self-hatred

Liking yourself is not the antidote to hating yourself

May 8, 2019

You might think that the antidote to self-hatred is liking yourself. But is that desirable, or even possible? We all contain impulses such as jealously, hatred, and greed. What would it mean to like them? Are we supposed to approve of them? To give them free rein and act upon them?

The idea of liking “ourselves” seems badly put. When I look at myself I don’t see any one thing. I see a broad range of phenomena, some that promote my wellbeing and others that sometimes compromise it. There’s no one “self” there to like.

I have plenty to work with. I have skillful impulses, of course. But I also have destructive or harmful habits such as irritability, a desire to be “right,” depressive doubts about my own worth, and so on. These cause suffering for me and also for others in my life.

But hating these things is pointless. Hating these aspects of myself would just be introducing more unskillfulness and conflict into my being. To hate ourselves is to be at war with ourselves. And in such a war, who can be the winner? Hatred, as the Buddha observed, can never conquer hatred.

That doesn’t mean that I approve of these impulses or want to express them. If I was to give those habits free rein, I’d just end up with even more suffering in my life.

I certainly don’t like these potentially destructive habits. To like something means we have pleasant feelings associated with it, and I don’t experience pleasant feelings with regard to my irritability, self-doubts, and so on.

I can accept them, though. And I can be kind toward them.

Practicing acceptance simply means that I accept that these things are a part of me. They are part of the broad range of emotional responses that I have inherited as a mammal and as a human being. I didn’t choose to have them. It makes no sense for me to judge myself harshly for having these habits. I don’t need to hate myself simply for being human.

An audience member at a discussion between two Buddhist teachers described how she came to see that it was possible for her to have compassion for herself:

I’ve been thinking a lot about loving myself, but I felt like I would have to like everything about myself to love myself. But then I had a realization … that I could just have some compassion toward myself. I don’t necessarily have to like every part of myself.

It’s possible for us to relate with kindness and compassion to every part of ourselves, including those destructive tendencies I’ve described. I can recognize that they are born from suffering. Our unskillful habits are simply ways of trying to deal with painful feelings that have arisen. Irritability tries to keep at bay some source of distress. Jealousy wants us to have for ourselves a benefit that someone else has access to. Doubt tries to analyze what’s not going right in our lives. Every single unskillful impulse any of us has represents an attempt to find peace and happiness. The problem with them is not that they are “bad,” but that they don’t work.

One of the most radical things the Buddha said was that if letting go of unskillful habits caused pain rather than brought us peace, he wouldn’t have taught us to do it. He didn’t seem to see them as inherently bad. He’d have encouraged us to keep on going with our greed, hatred, and delusion if they actually made us happy. But they don’t.

Our task is to find better strategies. This is what developing “skillfulness” involves—finding ways of being that actually bring about peace and harmony. To lack skill means aiming to create happiness but instead bringing about suffering and conflict.

When we react to our unskillful tendencies by hating them we’re treating them as if they were enemies. They aren’t. They’re just confused friends. They’re trying to benefit us, but most of the time failing. Once we start to empathize with what these confused friends are trying to do for us, we can find more skillful ways to accomplish the same aims. Mindfulness and self-compassion are the most powerful tools we have for doing that.

Our irritability and hatred maybe trying (and failing) to keep some source of distress out of our experience. We’re trying to push the distress out of our lives. Mindful self-compassion helps us see that it’s not the unpleasant feeling that’s our real problem, but our resistance to it. It allows us to be present with painful feelings until they pass, naturally, and can open up the way for us to have fondness and appreciation for whatever it was we were irritated by.

Jealousy may want us to grasp for ourselves some benefit that another has access to (this is of course painful), but self-compassion can help soothe the pain of grasping and also help us feel a sense of abundance; there is so much kindness we can show to ourselves! And this can allow us to feel glad for the other person.

Self-doubt may be a clumsy way of trying to discover if there’s something wrong in the way we are. Mindful self-compassion can help reassure the uncertain part of us, seeing that there’s nothing going on that we can’t work with, reminding us to trust in our practice, and helping us to see our inherent goodness.

In all cases empathizing with our unskillful tendencies helps us to be happier.

Practicing self-compassion is like learning to be a kind and wise parent to ourselves. If our children act badly in some way, they do not need either our hatred. That wouldn’t be helpful for them. Neither, however, should we blindly approve of everything they do. That wouldn’t help them either. When our children act badly they need our kindness, our empathy, and wise guidance.

