The Magical Not Self-Hatred, Not Self-Pity Life Changer

How can something as self focused as self compassion actually be good for you?

“…As you love yourself.” Mark 12:31 MSG

Between self hatred and self pity swings a hammock blowing in a mountain breeze called self compassion. Can you see it there strung from the pines next to the river on that path down from the cabin? Most of us walk right past it because it looks too inviting. Seasick as we are from always wondering moment to moment in the tossing seas of self improvement if we should be beating ourselves up or giving ourselves a break. How could something as (cringe) gentle as self compassion be of help to us? We are trying to change here damnit! We think something more vigorous and aggressive is required for hammering out growth than a swing in the breeze.

Photo by Alexandros Giannakakis on Unsplash

Self What?

If you are not familiar with the phrase, self compassion may bring to mind all the “self loving” arrogant a-holes in your life totally awash in their own selfish, self absorbed egos. Or maybe self compassion just sounds weird like trying to give yourself a hug in some kindergarten activity. It’s snack time but your teacher just said, “Let’s learn to be kind to ourselves,” as she wraps her arms around her body and invites you to follow along. That’s cute for kids, but hardly something helpful in adulthood. Or maybe you picture the adult version repackaged and sold as “self care.” By which they mean facial scrubs, skin cremes, bath bombs, and massage oils—all mostly for women. Us men get beard oil and dude wipes. Thank you beauty industry for your wildly expensive, cheap substitutes for real self compassion.

Self-love, self-kindness, self-care, self compassion. How could anything with so much self focus actually be good for you?

Whatever you call it, you need to get real familiar with it. Because I wholeheartedly believe self kindness is an absolutely essential ingredient to change. Self compassion can draw you into a fuller and greater sense of self. It will make you kind to those around you. It will soften your heart and stir you to love. I actually believe you are called to self compassion. Jesus assumed you were doing it when he said you must love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). It completes his trinity of loves—love God, your neighbor, and your self—which summarizes the entire ethic of the kingdom of God.

Its Not Easy

But it’s hard to stick the landing on self compassion. At first it sounds like some happy sweet spot between self hatred and self pity. But it’s actually made of something utterly and wildly different.

Self pity and self hatred, despite sounding like opposites of each other, are actually both defense postures rooted in the wild swings of reactivity. Which means they are very easy to choose but, by default, prevent an open heart and keep us from love. That is how they poison our lives. Self compassion is the opposite, or better, the antidote to defense reaction. It opens us back up to love. But since it’s not a reaction, it must always be chosen.

So if we are always walking past that hammock, how do we slow down enough to take that forsaken bounty of pleasure? I want to get you there. And it starts with seeing the two ways we don’t get there. It becomes clearer when you understand self pity and self hatred.

Self Hatred

Self hatred never feels as bad as it sounds. Hate sounds so aggressive and cold and vile. Even substitutes—contempt, loathing, beating yourself up—sound awful. Yet, most of the time self hatred feels like the right thing to do, the necessary beginning of repentance, and the path to change. Which is why we often don’t know we’re doing it. It just feels like guilt and remorse and humility. “I screwed up. I was stupid. I’m an idiot, fool, monster, fill in the blank. And these are the right feelings because I need to change.”

Self hatred can even feel motivating. Those little rocket bursts of adrenaline and cortisol released by it feel like momentum out of our stuck lives or screwed up self. But people who work to improve their lives and change out of this stuff, burn out very fast. And often injure themselves in the process. It beats up the literal body. While on vacation, I dropped in to the town’s local Crossfit gym. On the wall hung a poster, “No one cares. Keep going.” What a terrible motivator! It’s an invitation to self hatred, to feel bad for treating your workout pain with compassion. It’s also weirdly false. I have never been to a Crossfit class where we didn’t commiserate if the workout looked hard or fist bump at the end in celebration for finishing. We care.

Self hatred denies that you are worthy of compassion. You are the problem. You may even feel like the villain in your own story. Sure, maybe others played a part, but you’re the real issue. You may say on paper someone abused you but still see yourself as an outright participant or at least a fool for falling for it. Somehow you must’ve invited it. The energy of your presence and contempt is towards correcting yourself. And that’s the difficulty: self hatred manipulates a partial truth. We are broken sinners who do sin in the world. We all fall short of the glory of God. Again, here is where self hatred can feel righteous. It can feel like crucifying the flesh.

This is where we confuse shame and guilt. If you don’t know what shame feels like in your body versus the good work of conviction, you will be way more prone to fall for self hatred. Shame shuts us down, guilt wakes us up. Shame is a body flinch of fear, guilt is a feeling of being moved, even painfully with tears, but still moved to want to love again. Shame is fear. Guilt is love. Shame is condemning. Guilt is dignifying.

Self hatred is an attempt to change by ridding yourself of a genuine part of you. But you are not simply some sin gremlin. Even Paul, in his most exasperated wrestling with his sin, said, “Its not me. It’s the sin living in me” (Romans 7:17). He was more than just his sin. Self hatred attempts to control the outcomes of life by ridding life of really important parts of you. It’s a flinch response to shame and it never provides long term healing. You can’t hate yourself into change.

