We’re constantly being told that self-esteem is important, and we need to love and care for ourselves. But what if we’re not interested in that? Here are five simple hacks to make your self-hate blossom and let it ruin your entire life. Read on.
Takeaway:
- Whatever you need to do to solve your problems – do nothing!
- Always put other people’s needs and wants first, and even when you finally find time for yourself – get distracted and forget about it.
- Keep hustling and pushing so that you’ll never have the chance to take care of yourself, cause you’ll even be too tired to sleep.
- Talk down to yourself, call yourself names, and give yourself insults that will trigger you right into an emotional flashback.
- Hurt your own feelings, especially when you deserve recognition and acknowledgment. Even when you do the right thing and really make an effort – ignore it or reject it until you feel totally worthless.
The What and Why of this Article
This article is a subversive instruction for your toxic Inner Critic of what to do exactly to make you hate yourself more than ever before. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Disclaimer: If you’re in the middle of a toxic situation, this content might be triggering. In this case, you might prefer to leave reading this article for another time.
Ok, there are many things you can do. As my favorite author says, human imagination never flourished more than when it had to come up with ways to torture other people. So here is but a humble pick of the top 5 of my favorite ways in which I liked to make myself hate my guts. Maybe it will become helpful to you as well.
1 – Do Nothing
It always works. It’s a fool-proof method to hate your life and yourself just a little bit more. When a problem arises, and you feel uncomfortable, discontent, irritated, bored, or hurt – do nothing. It’s easy. You’re probably already doing it most of the time! Why am I guessing that? Because our culture champions over-agreeableness and conformity. We’re afraid to stand out and draw attention to ourselves by voicing our feelings and needs. It’s second nature to us because even psychology used to promote ignoring feelings, treating them as obstacles, and doing it ‘the logical and rational way’.
Another reason why it’s so super easy and why it’s in our blood is because evolutionarily, we’re conditioned to fear and hate change. In our nomadic era, our survival depended on stability, on everyone playing their role in the tribe. If someone would change – it could affect the entire community.
So next time you realize you have a problem – don’t do anything about it. Just trust your instinct, you’ll know how. And even when you figure out what to do or make a plan and promise you’ll do it this time – don’t. Keep doing the same thing. And next time it becomes too much again, and you’ll make a new discovery about something else you could do – don’t do it either. Just keep coming up with these solutions and then sit on them. Resist taking action, it might take a little effort, but it’ll pay off. You’ll hate your guts for that.
2 – Over-Agreeableness and People-Pleasing
Do something for others against your own will. When you’re tired, exhausted, drained, depleted, sad or angry, and overwhelmed, do it anyway. Do it with a grudge and with a long face. Do it like you ‘have to’, or else they’ll think you’re ungrateful, rude, or narcissistic. Do it out of insecurity or fear of rejection or punishment. Do it for any other reason than you really want to, and you really feel like it. Do it when you’re sleep-deprived and hungry. Do it when you should rather go to the toilet.
And do it, especially when you don’t even have time for yourself!
Why prioritizing others and not setting boundaries is making us hate ourselves? Because somewhere deep down, we know that it’s our responsibility to assert ourselves, but we don’t and blame it on others. Something inside you knows that that’s not how things work, and the right person to be angry with is, in that case, you.
So deny yourself any rights and make sacrifices against yourself every time you’d like to piss yourself off.
3 – Push It
When you’re pushing yourself to keep doing something, even to the point of burnout – don’t ever stop. Just think that everybody does that, compare your results to people who are the best, most experienced, and have done that decades longer than you. Tell yourself that what you’ve done doesn’t even look like anything yet. Forget to take breaks, go to sleep too late and get up early anyway. Go like this for weeks, months on end.
Forget to drink water, eat only junk food, don’t clean your place, get back to a messy bed. Don’t rest, just keep making to-do lists, and even when you’ve checked off everything, take another list, telling yourself either that you’re so much behind anyway or that if you don’t do this ahead of time, none of what you’ve done will matter anyway.
Keep telling yourself that all your effort doesn’t count, that you need to do more. Or that what you’ve done, even though it’s a lot, is by far not good enough. Imagine speaking to yourself like the most heartless, soulless person you’ve ever known when you do this. Think cool, distant contempt.
Never sit back and do nothing or daydream, and when you do, punish yourself by telling yourself something really nasty.
And no matter what you do, always try too hard.
