A weird thing happens when you don’t love yourself. When your default is “what’s wrong with me?” then you look for ways to validate that.
It’s not something you do consciously. It’s taken me 60 years to figure it out enough to try to stop it.
Maybe you can get ahead of it. Do better than I have.
I call it the spin cycle.
You do something - let’s say post a new substack, or start a new business. You began by feeling really happy about it. It’s expanding and improving who you are - but it’s just slightly out of your comfort zone. You don’t know who you are or how this will be received, so you put it out there. Gingerly. Hesitantly. Is it okay?
Then someone has a reaction to it that’s not ecstatic glee. Because you already dislike yourself, you interpret this reaction as disapproval or even anger. You have all sorts of thoughts about this:
they hate me
they think I’m stupid for doing this
why did I even try?
maybe I’m in danger - will a social media mob show up at my door?
and so on
These thoughts bring feelings: shame, fear, self-loathing. These spiral into terror, panic.
To try and stop these feelings, you might take actions to get out of this perceived danger. But basically, because you hate you, and you were trying to be more you, you punish yourself for daring to be you. Read that last sentence again.
So you do stuff: whatever stuff you do when you’re stressed out. You might get drunk, or binge-eat. Discard the business idea you just had, or delete the post.
These actions, though they are counterproductive, actually make you feel better - for about 10 seconds.
Then you begin having thoughts about what you just did.
Depending on what action you took, you might have reactions from others. But generally you’ve retreated to what is in your personal comfort zone and normal for you, so usually you won’t get much of a reaction. In fact, depending on who your people are, they might even applaud you.
But you know you just really let yourself down.
Then you ask yourself: what’s wrong with me?
And because of this thought, you have all sorts of bad feelings: shame, hopelessness, grief, anger, depression.
To get yourself out of these bad feelings, you might do more actions against yourself.
Are you seeing the picture?
Months (or years) later, when you get up the courage to try something new, because you still do not love yourself, the spin cycle begins again.
Once more, you’re banging around in pain, wondering what is wrong with you.
So when you do that long enough, you’re eventually bound to see a pattern. Maybe now you see it for the first time.
That’s good! When you can see it, you can fix it.