Self-hatred Is Insidious
It’s in the clothes I buy, in the car I drive, in the place I live, and in every glance I make to every stranger. I am looking for approval. I’m quietly screaming to them, “Please tell me I impress you!”
Every conversation I have reverts to this thought in my head, “I need them to like me.” I stop listening to them and pick out key words relevant to me. Oh, they’re going to Colombia? I will interject and tell them I’ve been to Colombia. I will shift the conversation to me. Only recently did I discover this constant need for approval is because I give myself none.
My obsession with others’ relationship to me is deafening. I am always trying to figure people out. I tell myself stories about them and either fantasize about how I can get them to like me or I villainize them in order to explain why they don’t. There is this constant obsession with my relationship to them and it is almost entirely fictional.
I teach dharma practice in recovery and I have been doing it for a while, though stumbling. It’s only recently I’ve found a teacher for myself. I relied on podcasts, books, Tricycle articles, etc. to keep me knowledgeable. I thought if I consumed enough reflection on the dharma, it would eventually sink in. I’m finding this method has only intellectualized the dharma. I know it in concept but not in my heart. It hasn’t sunk in. I had a barrier where it could not soak through.
This barrier, as it turns out, is self-hatred. I use the dharma as a weapon. I learn the lists in Buddhism and then fire them at people in the same manner as any interaction: Look at how smart I am… and then please like me. I knew when I started metta practice that the tried and true approach is to start with yourself and work outward. When I came into practice, I tried this and felt nothing. After a few weeks or months I got the bright idea that I can reverse it: If I start outward, it will eventually come inward. It’s been eight years of me doing this and only last week did it sink in that this is not the way.
Without a positive and healthy relationship with myself, there can be no healthy relationship with others. That relationship with others is always flawed for me because it always traces back to desperately wanting validation from them. There’s no unity. There’s no balance. It’s a narcissistic-adjacent quality where I surrender to the pattern “Please like me because I don’t like myself.”
I’ve had this breakthrough now. I’ve started inward-out metta practice. I’ve cried A LOT in the past few days. I’ve deepened my practice to focus on metta for myself. While the hatred is there, there is some sunlight breaking through. I am feeling motivated to change my life for me and not for others. I’m developing new habits to not constantly distract myself from this hatred. And I really hope this works. I’m halfway through life (if I’m lucky) and I need to start doing things to cultivate my inner well-being and then give it away.
These Brahmaviharas are known as the Four Immeasurables for a reason: They are deep, they are limitless, and once attained, they can be given without the fear of losing it yourself. They are not a transaction. They are not currency. They are a flowing river. No matter where you point your finger at the stream, there will be more upstream and more downstream. This is my underlying misunderstanding of love. I was taught it was merit-based and transactional. I’ll give you two acts of love for your two acts of love. It’s a game with a scorecard where all parties lose. This misunderstanding was instantly blown up in the last week when a teacher said, “You deserve unconditional love.” What, me? No. Not me. We were in Noble Silence so I could not react. I went for a walk and that phrase kept repeating in my head until the breakthrough. Yes, I do, and I will never give unconditional love until I have it for myself. This is the teaching that took me 8 years to receive and I’m so grateful for it. This love is still in gestation but I feel it growing. There are rewards emerging as well: presence, confidence, and purpose. I wish to cultivate this further and then spread it downstream.