Hm....
I don't know if there is any strategy to defeat it different then being in therapy.
Maybe time is the only strategy, maybe learning to love ourselves from our therapists over time (since apparently we didn't learn it form our parents)?
I can't think of anything else that could bring my I think rather low self esteem to a better level, then being seen, heard, accepted, cared for by my therapist. I presume the purpose is to be able to give it to yourself in turn, eventually...
Just be open with your T, I believe this is the way forward.
I don't think there is any logic that you can apply to changing your feelings about yourself.

Hi MH...

Well...today I said to my T. "I hate who I am and I hate who I am not....so who am I?"

I guess that pretty much sums it up....the session was pretty unproductive. I could not pull myself out of this place. So I just "sat with it"....damn....it's hard to do!

My T does not know what to do with my silences lately and I don't know what to do with hers. It's pretty damn quiet...but the raging goes on underneath it all.

SD

Hi MH,
I struggled for years with a high level of self-hatred and I have since conquered it. I basically believed that I was so repulsive, evil and horrible that anyone who got close enough would be forced to flee. Layered on top of that were disgust with myself for being overweight and unattractive, my procastination, what I thought was my laziness, my inability to take criticism, my neediness, etc etc ad nauseum ad infinitum.

Getting over it took a combination of experiencing the acceptance and understanding of my therapist over the last few years combined with rooting out some lies I had been told.

What really did it was having my T consistently be there for me, listening to my feelings, and normalizing them. It wasn't so much what he said, although that was important at times, (because as you mention it's easy to discount what someone else says) but what he did. His consistent attention kept signaling to me in a very right-brain way that I mattered. There was finally someone totally concentrated on my needs, who worked to understand me and welcomed ALL that I was including all of my feelings good and bad. On a really deep level that conveyed that I must be worthwhile or why would he be spending so much time paying attention to me.

It was also being able to express all my feelings and watching his reactions to them. No matter what I brought into his office, fear, insecurity, anger, need etc he heard it and welcomed it. There were a number of times he worked really hard to allow me to express my anger (mostly unjustified, it was displaced) even at him. But his reaction was non-defensive and again he would extend understanding and acceptance of why I felt that way.

The other component was in following my reactions to get at my beliefs underneath and when those were wrong, he would be very clear about it. The most important was when I made the breakthrough of remembering that my father had consistently told me I was unattractive and would be to anyone else so that I felt I had no place to go and would be handy to abuse. I posted about it here:

Profoundly uncomfortable

There was one more part which was as I processed my stored pain and grief, it cleared out internal space and freed up energy that was being used to hold all that out of awareness. When that happened I found myself with more energy to devote to other things. So my ability to get things done, stay on top of housework, and be creative seriously increased. My accomplishments, and getting feedback from my husband about the improvements, also helped me feel better about myself.
It was a gradual, titrated process, chipping away little by little. It started by first being able to consider that maybe what I believed about myself wasn't true. It was reinforced by my T confirming that so many of my feelings were normal for a human being. Until eventually I found myself in a place where I could trust in my own worth, while still being aware of my weaknesses and strengths, knowing that sometimes I messed up but that didn't make me any different from anyone else. I used to not be capable of hearing any criticism because my sense of self-worth was so weak that it was too threatening to hear I was doing something wrong. Now I can hear it because I believe that even when I mess up, that doesn't mean that's the totality of who I am, nor does it affect my worth.

I don't want to mislead you, the self hatred and self critical thoughts can still pop up, but now I know how to look at them and say that's not the truth, I know it isn't. And be compassionate with myself for having those feelings because now I know where they're coming from. You can't spend your whole childhood having your needs ignored, if not condemned, of not being treated as a person, or having your feelings matter without learning to believe on a deep level that you're worthless. It took the repair of a dependent secure attachment (which I should have had then) to restore my sense of worth. I hope this helps.

