When you truly, honestly hate yourself

My friend, please hang on. I don't know what is hurting you so badly, but try, please try, to give yourself some more time and space to figure it out. Go and find a psychologist who will listen to you. Open up a journal and write everything down that you feel and think - everything. Anything to give you some little opening and hope that you can make. And, having gone through a lot of dark hours myself, I really believe you can make it! So, please just keep trying and hang on! Hugs

@1k194 that sounds so painful. No one feels happy about themselves all the time. I have times when I look back on my life, and realize I said or did some stupid things. I then make a decision not to dwell on it because it’s done and can’t be changed.
Looking forward, I decide to treat myself with respect and move on.
Right now it seems almost everyone is angry, irritated, stressed about everything. Our world is a messy place and it’s easy to get caught up in the chaos.
I have a feeling that you have some really good ideas, and strengths that can be used to help others. You can create something that will make you and another person feel good.
Helping others makes us feel good.
Best wishes.

@1k194 What is one little thing you can do today, just for you? Make a great cup of tea? Bake some cookies? Go for a walk and enjoy listening to birds singing? Read a few chapters in a book that interests you? Call someone just to wish them a good day? Pull some weeds or water some plants, talking to them all the time?

Like @SueEllen66 mentioned, we all seem to have periods like you describe. I'm glad you recognize this in yourself, because to me it means you are hurting and want to get some help. That help started when you reached out here. Have you been able to address these feelings with a professional at any point?
What will you do today that is a positive?
Ginger

I have always had similar feelings as well. I was born to an extremely poverty striven family. They had just gone thro a loss of the family farm and were left with nothing. Absolutely, 63 years ago. I believe I was taught to have no self worth. And the world was not kind. I still feel the same ugly, stupid, like everyone matters but me. It's hard to get out of believe me. I know.

@1k194 Here is some info from Mayo that might be helpful also
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/suicide/in-depth/suicide/art-20048230

@1k194, to start, I just want to say that much of what’s already written by other posters is great and valid - so I won’t repeat it.
What I will say is this: that rage, that loathing, that caged desperation that it turns into and onto itself, compounding itself, evolving into more and more impotent and desperate rage..I am familiar with that beast.
Sometimes nothing can modify it no matter what I do; none of the calming techniques, the psychological techniques, the other stuff…all just mere distractions that the rage inside at myself eats and spits out within seconds of attempting to contemplate them.
This rage then colours everything I see, everything I do, and it’s at times inescapable- and becomes wrapped up in such unbearable self loathing that it refers me inoperable/non-functional.
I’m far from perfect, and I hate my body for what it became after being smashed up from impact with cars, unable to have children, illness, a brain injury resulting in memory loss, and a court system that destroyed my life in its abject cruelty and innate function designed to cover up corruption and perpetually exploit the innocent.
I hate myself for what I have become.
The rage lives within me each and every day, under the veneer of socially accepted presentation that society demands.
How do I cope? My only solution is channeling that rage into something constructive, instead of the completely destructive impotent ball that is not otherwise well contained within my chest.
I have become a systemic advocate for better and just, rights-based medical care, homelessness, and cancer - all things that have been incredibly destructive in my life and I have till recently actively avoided, thinking I was protecting myself; only to realise that facing these horrible blights on me and society is actually an excellent means of releasing the rage. It doesn’t take away how much I do loathe myself for what I am, but it does give me somewhere to direct that energy, which then helps people, and in turn that helps me.
I tell my story of pain and hurt, to the people who have the means to change policies, procedures, service delivery, and cultural change in health. It took me over a year to finally get where I need to be, but now, I make a difference with my rage, my pain, and my hurt - and this is what helps me feel better.
I encourage you to find what hurts, and find a place/thing in society that parallels that pain and needs advocacy, and you start learning how to tell your story of hurt, pain, and rage to the people who make decisions.
I am involved with a number of organisations that advocate for suicide prevention and reduction, education in mental health (particularly in telling your story to help you make an impact, as well as how to be involved in committee work and co-design of services), organisations that gather information from society (ie: I tell them my story) and they use it to inform governmental submissions to advocate for state and National level policy and legislative changes, organisations that feed into decision maker govt/CEO levels of organisations that will positively influence the lives of homeless people, and organisations that research the impacts of end-stage cancer and how their research needs to include the voices and needs of the people they are undertaking the research for (my argument being: what are you doing it for if you’re not actively working to help people with cancer? And “your career” does not cut it when you’re in the room with me - professor or not).
I am trying to channel my rage into something productive, something that has patience to guide someone to my point of view - because my point of view has VALUE.
You sound like the kind of person who could have lots to teach, lots to bring change, and I encourage you to find that thing, find that voice, find that pathway, to channeling that rage into meaning and value for yourself and others.
Your words tell me you have a lifelong experience with emotional pain - this in itself could be a ****ing powerful story to tell, if you choose to, and it in turn could be the catalyst to changing a system (domestic violence system, depression and anxiety systems, etc) to help people who are experiencing the same thing.
I got rage, and I’m now proud of it.
I hope you can find a way to channel what is in you too 🌺❤️‍🩹

PS: besides that, I actually vent my emotions of rage when they become overwhelming; I go find a place where I can be alone, and I roar at the top of my lungs, to externalise that emotion. And it helps.
If you’re like me and can be heard like whale-song for miles, take earplugs 🙌🏻🌺

I was not always who I am. I was once a sweet little boy full of wonder and joy. If I can not love who the world has made me I can love who I was.

Our scars are beautiful. They tell of our lives.

When the pain of my life was more than I could bare I turned inward and hated myself. Suicide is all that pain turned inward. I am not loathsome any more than a child is loathsome and neither are you.

It has always helped me to reach out to someone more in need than me. Perhaps I help them, but they have often saved me.

You are loved because of your flaws not in spite of them.

To all that are suffering. Please take some solace in knowing that with all your faults and misgivings,
God Truly Loves you.
Blessings.

Somebody must have told you very early on that you were worthless, loathsome, ugly inside and out. Nobody is born with such a self image; they're taught it.

Please find a competent therapist to unburden yourself of all those distorted self-perceptions. Find where they came from. Banish them. Get help talking back to these self-hating voices. Adopt a rejected pet. Saving its life may well save yours.

There are also online support groups for the depressed, one for "adult children of alcoholic and dysfunctional families". https://adultchildren.org/

You do NOT deserve all these convictions about your basic "badness". Fight them. Talk back to them. Help a needy person, give a homeless fellow a sandwich, even just a smile.

Force yourself to smile even if it hurts. It will give you if only for a moment at least the smallest sense of control over the forces that propel you to self-destruction. If you look around, there's no way for you not to perceive someone else worse off than you - how you see yourself.