How To Hate Yourself Less

Psychotherapist Jenise Harmon here offers three steps to help battle self-hatred. Perhaps they might assist you if self-hatred is a thing from which you suffer. If you ask me, most of the problems we face today arise from a general lack of self-hatred on the part of the people who make the decisions, but that is a subject for another lecture. In any event, you can find some tips at the previous link. Not being a psychotherapist myself I cannot say whether or not they are particularly effective as treatment but what I am is a sort of spiritual guide to many of the lost souls who distract themselves with the emptiness of the Internet and over the course of my ministry I have developed a three-step plan of my own which culminates in an important invocation the efficacy of which many of my followers have testified to in both email and tweet. If you’d like to learn from my counsel, read on.

1. Remember that as bad as you think you are, you are probably actually overlooking a bunch of stuff. We all know the obvious flaws in our natures because they are obvious. We even have a fairly good handle on the more-difficult-to-identify problem areas of our personalities, either because we have overheard people talking about us when they think we’ve left the room or we just know from the disappointed glances and shaking of the head that happens whenever we say the idiot things that we can’t keep from coming out of our mouths or we once again fail to meet the basic expectations others reasonably expect of us. But there are plenty of things we do — some of which we actually think of as assets in our otherwise deficit-laden daily interactions with those unfortunate enough to encounter us on a regular basis — that are just as bad, and maybe even worse because we’re proud (or at least not as shame-filled as usual) of them, as our most glaring and detestable traits. So you’re actually not hating yourself enough, which makes sense because you suck so bad that of course you’d fuck up self-loathing too.

2. Realize that every effort you have made to be better has failed and that every effort you attempt in the future will achieve similar results. People don’t change. Change is a lie told by Hollywood and anyone out to make a buck off of your basic desperate need to be loved in spite of your loathsome and repellent qualities. The most wistful word of all is “tomorrow” when it is used in the context of “tomorrow I’m going to be nicer” or “tomorrow I’m going to drink less” or “tomorrow I’m going to be more patient and less hurtful to the people around me who are actually trying to be good to me even though no one deserves it less than I do” or any of the hundred other things you tell yourself will be different the next day but never are because it’s easier to just be a dick and frankly you have been stuck on suck for so long that even trying to shift gears would result in a pain greater than your quotidian suffering over being unloved, since the worst hurt of all comes from confronting just what a useless sack of skin you are and how much space you take up with your irritation and ill-mannered complaining and general worthlessness and knowing that it is impossible for things to be otherwise. People don’t change. Even people who are better than you — and everyone is better than you — have tried to and failed. Why on earth do you think you’d stand a chance? You are who you are, as awful as that is for everyone.

3. Accept your irrelevance. Now that you’ve understood just how hideous your personality is and how disagreeable it is for everyone to be around you or force themselves to feel (in the case of family members) or feign (in the case of “friends”) affection for you, you have come to a place where we can let the healing start. Today I would like to teach you my Affirmation of Insignificance. Please memorize and repeat as needed.

I don’t matter. Nothing does. Everything is terrible and only getting worse but as awful as I am, I am still just a meaningless speck in the giant ocean of ghastliness and atrocity and it is the height of absurdity to assume that even someone as tiresome as I am merits an entry on the list of abominations that plague this world each second of every day. I suck. I’m nothing. I won’t worry too much about myself, because nobody else will, and they’re not wrong. Soon all trace of my sorry existence will disappear from the face of the world and whatever suffering I’ve caused will be as if it never existed and if it mattered one bit there would be great rejoicing but it doesn’t so there won’t. I suck so bad and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. I’m the worst, and whatever.

Feel better? You’re welcome. I recommend saying it when you wake up in the morning and right before you go to bed at night, but you will find a routine that works best for you. Good luck! Not that you deserve it, you piece of shit. You’re useless. And that’s okay. Here endeth the lesson.