Remembering one of the first self help books I ever owned, now vanished in a move, Cheri Huber’s “There is Nothing Wrong with You.” It was literally reproduced handwritten/drawn pages. One talked about the origin of self hate and how you, the reader as a kid, naturally came to the conclusion that you must be doing something wrong otherwise the adults wouldn’t treat you this way, with a big drawing of a gong and the word MISTAKE! Plus an explanation that you wouldn’t have concluded anything else.
Apparently this is one of the two parts of the book that really lodged in my brain. I’m thinking about this because the self hate which truly fucked with me for decades was a convenient reaction to shitty stuff happening to me; explained it, distracted me from discomfort, matched how I was told I was shitty, matched how I felt like an out of control monster while angry (about to come up again), and directed anger inwards where I wouldn’t be punished for it.
‘Course , this meant when there wasn’t someone around to tell me I was crap, I would be there to do it, when things sucked, and things sucked often.
The more practiced I get responding to stress with “this isn’t because I’m a shitty person,” the less I rely on counterproductive coping mechanism as response to harm or threat, the angrier I wind up feeling in response to the outside world. I’m then VERY tempted to go right back into self hate because I feel like an angry out of control monster.
Something making this harder is, I’m angrier about subtler injustices (I’ve read ~10 year olds get really upset about unfairness and there was a lot of trauma around then for me). Like I’m obviously going to be angry about surprise bills or TERFs showing up on my Twitter. But I’m also feeling more ADHD or general upset; my interests, personal space and time are officially unimportant, and stuff I don’t find fun or interesting, people who have no genuine interest in me, are all officially vital.
Another potential “tripping hazard” with self worth is; what I do bolsters my sense of self (I draw, I explore, I try to support people, etc) so making me stuff my personality down more or sticking me with a huge bill means I feel less “I am a person who does [whatever],” more “I’m an out of control monster” when I get angry as response to having agency taken away AND while feeling stuck, trapped and treading water, really difficult stuff for me.