And this, too, is how we need to learn to relate to ourselves if we want to flourish and be happy in the long-term.

For people who hate their bodies

June 14, 2014

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Not many people like their bodies. The typical reaction from looking at oneself naked in the mirror lies somewhere on a spectrum from mild disappointment to outright revulsion, with a bit of disbelief thrown in (how did I get so old? where did those wrinkles come from? where’s my hair gone?)

I had a little epiphany the other day, though. I’d been talking with my girlfriend, who I adore. She’s beautiful. Really beautiful. And she’s also afflicted by doubts about her attractiveness. So when we were talking she was going over some of the things she didn’t like about her appearance (wrinkles, etc) and I’m, like, “I don’t care. I love those things about you. You’re beautiful.” Well, you know what it’s like when you love someone unconditionally. There’s just a complete acceptance of the whole of them. So that’s one thing.

Then I walk into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and see myself naked in the mirror. And a quick series of criticisms of my body flashes through my mind. Some bits are too skinny. Some bits are too flabby, too hairy, not hairy enough… My overall response could be summed up in the word “Yuck.”

And then I caught myself. Why can’t I give myself the same uncritical love that I give to my girlfriend? I mean she thinks I’m attractive, so why can’t I just accept that?

So I started telling bits of my body that I love them. I patted my belly fondly and said “I love you.” I did the same as I touched my thinning scalp. And as I laid a hand on my man-boobs.

And you know something? It feels great saying those things. Criticizing ourselves is almost as painful as being criticized by others, but giving ourselves affection, appreciation, and acceptance is often even more moving than receiving those things from other people, because it’s something we so rarely do. So I’ve been doing this ever since. You might want to try it too.

If there’s an inner voice telling you that this is silly or doubting that you can really love those bits of yourself that you tend not to like, don’t suppress that voice or try to argue with it. Just let the thoughts come and go.

Bear in mind that this is something you might want to repeat often. After all, you might have criticized your body tens of thousands of times, so perhaps it’ll take you a while to get into the habit of doing the opposite. But do try it. I’d love to hear how you get on.

Why you don’t really hate yourself

January 21, 2014

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Lots of people struggle with self-hatred. They find they constantly judge themselves, talk to themselves harshly, and even do things to themselves that are harmful. It’s very painful to be this way.

But I want to tell you: you don’t really hate yourself.

In the deepest core of your being you love yourself. In the deepest core of your being you want everything for yourself that you want for those you hold most dear. In the deepest core of your being you want to be happy, to be well, and to be at peace.

And everything you do — everything — is a strategic attempt to find happiness, wellness, and peace. That’s the motivation behind every action you take, including your acts of self-hatred.

If you hate someone else, your motivation is usually something like this: by being unpleasant to them they’ll go away and not bother you any more, and then you’ll be at peace, and you can get on with being happy. Or they’ll stop doing that thing that annoys you, and then you can go back to being happy.

Those motivations of ours aren’t usually very conscious, because conscious self-examination is a relatively recent arrival in our being, evolutionarily speaking, and so many of our strategies are not clearly thought out, but are automatic and habitual. And so we often use strategies that just don’t work. The person you’re unpleasant to often can’t or won’t go away. They may be unpleasant back at you. And so your strategy to find peace and happiness ends up destroying your peace and your happiness even further.

If you hate some aspect of yourself, then usually the motivation is similar to those above. Maybe you messed up: “Oh god, what an idiot I am!” you yell at yourself, in the privacy of your own head. You treat yourself like a child who needs to be punished so that it won’t repeat an error. You do something good but you tell yourself it wasn’t “good enough.” If you can just be unpleasant enough to yourself, then maybe you’ll stop making mistakes. You’ll do better. Then you’ll be happy.

This is also a strategy that doesn’t work. You can’t find happiness through being harsh on yourself. You can’t create a sense of inner peace through setting up a conflict with yourself. But we get stuck with our failed strategies of self-hating behaviors — repeating them over and over. Hating yourself didn’t work that time? Try a bit harder at hating yourself next time!

But the key thing is that self-hatred is a strategy. And it’s a strategy for meeting a deeper desire for well-being, peace, and happiness. And that deeper desire for well-being, peace, and happiness is the love you have for yourself.

Self-hatred is self-love gone wrong. Self-hatred is your natural desire for happiness expressing itself in a strategy that can never work.

