You can’t hate yourself back to health
Hating yourself doesn’t work
I know from my own personal experience as well as with clients I work with, that when you hate something or someone – it doesn’t accomplish anything.
That becomes even more obvious when you’re trying to heal deep emotional wounds.
Be it with physical, emotional or mental issues – you CANNOT hate yourself back into health and wellbeing.
I hate feeling out of control
I completely get that. There is nothing more frustrating than having the rug pulled out from underneath you when it comes to your body or your mind – or both!
Everything is going fine and on track one minute but the next it feels like you are falling apart.
We just want to go back to feeling normal again. Useful, strong, in control.
And we might even fight it at first. Push ourselves harder because we don’t want to be seen or feel like we are weak. We don’t want to think we’re being judged by others as not being able to cut it.
So we push on, loading up on medication if we can, to get through.
Right in that moment – we literally hate ourselves for being human. We hate ourselves for being weak and not able to cope.
We’re suddenly not good enough.
We start sending silent messages to our body: “how dare you let me down!”, “how could you do this to me?”, “why now?”.
“I hate you for doing this to me”.
Push, push, push harder.
When things are spiralling out of control – push through it.
It’s the only way we seem to know how to deal with it all.
Negativity weakens your body.
Studies have consistently shown that negative emotions such as shame, which is the most damaging, followed by guilt, grief, fear, anxiety, craving, anger and hate, actually weaken your body. And what is worse, is that the chemical reaction that it causes within your body stays there for hours afterwards.
Your negative reactions, even if they feel brief to you, actually continue to cause harm within the body.
This link breaks it down a little bit more about how thoughts and emotions affect your health. Click here
What if we simply stopped?
Could the issues you are experiencing be trying to tell you something?
What if they are actually a blessing?
(did you want to stop reading when you read that last line?) 😊
That’s ok.
How could you possibly find a blessing in the fact that you’re in pain or that your body seems to be fighting itself? Fighting against you?
I’ve had many of those moments too. Moments where I was desperate and had to turn to medication in order to help calm myself down so I could sleep or breathe normally.
But once I came out the other side of it, I realised something.
In every single instance of my health failing and my body giving up – I realised that not only was I was ignoring all the signs and pushing my way through it all, but I was also hating myself for my weakness and the place that I was in.
My ‘blessing’ was this moment of clarity where I realised my body knew a lot more than I’d realised.
My body was desperately trying to tell me something and I was ignoring it.
It was telling me the truth.
See issues as a blessing – not a curse.
If you are experiencing pain, any sort of pain, in this moment right now, it’s important that you stop and listen.
Your pain is coming up and showing itself to you because it wants you to heal from it. It wants you to reconnect with yourself so you can know and understand yourself on a deeper, more intimate level.
You are being invited to dive into the core reason of this pain so you can let go of it.
Your body, your pain, no longer wants you to suffer.
When you are in pain, the reason it is a blessing, is because it has an ability to show you, directly, what you are holding onto.
You can hate it all you want. You can despise what you feel it is doing to you – but that will just add to the emotional and physical pain you are already in.
But when you tune into it. When you talk to that part of yourself and thank it for showing you that something isn’t right, you instantly start the healing process.
In many cases I have seen people, once they’ve built up the relationship with their body, simply focus on the pain – and I mean really focus in on what it feels like, what it might look like and even ask “what is this trying to tell me/what emotion is stuck in here?”, and the pain fades away.
When we hate something, we get caught up in the justification of feeling that way. We believe we have a right to feel that way because, lets face it, it’s ruining everything! Right? It’s getting in the way!
Positivity
Positive emotions strengthen your body.
And even if the science wasn’t around to prove it, you’d only need to feel into what it’s like when you’re happy and laughing.
It feels good right? Feels like if everyone laughed a bit more the world wouldn’t be so serious, and it would be a better place.
The people who I’ve had around me and that I’ve lost through disease and illness, as well as the clients that came to me for a time but
then left because they felt it hadn’t worked for them, all had one thing in common.
There was anger and hatred about what their life was or had become.
They hated where they had come from and what had happened to them.
They hated what they now had to deal with and overcome.
It felt like another blow, like life was plotting against them.
The struggle to find any form of happiness or love in the situations around them kept them from healing.
The one thing I felt that they were all missing was that connection to themselves.
Their ailment was seen as a curse or punishment. They couldn’t see it as an incredible journey of the body, mind, spirit and soul to reconnect and find each other. The ability to deep dive and heal and learn from it wasn’t done.
They ran from it.
When you hate something, you’re essentially running from it. When you’re accepting of it, you’re able to look at it with some objectivity, maybe even eventually some compassion. THAT is how you truly heal.
At its essence – it’s love.
“Positive people also have negative thoughts; they just don’t let those thoughts take over and destroy them”
Love heals
It’s likely that you’ve heard this before: Love heals.
To add onto that: kindness, compassion, forgiveness and understanding – heal.
They all come under the banner of love, but I find it’s worth pointing out.
In order to heal, who do you need to forgive? Who are you angry at?
Who do you need to show kindness to? Is it simply you?
If you are in pain and you want to truly heal then you may have to dive into the rabbit hole of where it comes from.
Your body will direct you if you follow it.
And if, along the way, you’re scared, unsure, or don’t know what to do, then please check out my previous blogs about EFT and how to dive deeper into it.
Sometimes it’s the simple things that can make the biggest difference.
Like planting a garden
I mentioned this in my last blog about healing yourself and healing the world.
An experiment has been done time and time again with your common, every day, household plant.
One plant is hurled with abusive, nasty comments. (Words of hate!)
And the other one is talked to with love and compassion.
The one that is treated with hatred has stunted growth, turns brown and withers – and will eventually die.
But the plant that is treated with kindness, flourishes.
You are no different!
If you hate yourself for all that you are and have become, then you will forever struggle to heal.
However, if you can LOVE yourself for everything that you are right in this moment. Love yourself for everything that you’ve survived through and have endured – and you’re STILL moving forward. If you are a good person who cares, and who is kind and considerate, who can appreciate themselves for doing the best they can with what they’ve got and have been given, THEN you have the ability to heal yourself.
It starts with gratitude and it starts in your heart. Feel it in your heart and let that spread into your mind and your body.
Things you can do to help you love and reconnect to yourself:
The list here is really, endless. The best way to think about this is what makes you happy? What things do you like to do that make you happy and bring a feeling of contentment or satisfaction into your life? What things did you love to do as a child?
I’ve listed a few here that I do regularly as well as some I found on the internet just to get you started.
If you have no idea about what makes you happy then use this as a way to find out. Look at this with a sense of exploration. It’ll be a loving journey back to yourself.
- Meditation
- Get in touch with nature
- Quiet/contemplative time
- Writing
- Exercising/going for a walk
- Reading
- Gardening
- Painting/drawing
- Anything creative!
- Watch a funny movie
- Coffee with friends that make you laugh
I find anything that brings me to a state of peace helps me to connect to myself on a deeper more intimate level.
Be careful how you talk to yourself
It’s time to look at the language you use around your issues. Are you thanking it for letting know you know something is wrong or are you hating what you feel it’s doing to you?
If you are angry or hateful towards yourself, and it’s not working – why not try a different way?
Because it’s love that’ll heal you.
Need help deep diving into your pain?
Would you like to move past the hate and into a place of love and acceptance?
I’d love to connect.