Surrendering Self Hatred

When it comes to our suffering in life, from the daily grind to the outright traumatic, it is profoundly liberating and an essential first kindness to recognize that a good deal of our suffering is not our fault. We all live outside of Eden. And we do well to remember that God makes an enemy not simply of sin, but all the things that prevent the world from working the way it was made. From evil and death to the dehumanizing systems of society and the curse on the natural world. That revelation can set us free from a helluva lot of self hatred.

I remember the first time someone helped me name my wounds. It was wildly transformational to realize I deserved kindness for my pain, regardless of how I had handled that pain. I never knew God cared about this stuff. I thought he just wanted me to behave. And now, every time I buy the bulk boxes of Kleenex at Costco, I thank God for the redemptive and sacred tears my clients shed in the name of this kindness, too. To find that space within to accept the powerlessness of being a victim is quite healing.

This is where the repentance from self hatred is so life changing. Self hatred, often as false guilt, really deceives us into believing it’s giving us power. It’s an addiction to control. It’s a masked arrogance as they say. But God actually invites us to celebrate our smallness, that the story is much bigger than simply us or our sin. We don’t normally see feeling small as a gift. But in this case it’s the comfort of knowing a larger story exists around us. Evil loves to narrate stories that put us as the villain, the idiot, the fool, the monster. We caused our pain. We are at fault. Surrendering your control is the way you get out of hatred. Celebrating your smallness is the start.

Self Pity

Self compassion has an evil twin called self pity. I know. Pity… compassion… aren’t we splitting hairs here? Yes, they’re almost synonymous. But pity connotes condescension. And no one suffering wants to be looked down upon. Its degrading. Self pity is the mocking version of self compassion. Self pity takes a low view of the self by taking our pain and making an identity out of it. Every human on earth has been a victim of harm and sin from someone else at some point in their life. Period. Being a victim is a reality of life. But it’s never, ever your core self. Self pity says otherwise. Being a victim is now not simply a description of what you’ve suffered, it’s your name. You are a powerless person. You are just a total and perpetual victim.

People who live with self pity feel childish. They stop caring for the wounded boy or girl within and just become that little boy or girl. Instead of your story being a reason for our struggles it becomes an excuse. “Given my story of abuse or suffering, from a bad day to a bad life, I couldn’t help but act this way. I am wounded. My responses are rooted in trauma triggers (again, a manipulated truth) and therefore I have no agency or responsibility. This is not my fault and I can’t be responsible then for how I acted. I am just coping and that’s okay. I’m entitled to my ways of coping. I deserve a break.”

Its ultimately another form of self sabotage. We are meant to grow and become more than we are. That’s the natural state of being human, to grow and change and mature. Often people stuck in this place end up using their own story of genuine harm to justify their lack of growth. Acknowledging that you were a victim of harm was meant to free you to heal, not trap you in your story and enable you to stay stuck. Self pity does not invite you to the grieve on the path to heal. It invites you to wallow in self absorbed pain forever.

Self pity may feel initially like love, like kindness. But it’s simply another way to cope with shame, by letting you off the hook. It says you can’t help it. Again, there is partial truth here. In most cases, when you are wounded as a child and often as an adult, you are too small or powerless to make a decision. You are overpowered and a genuine victim. You could not make a better choice and magically get out of it. There are genuine moments where someone renders you powerless and it’s not your fault. But now as an adult outside that moment, you have far more choices and resources. Using your story to excuse behavior is to literally use your own pain, it’s to actually perpetuate the abuse on the boy or girl within.

Surrendering Self Pity

I once had a counselor ask me as I sat in tears over my pain, “Are these tears kind?” Say what? I didn’t know there were different sorts of tears. I thought all tears honored pain. But he was probing my heart here. Were these tears simply the overflow of pain and suffering like water being wrung from a sponge ? Or was I truly loving the parts of me that had suffered? It made sense. Tears can be frustration or anger or pity. But to truly join our pain with kindness takes love.

Here is something we all have to live with and I hate it: Our suffering may not be our fault but it’s always our responsibility. I didn’t make people wound me. But I certainly had to suffer it. And even more, now I have to take responsibility to do something about the pain in my life. That is simple and straightforward enough. But it’s a burden we are asked to step into as victims. We must own our lives. Your story is reason for your suffering, it contributes to your behavior, it has shaped you in powerful ways. It is worthy of great compassion. It still does not define you. You have a story. But you are not your story. You were a victim once and powerless as such. But victim is not your name.

The Hammock in the Breeze

Are you still seeing that hammock gently swaying as the wind blows?

The magical other place we must go here is self compassion. Self compassion is not bent on managing shame. Self compassion operates in the sphere of love. It sees all and loves all. It both treats your story and suffering with great compassion and empowers you to grow out of what happened. It sees your story as something that happened to you, not something that defines you or names you. It sees victim as a state of being, a fact, not an identity. And yet, it calls you to change, but not through self hatred. It invites you to take responsibility in life, but again without defining you as a villain without hope. Self compassion holds the tension and complexity of life—our suffering and participation in life—all while remembering our true name as the sons and daughters of God.

So remember: You cannot hate yourself into meaningful change. Nor can you enable or entitle yourself enough to grow. You are never just the monster or the victim. You are a human who has suffered pain that was never your fault and you are someone who has found self protective ways to live in the world not rooted in love. You need to live in both realities. You are never so far gone that you become worthy of pure hatred. Nor is your life one perpetual tale of being a victim.

Go find that hammock.

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