This is, I hope, encouraging. Because it’s not you, in your core, that’s the problem. It’s your strategies. And you can change your strategies. Strategies, in the great scheme of things, are relatively superficial. When you mess up, you can learn accept that you messed up without recrimination. You can learn that you don’t need to be harsh on yourself to prevent yourself making mistakes. You can learn, as animal trainers well know, that rewards are more important motivators than punishments like harsh self-talk. You can learn to be kind to yourself. You can practice lovingkindness, and learn the arts of being patient, accepting, and kind toward yourself. You can learn to be compassionate to yourself when you’re suffering.

It’s not necessarily easy to do all this. In fact it’s not easy. It even can be very painful in the short-term (we’ll often give ourselves a hard time for giving ourselves a hard time), although in the long-term learning to be kind to ourselves brings great happiness. You can expect a bumpy ride at first. But the only thing more painful than learning new strategies for finding happiness is to keep going with strategies that never have worked and never can.

Self-hatred, self-compassion, and non-self

October 10, 2013

Bodhipaksa

on practice

A lot of people have difficulty practicing self-compassion, but some people have difficulty with the concept of self-compassion. I’ve had very experienced Buddhist practitioners tell me that while they think it’s good to have compassion for others it’s not desirable or even possible to have self-compassion, or that self-compassion is just self-pity. It’s a shame there’s so much confusion over such a crucial practice.

But in some ways it’s not surprising that this confusion exists. The Buddha just took it for granted that we love ourselves — he said we should love others as we love ourselves, which for self-loathing westerners seems the wrong way around — and as far as I’m aware he never addressed the problem of self-hatred, which people say is largely a modern, western phenomenon, although I’m not sure there’s any evidence of that. Anyway, there’s little to nothing in the Buddhist scriptures about the practice of self-compassion or even self-metta.

Dealing with those objections, I see the issue of self-compassion versus compassion for others, or self-hatred versus hatred of others as a red herring. Hatred is hatred. So hatred of oneself, or parts of oneself, should be dealt with in the same way as hatred for others. And compassion for oneself should be cultivated in exactly the same way that compassion for others should be cultivated. So when the Buddha says something like:

“You should train yourself thus … ‘I shall remain friendly and empathetic, with a mind of lovingkindness, and I shall not give in to hatred,'”

this is as applicable to ourselves as it is to others. When the mind is full of compassion it touches everything it experiences with compassion. And this applies to reflexive thought — when the mind full of compassion thinks of itself it does so compassionately. How could it do otherwise?

This is a teaching of non-self. The perception of pain is just the perception of pain. If you experience pain in another or in yourself there’s not any essential difference regarding how you should respond: your pain, another’s pain — it doesn’t matter. And the only appropriate and skillful response to the perception of pain is compassion. It doesn’t matter whether the pain you’re perceiving is in yourself or another, you should meet the pain with compassion. This is where the non-self perspective comes in. “Your” pain isn’t really your pain.

There’s an interesting dialog in the Samyutta Nikaya, where the Venerable Moliya Phagguna asks the Buddha the simple question:

“Lord, who feels?”

The reply is very interesting: “Not a valid question,” the Blessed One said.

“I don’t say ‘feels.’ If I were to say ‘feels,’ then ‘Who feels?’ would be a valid question. But I don’t say that. When I don’t say that, the valid question is ‘From what as a requisite condition comes feeling?’ And the valid answer is, ‘From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving.'”

So suffering, which is a feeling, arises, but it’s improper to say that there is a person who suffers. There is suffering but there is no sufferer. This is hard to understand without having seen through the illusion of self, but if we want to move toward directly seeing the truth of non-self we shouldn’t get caught up in thinking that our own suffering is any different from other people’s suffering.

We often, though, think either that our suffering is more important than others’ because it’s ours, or that it’s less important because it’s ours. Both of these are examples of what Buddhism calls “conceit” which includes not just thinking that we’re more important or better than others (so we’ll hurt people to relieve our own suffering) or that we’re less important or worse than others (so we’ll give compassion to anyone but ourself).

Self-pity is entirely different from self-compassion, incidentally. Self-pity is where you’re causing yourself further suffering by going “Oh, this is terrible. This shouldn’t be happening.” With self-compassion you let go of those story-lines and simply feel compassion for your pain. You send it loving attention. You hold it in awareness the same way you might hold a sick child. You give yourself comfort and reassurance.