AG

Hi MH... first I think AG gave a thorough and wonderful answer. I too have struggled with the self-hate. I have told my T that I don't even understand why he would want to talk to me or even allow me in his office as I was so defective, horrible and I would just sit there and spew toxic waste all over his nice rug. There were times I felt so repulsive that I wanted to run out of his office and hide somewhere. He reassured me that I was not repulsive nor did I spew toxic waste or anything else on his rug. The really hard part is allowing those words to penetrate and take in. I have a really hard time with it. What has really made a difference though is staying through the feelings of self-hate and worthlessness and talking to him about it and "seeing" and "feeling" his reactions and his behavior towards me. This happens over and over again and there are times when I can almost admit that he really does care about me and that he likes me despite all that I've told him. It's the actions and reactions that we can take in on a limbic level that changes how we feel about ourselves. He can tell me these things until the bovines return to their abode (translation.... until the cows come home ) and I would not be able to hear him. I had to feel it not just know it cognitively.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that when you leave your T and you are so upset and things are churning inside of you and you have the urge to cut or do any other kind of destructive action that may be because you and your T have exceeded what you could tolerate in that session and that she left you in an overly activated state before you left her. The discussions in therapy should follow a bell curve (and here I'm stealing from John Briere, PhD who is a trauma expert). During the session you should reach the high point just before the halfway mark, time-wise and then your T needs to bring your feelings down slowly to a level where you can manage and tolerate your feelings. He says you should actually leave the session in a slightly better place than when you walked in. Briere describes this as the therapeutic window and the therapy needs to stay in the window... if you undershoot the window little work/progress will happen but if you over shoot the window you become too activated and will resort to avoidance behaviors (cutting, drugging, alcohol, dissociation or whatever your avoidance behavior of choice is) because you cannot tolerate the feelings. My T and I have struggled with this because there are times I leave after a difficult session and I am feeling so badly I need to contact him before my next appointment because I would end up in my "black hole" of self hate and would not be very functional.

I do see improvement (validated by my T) in that when I do have these episodes of self-hate they don't last as long or go as deep as they used to. I believe this has much to do with the caring and acceptance that I feel from my T. I do feel that I have some to go yet in that I still cannot get past certain things about me but I'm not giving up and my T has promised he would not give up on me either.

TN

Amazon, I think you are right that I need time. Time with my T to experience enough safety and care from her that I can finally trust my worthiness to receive it. Yet I feel pressure to accomplish this, like yesterday. It's not exactly like a checklist of tasks I can cross off. I know I am resisting changing my thinking, but that doesn't mean I know how to stop resisting.

SD, your words to your T struck me: "I hate who I am and I hate who I am not....so who am I?" I know you've been going to therapy for several years and wonder if you've felt this way from day one? Is the intensity the same? What was your T's response to that today? Silence? There aren't usually long stretches of silence in my sessions. I seem to be incapable of bearing it, so I usually interject a comment here and there - not always meaningful comments, mind you, some of them are just space fillers.

Echo, thanks for the link. I will ask my T what she knows about ACT. There are a few self-criticisms which I have reconsidered lately - more compassionately - after being asked to imagine my own children in my shoes. It is hard to feel or justify hate for my kids doing the same things which I hate myself for, which is probably creating some "disparity" (new word I learned from AG ).

AG, as always, your post contained many gems for me to ponder. I do identify with feeling repulsive and evil at times. It was just a week ago that my T took hold of my hands, trying to ground me and bring me out of dissociating, and I remember asking her through my tears how she could stand to touch me? At that moment I felt she should be recoiling in horror at being contaminated by my touch. Thank you also for the link to your Profoundly Uncomfortable thread. I had not read that one before. It is a bit too emotionally triggering for me to comment on right now though. But I will come back to it someday.

Hi MH...I think our posts crossed and my response is above your last response.

I just wanted to add that when I found the courage to tell my T about one of the most traumatic things that happened to me and I felt at my most repugnant and untouchable...the darn guy gave me a hug at the end of the session. It was actually the second time he did that.. the first was a birthday hug but some time had elapsed in between. It totally dispelled all the feelings of repulsiveness I was experiencing and trying to detach from during the session and I feel having that "safe" touch had a lot to do with my not having a meltdown in the days following that session.

