Loathing Yourself to Death
Do you loathe yourself? Do you loathe aspects of yourself? Are you disgusted when you look in the mirror? Do you hate who you are, what you do, how you act, or even your whole life?
When you read any of the questions above, did you feel, and I mean really FEEL, bad or worthless or sad? If you said “yes” to any of these questions, know that you have plenty of company, and there is some good and some bad news. The bad news: If you agreed that you felt bad just reading those questions, it means those sentiments are deeply ingrained in your subconscious. The good news: You can immediately begin to change those negative feelings through hypnotherapy!
If you truly “feel” that way about yourself, I guarantee you that those feelings affect your life in negative ways. Some of those ways may impact your personal relationships, your professional success and many aspects about yourself that only serve to reinforce those feelings further. Here’s what I mean: Something in your past haunts you (i.e. sexual, physical or psychological abuse), and as a result, you eat way more than you need to in order to medicate yourself – to dull the pain. You weigh more than you should, maybe much more, and every time you look in the mirror, you are disgusted with your appearance. You feel it is not even worth trying to look good anymore, so you continue to overeat. You get the picture. Your personal “medication” might not be food. It might be alcohol, or drugs, or avoiding public contact, or lashing out at others, but whatever the method, you do something subconsciously to relieve the pressure of your self-loathing.
In an article by Anneli Rufus entitled “Do You Make Yourself Difficult To Love?” which appeared in Sprituality and Health’s on-line magazine, she says “Self-loathing makes us certain of nothing, makes us afraid and too easily ashamed. Self-loathing makes us second-guess ourselves and others, turns pleasure into performance, punctures joy.” She continues “Self-loathing makes love difficult and makes us difficult to love. It makes us needy, sluggish, argumentative, often withdrawn. Whoever loves us has to do a lot of pleading. Because we believe our self-loathing is justified, each might-be-love becomes a tug-of-war between our potential partner and it. Which is to say: and us.”
Much of my work with clients, no matter the issue they want to change, stems from self-loathing. Getting to the source of that is the key to changing everything for those clients. They may think they simply need to change their eating habits when they walk into my office at Skipnotherapy, when in fact they really need something different entirely. And once we address and resolve the core issue that started and maintains the self-loathing, then they find it so easy to resolve many of their other problems.
If you or someone you love deals with these kinds of issues, please consider the benefits of hypnotherapy in helping make the changes necessary to improve your life. Find out more by contacting me in Salem, Oregon at www.skipnotherapy.com.