I've a tendency where if I recognise something about myself that I like in what seems to me a dark way, I wallow in it because it seems to always come back. Sometimes I can't - more like won't - look at myself in the mirror because I don't want it to be me, and when I get really bad I want to kill myself because I think I'm a horrible person. But I know I can't be like this, and I don't want to be unhappy and self-hating. Any tips on how I can get out of this?
Hello my friend, There was a time, in a galaxy that seems far, far away, that I was in the same situation. I detested myself. I looked at myself and thought “Who are you? Why do you deserve to be alive? What makes you so special?” I detested everything I did and all that surrounded me. It was that kind of self-hating depression that only gets worse, as it’s a dangerous downward spiral. What got me out of it was setting myself to a hobby. I took up the saxophone. I sucked at the beginning and my depression got worse, because I thought I couldn’t do anything right. But my mother forced me to continue. And I gradually got better. I started thinking to myself “Holy crap! I’m actually getting kind of good at this”. Along with the fact that my dearest and closest friend was there for me when I needed him, I realized - why do I care? The moment I didn’t care about what I thought about myself, what others might think and why I’m so terrible. The moment I stopped and said a big fuck you to myself, was the moment it just sort of went away. Feeling bad about yourself is a loosing war with yourself. The only way I got out of it was to say “Hell no, I’m not doing this war no more”. I’ve shared my twopence with you. I hope I’ve helped even in the smallest of ways. I know it sounds unpleasant. I know it’s hard. But please, don’t kill yourself. I nearly went down that road. P.S: I think some of the hatred I had was because I was in denial about my sexual orientation and that I was brought up Catholic. That religious guilt man. It gets to you.
Awful thoughts aren’t the root of anxiety/depression problems, but they are what lets depression rule us. All it takes is that one thought for something to go terribly wrong. They aren’t easy to control. In fact, a lot of times they seem random. The girl with the eating disorder’s shirt accidentally shows her stomach a bit, or the man with depression may accidentally see a girl who looks just like his ex wife. What makes these thoughts so volatile is the fact that they can sneak into your head at any time, and once they are there, you’re damn lucky if you can get them to go away. That one little thought just continues to multiply. My friends went to the movies. My friends went to the movies without me. I’m alone. I’m alone without friends. Why didn’t my friends invite me? They never invite me. They don’t like me. I have no friends. I have nobody. Nobody loves me. Nobody will love me. To someone with a clear head, that train of thought seems absolutely ridiculous. But to someone who that is a real fear, those thoughts can be constant and can take over your consciousness. I still have trouble beating them. To this day, I have not found the key to completely stopping these thoughts. I’ve figured out how to take care of myself while in a depression, but I have no clue how to actually get rid of them completely. The key to not letting them defeat you is to try and confront them. Don’t shy away from them. If you shy away from them, they will just keep coming back. The best thing to do is to completely try and contradict these thoughts. This is one of the most difficult things to do as an emotionally unstable person. If you have lived with these thoughts long enough, they are true in your mind. There was a very long stretch of time in my life that I, 100% believed that if I got fat, all my friends would leave me. Once again, it sounds crazy to most people. But I know there are some people who have had that exact same thought process and know how damn scary that can be. Confront the thought. Look at yourself in the mirror, and simply say, “No, that’s not true”. You cannot logic with anxiety. You cannot beat depression with statistics and graphs. You have to beat it by looking at it right in the face and putting your foot down against it. It will never be beat, but it can be faced. Every time the world, the universe, yourself tells you that you aren’t good enough, tells you that you are inferior, and you are weak; just face it head on and yell, “no!” as loud as you can. Even if nobody hears you when you yell, or even tries to shut you down, you just have to remember that you are the only person who can truly know yourself. Every day you don’t have those thoughts in your head, look in the mirror and say, “good job” and remind yourself that somebody loves you, and more importantly, that you love yourself. Because those thoughts can take over at any time, but they can’t take the happiness that you are feeling in that moment. Celebrate whatever you can. Sorry for the long post.
