirror in the morning and you know, that's kind of how you start your day. Or are there particular things in the environment or particular things that you do that may trigger your self hatred? So be aware of things that cause your of self hatred to flare. The next thing, and this is kind of global, is to think for a while. You know, spend 10, 15 minutes thinking about what it is you don't like about yourself. Make a list. You know, you can sit down and start making a list. People who have self hatred really don't have difficulty with this activity very often. So spend 10, 15 minutes writing down all the things you don't like about yourself for the big things, and then for each one, go back and examine it and ask yourself, where did I get the message that this was unacceptable or that having this characteristic at all would make me unlovable? For example, I'm going to use the, the example of impatience throughout this presentation. Sometimes people who have difficulty being patient hate themselves when they get impatient and get irritable with others. And it's important to reflect, where did you get the mess that it was not okay ever to be impatient? Impatience is a natural emotion. Impatience is a natural reaction sometimes. Now what we do with that emotion, you know, has better or worse outcomes. But it's important to recognize that some things like impatience or some characteristics that we have are just natural reactions to what's going on. So where did you get the, the message that you were supposed to be patient quote all the time? That's that extreme language we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Do you believe that this issue makes you acceptable or unlovable. You may have grown up in a household where you were taught that it was not okay to be impatient. You may have been taught by society, by at school, in church, wherever, that patience was a virtue, that it was not okay to be impatient. But do you believe that having this quality makes you unlovable? There is a difference between having something that you want to work on and being somewhat imperfect and being unlovable. And it's important to separate the two of those things. I think most people have areas, things that they could work on in order to become more like the person they want to be. But people who aren't plagued with self hatred, they view themselves as lovable despite their flaws. I am lovable even though I'm not perfect. And that is a statement that a lot of people who are immersed in self hatred have difficulty with. So for each thing that you identified as something you don't like about yourself, I think about whether you believe that having this characteristic makes you totally unlovable. You know, that behavior may not be very likable, but does it make you unlovable? The same sort of thing we've talked about in other discussions about not globalizing our language and not personalizing it. When you are correcting a child, instead of telling the child you are bad, telling the child that that behavior was bad, I love you, but that behavior is bad. And we may need to start changing some of the semantics in our own head. Instead of saying I'm a screw up, saying, okay, I did screw up, I'm a good person, but I made a mistake. Semantics, but it is, it makes a big difference when you start unhooking from the mistakes. You are a lovable person and, but you may make mistakes. You may do behaviors that are, you know, not necessarily the best choices. Looking at that list of things that you don't like about yourself, are they is go through each one and identify, is this something you can address? Patience, for example? Sure, we can all work on being more patient. What is one thing you can do to start addressing it today? And on next to each thing, identify one thing that you can start doing to address it today. Ask yourself, if your child or best friend had this flaw, what would you tell them? Would you tell them that it makes them completely unlovable? I would hope not. Would you highlight some of their other strengths and say, okay, you know, this, this may be something you need to work on, but you know, in general you are a loving, caring, compassionate human being. You know what Would you say to your. Somebody that you care about who had the same characteristic? It's important to look at that because we are our own worst enemies. We are our own harshest critics a lot of times. So it's important to go back and examine, you know, what is going on right now. That. And would I hold somebody else up to this same standard, or am I holding myself up to this much higher standard? Another thing that you can do is challenge negative thoughts. A lot of times, just like what we were just talking about, we personalize problems. We make it part of who we are instead of a behavior. We want to identify things as specific and changeable. Instead of, I always screw up saying, you know, I made a mistake or I'm not good at doing this. For example, you know, I know when I do write Grants and when I'm working on my books and things, I. I'm a broad stroke person. I have difficulty following and keeping up with little details. I know that about myself. Would I like to be better at, you know, keeping track of all the little details? Sure. However, that's not one of my strengths. And on self evaluation, I've recognized that ultimately there are other people who are really good with details. That's why they become editors. And so there are certain things that I'm willing to spend my time working on to improve myself and other things that I am not with patience. For example, I can be impatient at times. I am not, you know, globally necessarily impatient all the time. Those are those extreme words. But there are certain things and certain times I can be impatient. So that is specific and changeable. Then I need to look