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Self-Loathing - How it Happens - How to Change It

Lady Saoirse
By Lady Saoirse
November 27, 2025
Self-Loathing - How it Happens - How to Change It
Self-Loathing - How it Happens - How to Change It

Self-loathing causes self-esteem issues and holds us back from being brave enough to take chances to succeed. You don’t have to let self-hatred hold you back though. Find out easy ways to overcome self-loathing and learn to love yourself.

Have you ever looked in the mirror and been unable to find one thing you like about what you see? Do you feel ashamed of yourself regularly and just can’t find the strength to be proud of one thing? Do you let people tear you down because you believe you deserve it? You might be suffering from a nasty case of self-loathing, but you’re in luck because you found this article. Join Mysticsense to find out how to overcome self-loathing today and learn to love yourself. Find out why we self-loathe and some signs you hate yourself. Discover the bad things that happen when we struggle with self-hatred. Everybody deserves love- and the most important love is the love we have for ourselves. Find out some simple tips to overcome self-hatred and learn to love yourself.

What is Self-Loathing?

What is Self-Loathing?

Self-loathing, also known as self-hatred, is personally disliking yourself very strongly to the point of hating yourself. All of us have things about ourselves that we don't like, but if you self- loathe, it's worse than that. You will have regular negative feelings or thoughts about yourself and intensely criticize and judge yourself. You will typically judge yourself more harshly than you judge other people when you engage in self-loathing. You will be more forgiving of other people's mistakes than you will be of your own, and you will typically demand perfection of yourself.

Typically, people who hate themselves won't even recognize self-perfection when it exists. They will always find some way to criticize themselves. If you hate yourself, you might not say it aloud in front of other people, but inside your mind, you will constantly be reminding yourself of how you believe that you're not good enough. You will experience a lot of guilt and shame and have a hard time recognizing your accomplishments or positive qualities. Self-loathing damages your relationship with yourself, but it can be fixed. Find out how here: How to Love Yourself More

Why We Self-Loathe

Self-loathing isn't something we choose to do to ourselves initially. It happens because of something that happened to us. It can be a symptom of an illness, or it can happen because you've been abused. Unfair peer pressure or unnaturally critical personality can cause it also. You might just be so unaware of the fact that other people struggle with the same things you do, you think you're the only one who does.

Illness

Self-loathing can be a symptom of illnesses such as borderline personality disorder. Some people with borderline personality disorder who practice self-loathing and, also may self-harm. Mood disorders like depression can cause self-loathing. Another disorder known as body dysmorphic disorder can manifest as self-hatred. With body dysmorphic disorder, you imagine that you have serious flaws that don't actually exist. Something called Survivor Guilt can cause self-loathing. Survivor Guilt happens when you feel guilty after surviving some type of a traumatic event that other people did not survive.

Abuse

Self-loathing is sometimes associated with early life experiences from your childhood. Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse can lead you to hate yourself. Growing up and a dysfunctional family where you are heavily criticized, cut down, and expected to be perfect can make you hate yourself. High achieving parents may impose unfair standards upon their children and push them to excel, verbally beating them down when they don't live up to their impossible standards. Even if nobody is abusing you at home, serious trauma from catastrophic events can create self-loathing. Find out if you are an abuse victim here: Are You Abused? | The Signs You May Be

Peer Pressure

You might be lucky and belong to a very supportive, and loving family. However, you might be surrounded by toxic peers. Childhood bullies might cut you down to the point that you internalize their viciousness, and you start to cut yourself down also. While some adults think that schoolyard bullies are just annoying children, bullying can create permanent self-esteem issues and self-loathing that stays with people for years.

A Critical Personality

Sometimes, people aren't taught to be overly critical. They're just naturally that way. Highly critical people can become some of the best problem solvers there are. They just have to be careful about how they speak to themselves. If you notice a mistake you've made, instead of telling yourself that you're too stupid that you can't do anything right, learn from the mistake and correct it. If you are a naturally critical individual, try to use your critical skills to find ways to identify problems and solve them instead of being angry with yourself for being less than perfect. One highly critical Zodiac Sign is Virgo, and you can read about them here: Virgo Traits | Star Sign in The Spotlight

Unawareness of Other People’s Problems

Self-loathing can happen because you think you're the only imperfect person there is and everyone else can do no wrong. Some people are very good at hiding their flaws and mistakes. If you really get to know people, and pay attention to them, you will see that everyone is just doing the best they can and dealing with their own imperfections to the best of their abilities. Once you see that everyone else makes mistakes and has flaws, you might notice that you're not angry with them or critical of them for that. Treat yourself with the same kindness that you treat other people because of their imperfections.

Signs You Hate Yourself

Signs of self-loathing might seem obvious, but they aren't always. Small things like hating your appearance or excessively criticizing yourself are signs of self-loathing some people might not recognize. However, something like neglecting your health or appearance is a sneaky symptom of it also.

Your Dating Confidence is Nonexistent

Self-loathing can make you believe that you have nothing to offer a potential partner. It can make you shy away from your crush or accept dates from people who mistreat you. Self-loathing creates a hostile relationship with yourself and your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will have. If you don't love yourself, it will be hard for you to accept love from someone else. Even if you’re shy, you can still tell your crush. Find out how here: What to Say When You Have a Crush on Someone

You Hate Your Appearance

You Hate Your Appearance

Most people would like to improve their appearance, but absolutely hating everything about the way you look is a symptom of self-loathing. If you over focus on what you don't like about yourself instead of celebrating other things about yourself, it's a sure sign that you hate yourself, your appearance, and your body in general.