Actually self-compassion is a bit of a misnomer. You don’t really have compassion for “yourself.” “Your self” is too large and vague a category; it’s hard to point to exactly what it refers to. You don’t really have a unified, stable, single entity called “your self.” “Your self” is an abstract category, and so you can’t really have compassion for it. What you can have compassion for is your pain, or the part of you that is suffering (which is inseparable from the pain). It’s the experience of suffering that is the object of self-compassion. The experience of suffering is more concrete. There is feeling, but no one who feels.

So this is my practice: when I’m experiencing pain I notice as best I can where it is in my body (even emotional pain is experienced in the body) and I send it my love. I send it my kindly attention, and drop phrases into the mind like “May you be well; may you be free from suffering.” But you could just as easily describe the intention as “I shall remain I shall remain friendly and empathetic, with a mind of lovingkindness, and I shall not give in to hatred (or self-pity).”

Self-compassion is not selfish (Day 35)

May 16, 2013

Bodhipaksa

on practice

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In his book, Living Ethically: Advice from Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, Sangharakshita has some advice for those who feel guilty about wanting to be happy. I have to confess that I’d forgotten that it was possible to feel this way…

“How can we wish for the happiness of others if we are alienated from our own desire for happiness?
“Unfortunately, many of us in the West were given to understand when we were young that it is selfish to want happiness for onself, and we therefore feel unnecessarily guilty about wanting it. As a result, we can feel guilty even about BEING happy. ‘After all,’ the perverse logic goes, ‘with all my selfish desires for my own happiness, how could I possibly deserve to be happy?’ This further produces the still more perverse belief that if we are to make spiritual progress, we will necessarily have to subject ourselves to great suffering. Such a deep-down belief that you are undeserving, even basically wicked, will inhibit your practice of the Dharma from the very beginning.”

There are lots of connections with compassion and lovingkindness here, but the main one is the simple point that our kindness and compassion should include ourselves, and so we should learn to embrace our desire for happiness, and our desire to be free from suffering. Happiness here doesn’t mean one single thing, and it’s certainly not limited to going through life with a smile on your face. It includes joy, yes, but also a sense of meaning, and fulfillment, and purpose, and peace — including the peace of accepting being unhappy. We can be happy in the face of our own unhappiness.

Learning to embrace our desire for happiness is something I suggested earlier that we can do as a conscious act as we begin a session of lovingkindness practice. And learning to embrace our innate desire to be free from suffering is likewise something we can contemplate as we begin to cultivate compassion.

When we accept the truth that we want happiness, and that happiness is rather hard to find, that we want to be free from suffering, and yet can’t avoid suffering, we’re connecting with the most vital part of our being — that deep-down drive that gives rise to every action we perform. These desires fuel everything we do.

There’s a sense of vulnerability when we reflect in this way. After all, this being human is not an easy thing. It never has been and never will be. It is hard to want happiness and freedom from suffering in a universe where happiness is elusive and suffering is almost omnipresent. Accepting vulnerability opens the heart. But there is always some part of us, when we open up to our fragility, that is willing to give us kindly support and encouragement as we go through life. And we all need such support.

And having connected with these truths, having opened the heart, having connected with the part of us that wishes us well, it’s not hard to do the same reflections for a friend, a suffering person, someone we don’t know, a person we have problems with — anyone. Any person we can think about wants to be happy, and finds happiness elusive, wants to be free from suffering and is held captive by suffering. But the miraculous thing is that there is some inherent part of us that wishes them well. There is some part that all of us come equipped with, as part of our evolutionary heritage, that resonates with the sufferings of others, and that wishes freedom, peace, and happiness for them.

It can be painful for many people to come through their resistance and to accept that happiness (whatever that may mean for them) is a worthy and right motivation and goal. There are layers of guilt that have been erected to prevent this very realization, and peeling away those layers can be agonizing. It can be hard to accept feeling vulnerable, for we can confuse being vulnerable with being weak, and so we try to hide our vulnerability from ourselves and others. But when we do so — when we pretend that we’re not suffering, that everything in our lives is sorted, our defenses become an armor that bruises and harms others. We become callous and cold and driven, and we’re unwilling to see the vulnerability of others. At our worst, we despise the fragility of others.