at, you know, what are those triggers that tend to create impatience within me and how can I address those? Look at cognitive distortions, as I've been highlighting so far, extreme language saying, I always do this or I never can do this. Look for exceptions. Recognize that most of us are not able to do something all the time. Even my grandmother, God love her, she was one of the most patient people I ever knew. But there were a couple times I remember two in particular in my life, and that's, you know, saying something, only remembering two times in my life that this woman lost her temper. So there were times that even my grandmother, who by all accounts was, you know, next up next in line for sainthood, did lose her patience. So that extreme language, believing that somebody is always patient or always better than you, you want to look at that and try not to, and examine personalizing where you assume that you are bad or you caused somebody to Feel a certain way. It's important to set those boundaries. Some people don't like themselves because they feel like they cause other people to be unhappy. And it is super important to recognize that every person is responsible for their own emotions. Now when you're dealing with children, it's a little bit different. You know, you want to help them learn how to identify and address their own feelings. But you know, ultimately people are responsible. They feel a certain way and they're responsible for choosing what whether to continue to feel that way and nurture that emotion or do something to change the situation. Another thing that you can do to address self hatred. I do this in my self esteem groups a lot. I have people identify five things that they look for in a friend. What characteristics do you look for in somebody that you are going to be friends with? Characteristics that you admire in people. And then after we do that, I say, okay, now go back over that list. Which of those qualities do you already have at least some of the time? You may not have it all of the time, but what, which of those qualities do you already have some of the time? And it starts helping people get out of that extreme thinking and recognize that they have a lot of good qualities, you know, at least some if not most of the time. Spend time thinking about the type of person that you want to be. Now you can want to be a good person or you can just be mired in, in self hatred and, and really not know why you hate yourself, but also really not know the type of person you want to be. You just for some reason you got messages when you were growing up that said you were not okay. And you've held on to those messages and you've always told yourself I'm not okay, I'm not lovable. But, but you don't know why. You also don't know what would make you okay or lovable. So you need to sit down and really think. You know, what do I think would make me lovable? What type of person do I want to be? And again, in what ways am I already that person? Loving kindness. Meditation is an activity that you can do on the daily and I encourage you to do it. It's like one of those affirmation things, but spending a minute or two, it doesn't take very long. Just breathing and repeating to yourself, may your life be filled with love, happiness, health and peace. And sit with that until you, you know and really try to believe it. May your life be filled with love, happiness, health and peace. It may take a while before you Believe you deserve those things. But wishing those things for yourself is a way to start the day. It's a way to open yourself up to the possibilities, develop self compassion. Ask yourself, when you start criticizing yourself for something, would you be critical of somebody else for this? Would you be critical of them as a human or would you be critical of their behavior? You know, I have friends, I have, you know, family and you know, everybody I've interacted with at times has done something that I haven't particularly liked. But I still loved them as a human being. I love them. But I may not like that behavior. And it's important to spread, separate those two things and recognize the, again, the higher standard that a lot of times we try to hold ourselves to explore your behaviors as communication. And this kind of goes along with that thing we talked about earlier about looking at triggers. For example, if you, one of the things that you want to be is patient. And you lose your patience one day, reflecting and saying, I was impatient today because looking back, what things make you more vulnerable to impatience? My husband has hypoglycemia. So when his blood sugar gets really low, he can get kind of cranky. And it was helpful for him to reflect and look upon that and he recognized that. So now he does a much better job of, or pays a lot more attention to making sure he regulates his blood sugar. I tend to be more impatient if I'm over tired. You know, that can be something that inhibits my patience. So I know that when I start to be impatient, I start to look, I go, okay, you know, my body's telling me I'm tired, my body's telling me, or for my husband, my body's telling me I'm hungry, my blood sugar is low. But it's important to examine what is this impatience or what is this behavior that I don't like? Why is it coming up now? What's the function of this behavior and how could I have prevented it? It helps you learn more about yourself and finally practice positive self talk and affirmations. Ask yourself, what would you want a nurturing person to say to you? You know, when you were growing up, what would you, what did you want your parents to say? What did they say? What do you wish they would have said? What do you want, you know, your best friend or your significant other to say to you? And say it to yourself. If you want somebody to say, you know what