You Don’t Advocate for Yourself

Allowing people to verbally abuse you, take advantage of you, and staying in toxic situations you could easily get out of are all signs that you're not standing up for yourself. When you can stand up for yourself and you don't, it means you don't care enough about yourself to do it and it's a sign of self-hatred. Learn to build the self-esteem to take up for yourself through body confidence here: Learning Self-Confidence by Loving Your Body

Can’t Accept Compliments

If you can't stand it when people give you a compliment because you don't believe you deserve compliments, it's a sign that you hate yourself. Everybody has something good about themselves. When someone who loves you or even a stranger tells you they like your outfit, they love the way you do your job, or even that you just have a nice smile and you refuse to believe it, that means you don't love yourself and you actually embrace self-loathing.

You Neglect Yourself

Staying up too late to read, watch TV, or play video games is self-neglect when you're exhausted the next day. Not wearing clothes that fit properly or make you look good and not practicing proper grooming is all self-neglect. Neglecting your hygiene, eating food you know is going to make you sick, or working too hard because you believe you don't deserve a break is also self-neglect. We all have perfect opportunities to take excellent care of ourselves every day and refusing to do that is a symptom of self-loathing. Learn to heal yourself instead of neglecting yourself with prayers and spells here: Your Spell and Prayer for Healing Guide

What Self-Hatred Causes

Self-hatred creates self-sabotage and holds you back from your life. It creates self-esteem issues and snowballs from there. It will compromise your ambition and means that you will make no effort to meet your goals. It will compromise your relationships also.

Self-Esteem Issues

Hating yourself is the number one way to make sure that you don't have any faith in yourself. You will believe that you lack the abilities to accomplish the things that you want to, and you might even believe that you don't deserve to be happy. Everybody deserves to meet their goals. Everybody deserves to believe in themselves. If you don't believe in yourself and the ability to accomplish things, it's going to ruin your ambition.

No Ambition or Effort

Ambition is just the desire to achieve something that you have to work hard for. Without believing in yourself, you won't believe that you're capable of achieving. So, what happens is you won't even try for things. If you want to try out for the sports team, but your self-esteem issues mean that you have no ambition, you won't even bother. If you want to excel at the clarinet, you won't bother to practice because you will believe that you're not capable. Self-hatred will also make you believe that you don't deserve to accomplish anything. Find out how to manifest career and love success here: Manifesting Your Destiny with Love and Careers

Compromised Relationships

Self-loathing will also compromise your relationships and might take away your ability to have relationships at all. Your lack of confidence can keep you from asking your crush out. You will settle for toxic relationships which ruin your life. You might even self-isolate and stay away from people who would love to be friends with you. If you had the misfortune of growing up in a toxic or dysfunctional family that triggered your self-loathing, you might deliberately estrange yourself from your whole family, even nice family members, and make yourself feel like an orphan.

How to Stop Self-Hatred

How to Stop Self-Hatred

Overcoming self-hatred doesn't happen overnight, but you can get started on it today. The first thing you need to do is to be fair with yourself instead of unkind and change the way that you talk to yourself. Instead of having unrealistic standards of perfection for yourself, do your best, and that's good enough. Give yourself compliments and get support if you need it.

Be Fair to Yourself

Would you expect your friend to outperform everybody else? Would you tell someone else they aren't allowed to rest or have flaws? Would you demand that someone automatically knows how to do everything without being taught how? Of course not. So don't be so unfair with yourself. Give yourself a break, celebrate your victories without expecting yourself to win them all, and allow yourself the opportunity to learn things at your own pace.

Change How You Talk to Yourself

Instead of telling yourself that you're not good enough, tell yourself that you have the ability to improve. Instead of calling yourself names like ugly or stupid, call yourself a work in progress and someone who is growing. If you were mentoring or giving emotional support to someone else, you would never call them names or be impatient with them. So, don't do that to yourself. Words have magical power, so what we say matters. Find out why here: Magical Words: The Amazing Power of Words

Just Do Your Best

There might be someone who accomplishes more than you do. Instead of being ashamed for not doing more than them, just do the best you can. Each of us has different capabilities and everyone is just as good as everybody else. Your best is good enough. Look in the mirror and say that to yourself until you believe it.

Compliment Yourself

Focus on the positives instead of cutting yourself down. You might be unhappy with the ultra-short haircut you chose at the barber. Instead of calling yourself ugly, compliment yourself on being brave enough to take a risk while your hair grows back out. Instead of tearing yourself down because you couldn’t keep up with workouts this week, remember it is because you worked extra hours. Compliment yourself on being a team player on the job and get back to the gym next week. You deserve praise and nobody can praise you better than you can praise yourself. Even if you think you fail- you might really be winning because all “failures” aren’t bad. Find out why here: The Positive Side of Failing- Why It’s Good

Get Support

If you learned self-loathing because of other people, surround yourself with positive people and friends who will build you up instead. When you catch yourself practicing self-loathing, ask them to help redirect you and give you some encouragement.

Self-loathing isn’t something we want to have. It’s something we are usually taught as children because the people who should have been nurturing us were too busy tearing us down. It can also be learned from bullying or be a symptom of an illness. Self-loathing becomes a decision we make every day at a certain point, and it’s up to us to choose to treat ourselves differently. Things like self-neglect and inability to accept compliments are signs of self-hatred. You don’t have to be stuck loathing yourself forever, though. The way out is to change how you talk to yourself, and accept that your best is better than good enough- it’s fantastic. Love yourself. You deserve it.

Would you like to speak to a psychic for more ways to embrace self-love? Get a reading started to find out today.

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