TN

TN, I missed your post while I was typing my last one. Thank you for your insight.

I think I get what you are describing in experiencing your T's caring at a deeper level than just words. Sometimes it is the subtle things that are most convincing - like if your T doesn't shy away when you expect him to, or how when you finally lift your gaze off your T's feet to meet his eyes, he is already there waiting for you, intently studying your every move trying to connect with you. That's when the almost subconscious thought creeps in that maybe your T really does see you differently than you see yourself, even though he's been telling you that for months already.

I had not heard of the bell curve in therapy, but it makes sense. I don't think we've been following that curve too well, but that is probably my fault because my T lets me lead the discussions in the direction I want to go, for the most part. And I tend to take at least 3/4ths of the session to work up the nerve to broach really sensitive material. Often I am fairly activated by the time the session ends. It's because I want to push myself, but I procrastinate doing it until the end. (Procrastination should be my middle name.) I think this probably contributed to my most recent SI episode, but there's more to it. I am going through a "separation anxiety" transference sort of thing after every session, regardless of how things end. I have fallen into a pattern of texting my T usually within 24 hours after a session in order to deal with the anxiety. I don't know how to get out of it. I think it is something I have to go through for awhile.

I, too, stuggle w/intense self-hatred and I'm stuck at the point of wanting someone else to take care of me(vs me caring and parenting myself--which fills me with wild rage!!)....I see myself as that stray cat that is soo dirty and smelly that it doesn't have enought food or energy to clean itself and needs some help!...BUT...no one wants to get near it because of the fact that it is so dirty and smelly!!! All of this is keeping me so stuck and in a rage! mlc

Mad Hatter hi

Just a thought when I read your initial post, it immediately linked to where I am at the moment in terms of sorting myself out. I’ve spent decades consciously opposing and fighting my self hate and self loathing and it’s only recently that I’ve made a connection between what I call ‘anti-me’ beliefs in my head - and the experience of powerless rage.

That self hate and self loathing for me is decades of unexpressed anger and rage all turned inward because my experience of anger is actually my experience of myself as totally powerless and therefore utterly unimportant and worthless. I’ve only just worked out that my self hate (rage) needs a legitimate object to be turned against - so long as I keep holding it in thereby maintaining that sense of utter powerlessness and frustration it’s going to stay directed at me.

Don’t know if that makes any sense to you, and to be honest I’ve only just begun to recognize how angry I really am and how closely these feelings of rage are linked to my own self hate so haven’t really gone very far in resolving any of it.

What IS helping me though is being able to express bits of what I experience as unacceptable and unreasonable anger at my therapist and having him take it calmly and unjudgementally. That is starting to give me a tiny sense of being not so totally powerless and is making it a whole lot easier for me to resist my self loathing. As I said, just a thought. Hope it’s of some use though.

mlc, I like your metaphor of look what the cat dragged in! That image captures the struggle well. I also feel rage when I think of having to care for myself, although I don't completely understand it. I think the rage is because having to care for myself translates into the message that I am repugnant and unworthy of attention and that my needs are bad. The entitled toddler within me protests against that, because to accept it is to sink into abandonment depression.

Lamplighter, hi there! I read your other thread and can see you have been struggling with this longer than I have. Thanks for posting here. I often sense the rage go underground when I am in my T's presence. I think I am afraid I cannot control it once it is released, or that my T will react in a way that I cannot handle. So I mostly only allow myself to feel on a surface level, unless I am alone. However, I think I am beginning to do what you suggested, giving up bits and pieces to my T and testing the waters (for both myself and her) to see if we can both handle it.