you are awesome, well, say that to yourself. And if you don't believe it, then you want to ask yourself, well, why would My significant other Say that and really look at, look at yourself from a outsider's perspective. Try to see what other people see who aren't busy trying to fulfill that self fulfilling prophecy. If you hate yourself, you're often looking for all the reasons that you suck. If you love yourself, you're looking for all the reasons that you're awesome. So people who have self hatred often are so busy looking for all of the reasons that people would hate them that they miss the reasons that, that they're lovable. Look at yourself from an outsider's perspective. Outsiders generally look for the reasons that you're likable and lovable. What would your friends say? What would your co worker say? What would your kids say? Heck, what would your dog say if he could talk? Those are just a few tips and tools you can start using to address self hatred. Obviously those things are not going to like magically make you start lo yourself, but they are some things that you can start exploring to, you know, hopefully start feeling better and more empowered. What things would you guys like to talk about today? It was such a beautiful weekend here. It was cool. It was overcast all weekend, but it was nice and cool. It was a nice breath of fresh fall air. I actually, it was cool enough today. I got to wear my, my favorite scarf. So I was really excited about that. I encourage you to think about the good things from this weekend and the good things that have happened so far today. Whether you are in a rut of self hatred or a rut of negativity or anxiety, anytime that HPA axis is activated, you are going to not more and pay a lot more attention. Give more emotional weight to the unpleasant and negative things in your life. So right now, you know, really focus on what can, what's going well. Force yourself to look at the positive for 10 minutes to 20 minutes if you really can. 20 minutes a day, just carve that out, carve that, that little piece of time out of your day and focus on the things that went really well. I'm glad the motivational interviewing led you down a rabbit hole of research. I really, I do love motivational interviewing. And there's so many, so many ways you can use it, whether it's with your children, with your employees, with your clients, or even with yourself. Being self critical is, you know, it's always good to evaluate ourselves and evaluate our behaviors and there's a certain element of wanting to improve, striving towards self actualization that is healthy. But when that critic becomes overpowering, when it starts making you feel Bad about yourself in general, then it starts becoming a problem. When it contributes to anxiety and depression, then it's becoming a problem. When your self evaluative, I'll say that as opposed to critical, when you're self evaluative, it can help you examine things that you want to work on and that increases motivation. I can look at myself and go, okay, there are these things that I could do a little bit better. Let me look at as a challenge and see how I can improve it. That's super healthy. But when you look at those things and you start telling yourself phrases like nobody's going to love me, I don't deserve acceptance, or, you know, I'm not a good person, then that's when it can really start to have negative mental health and health consequences. So, great question. Yeah, a little bit of self evaluation is great because we always do hopefully want to strive to grow and learn. In terms of moving forward. When you start feeling stuck, you know, it's awesome that you recognize that you feel stuck, because then you can figure out, all right, where do I want to go from here? And I would really direct you to psychological flexibility. There are several videos about psychological flexibility on the YouTube channel. But basically, with psychological flexibility, you start out by saying, what type of life do I want to have? What would create a rich and meaningful life for me? Who's in it? What am I doing? What am I like? If you know, and create this image, create this vision of what a rich and meaningful life could be. You know, focusing on the things that you already have as well as things you may want to enhance. And then from there, start identifying, what is it that I need to do in order to use my energy to move toward these things. A lot of times, basics, you know, get back to basics. Getting enough sleep, eating healthfully, addressing issues that are contributing to depression and anxiety. Developing positive, positive self talk. Those things are your foundation to make sure that your mind and body are as healthy as can be and that you will have enough energy that you'll be freeing up energy that you can use to move toward those goals. So start with psychological flexibility to kind of figure out where you want to go from here. And, you know, obviously happiness is probably going to be in there. So if you're depressed, then dealing with that depression is going to be one of the things you want to address. And once you have your list made of what this rich and meaningful life looks like and what you need to do to get there, then you can start picking one thing at a time and saying, all right, how do I start addressing this. Great question? Alrighty, if there are no other questions then I will probably sign off for today. But I will see you guys tomorrow morning at 9:30. And I'm not sure what I'm discussing tomorrow morning, but we'll figure it out. Thank you for being here. Have a great day. Please remember if you like these to share, encourage your friends to come. That certainly helps me get better ranking for the, for the channel, which is, you know, helpful and helps me keep doing these live presentations. Have a great day.