Accepting our own tender and fragile desires to be happy and to be free from suffering is the beginning of true compassion. And in the end there is no self-compassion or other-compassion. There is just compassion:

Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.
– The Buddha
Attānaṃ rakkhanto paraṃ rakkhati.
Paraṃ rakkhanto attānaṃ rakkhati.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Loving your inner critic (Day 15)

April 26, 2013

Bodhipaksa

on practice

We all have an inner critic that tells us we’re not good enough. Sometimes it tells us far worse things than that — that we’re worthless, that no one likes us, that we’re essentially unlovable. In cultivating metta we’re supposed to love ourselves, but the inner critic is a part of us; how do we love that? And how to we stop listening to the inner critic long enough to experience any love for ourselves?

Actually all practice helps deal with our inner critic. Any mindfulness practice helps because as soon as you’re mindful of the brain’s “self-hatred module” you’re no longer being self-hatred. Self hatred is at its worst when we think that the voice it speaks with is “us.” But you’re not speaking with that voice as long as you’re standing apart from it and relating to it in some way. You’re hearing the voice, not being the voice. To relate to the inner critic in any way — even if it’s just mindfully listening to its words — is to stand apart from it. That distance, however slight to begin with, is crucial.

And like in the cute story about the two wolves (too well known to bear repeating), you’re choosing which wolf to feed — the wolf of love or the wolf of hatred. And your brain being an economical sort of organ, unused parts will start to atrophy so that your body’s resources can be used elsewhere. Your brain is malleable and adaptable and the part of it devoted to self-hatred will wither away.

Your lovingkindness practice helps because you can take this “standing back” a bit further. You’re standing back and you can wish the self-hatred module well. And you can become aware of any pain that your inner critic gives rise to and give it compassion too. This is all very healing.

There’s another effect of metta too, which is that you’re learning a more effective strategy for relating to yourself and finding happiness. Self-hatred is, oddly enough, a way of seeking happiness. The idea behind it is that if you criticize yourself enough for “making mistakes” you won’t make them in the future, and therefore you’ll be better, more popular, happier. It doesn’t work, of course, so it’s a very ineffective strategy. But it’s helpful to recognize that your self-hatred actually is based on a desire to be happier and to avoid suffering. Its motivation is fine — it’s the strategy it uses that’s messed up.

Mindfulness and metta give us different and more effective ways to deal with our “faults” — our unhelpful habits that cause suffering for ourselves and others. We can be more forgiving and kinder. We can want to change, but not be so punitive about it. Self-hatred assumes it’s necessary for our well-being, but we can live perfectly well without it.

Reflections on Samsara

April 1, 2013

Vimalasara

eight step recovery

If we believe that we are not responsible for our mental suffering then we are implying we are helpless.

If we believe everything is permanent then we are implying there is no room for change.

If we believe in a fixed self then we are implying we can not transform ourselves.

If we cling on to these thoughts and think they are facts we will continue to be swamped by the ocean of samsara.

If we can begin to see that our mental suffering arises out of our strong habitual behaviours we will begin to transform ourselves.

Ask yourself:

What thoughts that arise do I believe in?
What would I do if I could just witness my thoughts arising and ceasing?
What is permanent in my life?

Our thoughts are an illusion, a game of mis-interpretations, assumptions, and judgements. Our thinking is the dis-ease of resentments, jealousies, dissatisfaction. They keep us trapped in the ocean of Samsara.

Begin to free yourself.

For example when the thought I hate myself arises. Say to it with loving kindness where is the self to hate? Free yourself from the mental bonds of suffering.

Twenty three years ago I walked into a Buddhist Centre with ‘I hate myself’ ranting around my head as if it were some sacred mantra. With the practice of loving kindness it restored me to sanity, helping me to cultivate a calm and sober mind. The undermining voice began to cease, and I would hear I love myself. However I resigned myself to the fact that sometimes the voice of ‘I hate myself’ would arise and, I would just match it with ‘I love myself’. But somewhere I was still believing in this thought.

Then one day the voice arose, ‘I hate myself’. And I spoke to it loud and clear, telling it: ‘There is no self to hate. There is no self to identify with.’ Finally I was beginning to let go of this thought, and the undermining voice becomes quieter, and quieter every day I continue to practice loving kindness and remember there is no self to identify with.

Knowing that there is no self to identify with, gives those of us with addictions hope and the opportunity to transform. It is the freedom and liberation all humans need if we are to grow, change and develop.

When we see this clearly we can begin to heal the addicted mind. The mind that is addicted to thoughts.

How can we abstain from our thinking?

When we do we begin to cultivate sobriety of thoughts. Thoughts that just arise and cease calmly, with out a tinge of ill will, craving, doubt, anxiety or inertia.