Venting.I just finished a crappy session. First, I had to substitute my scheduled office visit with a phone visit because I have a sick toddler and can't get out of the house. (I've decided I don't like phone visits because the last two I've had have left me reeling afterward.) Then I couldn't get through to my T. It turns out her office phone isn't working properly (no dial tone). Finally, I called her cell phone, breaking my promise to myself that I would never, ever allow myself to call that number because it is her Emergency phone. But that is what we ended up talking on. By the time we began the session, the time was nearly half gone. On top of that the reception wasn't the greatest and we were disconnected once. One of the first things she said was, "Do we still need to argue more about cutting?" I already was in a foul mood and didn't need to hear that. She didn't know how hard I had to try last night to not do it. Then we talked about this self-hatred thread (which I guess is why I am posting all this here). I told her what your comments were, and that no, I still didn't have it quite figured out. I'm supposed to learn how to separate what I do from what I am. She says maybe I just don't want to like myself. BIG SIGH. Yeah, I'm feeling better already. I said even if I wanted to believe that nothing I did wrong would affect my worth as a human being, the self-derision is so ingrained that it is automatic. She said the first step is being willing to believe. So I'm supposed to think about that over the weekend. Somehow I'm supposed to sort out all the lies and the truths. Wish me luck with that task.

Hi MH - just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear that your session didn't go well. Connection problems mechanical and therapeutic... ...how very disappointing, when we wait for those appointments with such anticipation. I hope the next one is so good that it makes up for this one.

And I hope your toddler gets better quickly. That's tough on Mom as well as the kiddo.

SG

Thank you for being sympathetic, SG. I know I am being grumpy, so I appreciate your kindness that I don't deserve at the moment. My little guy is being treated for strep, but he'll be OK. I just hope it doesn't spread through the rest of the family.

Hello there Mad Hatter

I’m so sorry you had a crappy session - I really really relate to that right now, having just had the worst session of this bout of therapy so far.

I must say it would push all my buttons having a T say ‘maybe I just don’t WANT to like myself’. WTF!!!! I really hate it when they go all smartarse on me like that and make stupid comments that really aren’t helpful and at best designed to raise some sort of emotional response (they get it, snap snarl bite!)

Ok sorry I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s going on in your therapy right now and maybe her comment is relevant in some way, maybe she genuinely wants you to consider what might be getting in the way of your liking yourself - so my tirade isn’t so helpful.

I just think that if you’ve got someone struggling with self hate then the last thing they need is to be held responsible for hating themselves (if that makes sense.) Far better to try and understand where the self hate comes from and the reasons for its existence. I expect your T has already gone into all that though. Sorry again I’m just reading my stuff into your situation. (It’s hard for me not to get angry on your behalf lol).

I really hope you get through the weekend safely - and that your son gets better very quickly.

Lamplighter

Thanks for being angry right along with me, Lamplighter. It's nice to be understood. I thought it was supposed to be my T's job to be understanding, but lately what I'm getting from her is criticism. Maybe she is right that I just don't want to like myself. OK, she wins. But you are right that her saying it that way isn't likely to illicit a positive reaction from me.

Last night I texted T to complain that I felt trapped in a corner because (1) I can't express my feelings to her since she criticizes them, (2) I can't write out my thoughts because she refuses to read them, and (3) I can't cut. End result is I am all stopped up, and something has to give! So guess what her reply was? Another smart-aleck remark: "You are trapped only in your mind." Really? Thanks for dismissing this crisis state I find myself in as just fantasy. That helps tremendously to diffuse the mounting pressure. (just a tad bit of sarcasm intended). At the moment I almost hate her as bad as myself.

MH, sorry that you missed out so much of your session... really annoying
I think your T gave you some homework to do so perhaps the next session will go really well. I know you are in disagreement with her about the cutting. And the self hatred... Maybe before the salf hatred was something you did absolutely unconsciously, it was not something you were aware of, it was just the way you ware, it would not be something you would think of, right? So know she named it for you. It is something you are aware of. Something you can name and see for yourself. I think you can't expect that it will just vanish over night, but now you already know your enemy. I think the big step is knowing. You can't force yourself to like yourself. But you know that you hate yourself.

I think the fact that you are trapped now may make you look for a way out and find one.
Good luck MH. You kind of sound strong.
take care...