Anyway, I'm always boggled by the self-loathing.

Not everyone has a teflon ego. And my lack of a teflon ego doesn't make how I feel right now any less real.

I wound up giving myself a mantra many years ago; now when I'm feeling full of rage, I'm as likely to react "I hate the President" as I am "I hate myself." Don't hate yourself, hate Bush!

I only have this to say: You're awesome, love ya, need ya, want the best for ya. If there's any way in which I can help all you have to do is ask, or, if you're feeling shy, just say, "I wish someone would..." and I'll do my best to be there.

Not everyone has a teflon ego. And my lack of a teflon ego doesn't make how I feel right now any less real.

I have a vague theory that self-loathing and a total lack of it are just mirror images of the same thing.

Don't hate yourself, hate Bush!

I'll second that.

(Though really, do try to spare a little for my clients, for I am at work an hour later than I should be, with no sign of leaving in my future.)

Not everyone has a teflon ego. And my lack of a teflon ego doesn't make how I feel right now any less real.

Amen. I've got a husband with a teflon ego, and sometimes I want to take a scouring pad to it and scuff it up a bit when he seems to lack any understanding of what I'm going through.

The following does not help my self-loathing issues, and not being able to buy clothes off the rack: Want. Alas, not my size.

Having been an active self-loather for many many many years, I can hardly offer any better advice than Betsy's, especially the part that involves stepping back a bit from the hateful voice and evaluating its motives.

One of the most useful things I got from therapy --no, wait! Please! Don't everybody flee the thread!-- was an awareness of both my utter lack of control over the shitty feelings, and that I had the power to maneuver around them if I needed to. By the time you're at the tail end of your twenties, and especially if you're all the way over that hump into 30 and beyond (or, anyhow, by the time I was), a lot of the way you respond to the world is just hardwired into you. Certain situations are going to trip the FUCK ME I SUCK button no matter how hard you try not to let them; it's possible to rip out the wiring and redo it, but it takes years or even decades. In the short term, another effective strategy is just to try to remember that they are buttons, mechanisms, nearly instinctive responses that were wired in decades ago and don't necessarily have anything to do with the real world right now.

It's another version of the thing that some Buffistas have talked about before, how part of dealing with the hurtful humans in your life is realizing that you can't change them, that the only thing you have control over is your expectations, and your response to the same stupid damn thing they will keep doing over and over from now until kingdom come. You can't stop your internal shitty hateful voices from yelping when they're triggered, but if you can mentally take a step back before they swamp you (or recognize when you're about to walk into something that'll trip them off, like a family visit or a clothes-shopping trip, and brace yourself in advance), they recede just a little bit from THIS IS THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT ME to "Wow, that's a shitload of pain." Like the way you can smash your crazybone into something, and while your body is dancing around and flailing and shrieking, some part of your brain is sitting back, Oz-like, saying, "Huh."

Of course, it took me fucking years before I was able to do that with any consistency, and I still mess up plenty (as, per example, the night of the smonster F2F at Helmand, when I had a sobbing howling 25-minute meltdown about what a fat-armed pockmarked sloth I was, how I'd gotten fat and pasty since marriage and it was all my fault because I had no discipline, I didn't care about my own health or wellbeing, and anyhow I was a nasty bitch who didn't deserve to look pretty). It's horribly hard work. Sometimes I look at Hec and his robust ego and placid neurochemistry, and I want to throttle him, or the universe.

Everyone here is good folks, and strong, and trying so hard to struggle through so much shit, and even if you can't silence the self-hating voices, you have to trust that they're not telling you the truth. Even when they tell you that people like me are BS'ing you to be nice, and if we really knew you we'd be repulsed and hate you all the more. Which is exactly what my voice tells me about my real self and what all of you would do if you really knew me.

They're all a pack of liars.

(Still at work. FEH.)

Everyone here is good folks, and strong, and trying so hard to struggle through so much shit, and even if you can't silence the self-hating voices, you have to trust that they're not telling you the truth. Even when they tell you that people like me are BS'ing you to be nice, and if we really knew you we'd be repulsed and hate you all the more. Which is exactly what my voice tells me about my real self and what all of you would do if you really knew me.

JZ is wise. I am going to mark that post for the future.

Not everyone has a teflon ego. And my lack of a teflon ego doesn't make how I feel right now any less real.

I'm sure it's real, and I don't mean to dismiss it in any way. Or imply that it's a simple fix. I'm not stupid. I doubt anybody really wants to hear tales of positive self-regard. I mostly just feel like there's something deeply wrong with our culture that these feelings of self-loathing are so actively reinforced in so many people's lives.

Sometimes I look at Hec and his robust ego and placid neurochemistry, and I want to throttle him.

Note to self: remove garrotte from bedroom