Meeting Moments Of Self-Hate With Compassion

Self-hate can be a very challenging place to be in; I know from experience. From the perspective of Internal Family Systems (IFS), we can see this as one part of ourselves rejecting another part of ourselves.

But such clarity is often difficult to have in the middle of it. Self-hate typically is felt as a complete immersion in an unclear state of self-rejection. Adding to the challenge, we can feel shame, guilt, fear, despair and/or helplessness.

The difficulty about this dark place is that we tend to not want to help ourselves. One thing that is always available, however, is to accept our experience in the moment.

So sit with me, with all your hate, all your self-rejection, in the empathic act of acknowledging, seeing, and accepting. We won't have a change agenda, but rather fully accept where we are. We do this by finding the part in us—that is not a part but our true nature—which is already accepting our experience.

May this track help end your suffering.

image: Casey Horner

Transcript

Welcome to this practice with self-hate and immediately i want to just acknowledge that i know from my own experience that this is probably quite difficult or quite uncomfortable for you to do and i also just want to say from the outset here that you don't have to change anything the practice really is just to be to just almost like get through the time of this meditation with an attempt at accepting whatever is happening for you right now and how to do that how how to accept this probably pretty challenging experience you have right now so let's do it together again i know what self-hate feels like it's really intense it can be very uncomfortable and yet i notice that the one thing that is available to me ultimately is acceptance in those moments and i want to help you with that and so the practice is the invitation is can you simply breathe and allow yourself to be where you are mentally and physically without changing just for the duration of this meditation at least can you sense into your mind and body with this kind of question what does this state i'm in feel like so if you're anything like me i imagine that there might be contractions in your body some bracing some clenching can you notice any of that happening in your body is there maybe pain that you feel and again we're not changing it we're just looking at it how are you breathing right now and just for the duration of this meditation can you simply let that be as it is and maybe can you give it more space that very thing that you're feeling or sensing by breathing a little deeper breathing a little deeper as a strategy to allow whatever is present to be there so we're resisting less by breathing deeper so just take a moment now and just observe what is it like in your body right now and if you can notice for instance your shoulders coming a bit down or your face is able to relax a that is nice let that happen if it doesn't happen then okay doesn't happen what is your mind like right now are there judgments is there fear thinking happening or blame i could also totally imagine hearing me speak that maybe some of those thoughts if they're there are directed at me or other people and know that that is welcome it's just your mind's activity let it do that we're just watching it it is the mind being active in a way that is yeah perhaps uncomfortable or maybe you know is there is there a part of you that somehow enjoys it and is that is noticing that uncomfortable whatever it may be all this mental stuff since it's already happening can you just allow it to happen and again we don't have to change it let's simply watch the mind as we watch the body so you can see this practice also as a practice of curiosity kind of disidentifying what your body is doing what your mind is doing and rather kind of noticing it from a third person perspective i'm not asking you to dissociate or anything like that you know you you will always be what you truly are and you are not the part that is hating or that is rejecting itself or another part of you and witnessing these things disidentifies us from them so if you want to you can actually speak to what you're noticing this is actually quite a powerful practice if you want to try it you can you can welcome explicitly any feeling or thought or all of them together as you choose so you can speak to the thoughts or feelings or sensations and you can literally say inside your mind or if you want to speak it out loud in your own words in your own time something like i hear you i feel you i see you i understand you thank you for letting me witness you so if you want you can just experiment with that and see how that feels sometimes you'll actually notice that something shifts or something happens when you speak to yourself or two parts of yourself like that so if you want to experiment with that right now so self-hate is when a part of us rejects and or is very angry at another part of us there's one part that hates or rejects or is very angry at and another part that is hated or etc and this can be a very difficult experience of being torn inside receiving hate from the inside and it is a very human experience you are very much part of the human race of the human experience of the human tribe and you're welcome exactly as you are right now with all that is happening in you all of you is welcome and can you even if just for a moment feel compassion for the human that is suffering right now you may have legitimate reasons for your anger or hate meaning maybe there are needs that you didn't meet or maybe you behaved in a way that you wish you did different or maybe there's nothing to point to and you simply kind of inherited this self-hate as a state of the nervous system or as a trauma trace passed on from your childhood whatever the reason or the cause can you step outside all of that and see the human being suffering the human that you are and if you cannot can you accept that you cannot wherever you are right now know that what you truly are is already accepting what is happening no matter how much hate you feel self-hate no matter how much that one part hates that other part no matter how many layers of difficulty you experience maybe layers of fear shame or guilt or anger or whatever is added to the self-rejection wherever you are right now able to witness it and again this might be at the very rejection of even this entire meditation that noticing of even that rejection is the place in you we call the witness so wherever you are in all this can you experiment with just one single in and out breath experiment with accepting that which you witness and notice again this involves zero change agenda the witnessing is always already happening it is your true nature and you can notice that at any point and again i i acknowledge this can be a very challenging experience and i want to remind you that you are actually practicing love for yourself by doing this as you may already know but love doesn't always feel sweet does it love doesn't always feel warm in and and cushy mushy because sometimes in the middle of for instance self-hate nothing feels very great but accepting it is love so wherever you are i want to invite you to take a few if you want to you can you don't have to it's an invitation to take some deeper inhalations and deeper exhalations wherever you are and just for one more minute take as many of these deeper inhalations and exhalations and stop whenever you feel like you complete and just as a final boost of this practice without wanting to change anything simply witness yourself i think this is one of the most challenging practices one can do so i really commend you for doing it and thank you