4 – Trash Talk To Yourself
Whenever you make a mistake or mess something up, call yourself names. Come up with your favorite one and use it on repeat.
Drasticize and catastrophize any fear and anxiety you may have. Tell yourself – ‘what if this doesn’t work? And then something even more terrible happens, and then you’ll be a laughing stock to everybody, they’ll shame you and ridicule you, you’ll lose your job, your relationship, your family and your house, and you’ll end up living under the bridge, and you’ll die dirty out of starvation, and nobody will remember you’. Do this routine every time you contemplate, i.e., not passing an exam, not delivering a project on time, getting late to work, or forgetting about groceries.
It’s easy to do. You’re probably very good at this already, although you might not have realized this skill. Just remember the last time you failed at something, and you gave yourself a hard time – that’s what you’re aiming at. Remember, when you keep practicing, you’ll master this craft, and it’ll do wonders to nixing your self-esteem.
5 – Hurt Your Own Feelings
It’s a variation of the above, only you’re ruining for yourself any success, accomplishment, or even effort at doing something.
Every time you do something good, let yourself know how little it’s worth anyway. Tell yourself that compared to X, it’s nothing. Or that Y won’t appreciate it anyway.
It works best when you actually do something nice for yourself.
For example, you might be in the shop and see a great but too expensive dress. Normally you wouldn’t do it, but say, you’ve managed to convince yourself that it would be at least a good fun to try it on, or that you can afford it if you do X, and getting something nice for yourself will boost your self-esteem, or that you’ll be investing in yourself. See how great you look in the mirror, and then just when you feel the best, and it’s time to make that final decision – let all your doubts, fears, and insecurities start sneaking in. Think that you’re not attractive anyway, that you’re too fat or too thin, and you’ll first have to lose/gain some weight, which you won’t be able to do anyway, and so on.
Or think how your friend, that beautiful, slim, and curvy one, would look better in it anyway, and that she looks better even in rugs, and think how pathetic your attempt at looking nice will be if you’d stand next to her. Picture it in your mind well. Remember to pay attention to the looks of other people.
Another example – when you receive a compliment, think that the person who said it:
- did it out of pity
- doesn’t mean it, they’re just trying to be nice
- wants something from you
- that it was just a joke, with mean intent
Do anything it takes to deny and reject it. It works best if you can get to the point when you start thinking that everybody is a fake, you can’t trust anyone in this world anymore, and you have no friends.
Remember, the higher you get, the more painful the fall. It’ll work like a dream for ruining your self-worth!
Another tip is for when you’d like to do it subtly. That’s when it gets really insidious. Every time you do something wrong – notice it and let yourself know that you’ve seen it. You’ll feel that the judgment is justified cause you, in fact, did something wrong, so it will be the most difficult to reject and instead request understanding and compassion from yourself.
You can, i.e., tell yourself that you made a mistake, and quietly, on the screen inside your mind, show yourself all the times in the past you also did it wrong. You don’t even have to say anything to yourself anymore, just keep previewing those memories. Zoom in on humiliation and shame, and give yourself an ‘inner judgemental look’ in total silence. And when you feel all alone, think to yourself – that’s why nobody likes me.
And to the contrary – when you do something right – try not to pay any attention at all. Think it’s nothing, or try to distract yourself by thinking about other things you must do but you haven’t even started yet.
Criticizing ourselves when we’re doing something right is what hurts us the most. It really gets to us and stays with us the longest. So do it whenever you can if you want to become a master nihilist and feel that life has no meaning and you don’t either. Results guaranteed!
Good luck!
These were my personally tried and tested top 5 ways to make yourself yet more miserable and resentful towards yourself and others. You might probably come up with even more ingenious ways yourself! Good news, if you’re struggling with CPTSD and have experienced narcissistic abuse, your Inner Critic is no doubt already a master of this game, so you likely need no encouragement or guidelines. But don’t worry, you can always feel worse, just keep on going.
The rule of thumb is trying to remember how your abuser used to hurt you, what exactly they did that made you feel gutted, disempowered, abandoned, or crazy – and do exactly that. The objective is to trigger an emotional flashback and send yourself straight back into your childhood, right when your original wound was created, and you felt at your most vulnerable. Just do it as often as you can, surprise yourself when you can top what you said to yourself before, and even when you feel like you’re not in the mood – try to at least sneak in a bit of smart-ass remark or a little sarcastic and cynical laugh.
I’ve been considering giving you some affirmations for that, but the truth is, we’re all masters of this already. We just need to try harder.