I Can't Stand Myself Anymore

[Rizzo]

I am a perfectionist, critical and obsessive about everything related to myself
I can't relax, my thoughts are driving me crazy.
I don't think there is anyone who hates me as much as I hate myself
I can't stand looking in the mirror, I am disgusted by what I see
I wish I knew how to change it..
If anyone has any tips on how to deal with this..
It suffocates me.

[Beijaflor57]

Rizzo, I can totally relate to this. I've struggled with intense self-hatred and self-loathing (and perfectionism) for most of my life. Finding out I was the scapegoat in my family helped me at least see where most of that self-hatred came from. That it wasn't really me, but what my family was projecting onto me.

But what has been most helpful for me is finding ways to divert my focus from myself and onto things or people in need, or worse off than me. Reaching out to others with genuine compassion fills me with joy and purpose, and helps me realize I'm not the disgusting, awful person I've been led to believe I am. And the more I reach out, and the more others respond positively to that, the more my distorted self-image improves. Focusing on others, or some other worthwhile cause, also helps alleviate my obsessive, self-focused thoughts.

I don't know if that helps, but I've found it helpful in my own life.

Hang in there...

[Cascade]

it wasn't really me, but what my family was projecting onto me.

I'm working on my own shame, which was projected onto me by my parents.  I know the sense of disgust of yourself that you mentioned.

Can you express in some way your feelings (not thoughts, but feelings) about what happened to you at the hands of others in your life?  Any expression:  crying, anger, sadness, through words, art, sounds, running, jumping jacks, or safely angering out to release some of it from your body?

🕯🕯
Rizzo, you are beautiful just the way you are.
You deserve to be loved; you are lovable just the way you are.
It's simply because you exist that you are beautiful and lovable.

Thanks for reaching out of isolation so I know to send you some love as a human being and hugs, if that's okay.
  -Cascade

[Beijaflor57]

🕯🕯
Rizzo, you are beautiful just the way you are.
You deserve to be loved; you are lovable just the way you are.
It's simply because you exist that you are beautiful and lovable.

I second this. 

[Papa Coco]

Rizzo,

I agree with Cascade and Beijaflor, that you are beautiful just as you are.

I ALSO fully, fully understand how difficult it is for you to feel the love for yourself that you deserve to feel. C-PTSD is all about having been taught through abuse into losing our ability to love ourselves. 

For most of my life I couldn't look in a mirror if I wasn't completely alone. I always said it was like this: I can't look at people I hate, and when I look in a mirror I see someone I hate.  As of the past few years I've been coming up out of that self-hatred, because I have come to understand that it's trauma talking, not reality.

In reality, we, (You, me, and all the other souls on this forum), are good people who've been tricked into believing what narcissists told us to believe. During the times when we feel the most down on ourselves, that's not when reality is talking to us, it's when Trauma is talking to us. And trauma is not reality, it's an imposter. It pretends to be reality, but it's not. It feels real, but it's not. It's trauma. It's lying to us when it tells us we shouldn't love ourselves.

I hope that you can feel what I'm saying here. That in reality, you are a beautiful soul. Trauma is making it hard to see the truth, but the truth is that you and me and Cascade and Beijaflor and pretty much everyone on this forum is a beautiful soul. We are the ones who didn't become cruel and decide to fight back by being just as evil as our teachers were. We're the ones who feel the pain of what they did, and we come here to the forum and remind ourselves and each other, that we are good, loving, compassionate, souls who just need to remember that trauma feels real, but it's NOT the real world. It's the trauma world. We are NOT trauma. We have trauma, but we are not trauma. What trauma tells us about ourselves is not who we truly are. It's who some jealous hate-filled person(s) wanted us to feel. They were wrong. We are beautiful. That's the truth.

The trauma hurts as bad, or worse, than actual self-hatred does, but it's trauma. It's the trauma talking. Even though it hurts just as if it were real, it's not real. It's trauma doing what trauma does. The good news is that the more we accept that trauma-reality is not the same as true reality, and that we are, in reality, beautiful, that we can start slowly lifting ourselves up and out of the darkness that trauma tricked us into thinking was real. With time and the friendship of others who know what it feels like to suffer in similar ways, we begin to find connections with other good people, and when that happens, things begin to improve. I like to say that if I have one friend at my side, I can survive a world of bullies. And the friends who are on my side are here on the forum, answering my calls for help, and sending me hug emojis and kind words when I need them. That's reality. The people here on the forum are reality.

You're not alone here.

[Kizzie]

Awww Rizzo, I am so sorry to hear you are stuck such a negative critical spiral.  It may seem simplistic but when I was in that state I found if I challenged the thoughts, little by little I saw how unreasonable they were.

For example: "Am I really that hateful/disgusting?"  And then think about some of the most heinous crimes you can remember from the news and compare yourself to the perpetrators.

Sounds a bit wonky I know, but we truly are none of the shameful, awful things we have been taught to tell ourselves we are. It is in comparison we can sometimes see that. 

I hope this works for you.  You have to keep giving it a try, even if a little at a time. Eventually you may come to see those who abused you as disgusting and hateful rather than yourself.

[Dalloway]

Rizzo, I can relate to the things you are describing here. All my life I´ve been struggling with perfectionism because I was taught that I don´t deserve unconditional love and respect, so I tried to earn it (still try). And yet, sometimes, when I have a bright moment, I pause and think to myself: wait a minute, what is going on in here? I am a worthy person and deserve love and respect. Period. (Personally, this "period" really helps me to emphasize that I´m stating facts here  )

Soo, I just want to second everything that was written so far and tell you that even though sometimes you don´t believe it, you ARE a beautiful person. 

[Chart]

Rizzo, I think we have to get to a tipping point. And to get there means being able to stop thought obsessions. For me what worked was each time I felt the self-hatred and blame, I literally spoke the words in my head, "It's NOT about that..." I then forced my feeling-thoughts to acknowledge that I have Cptsd and what I was feeling was Trauma. I had to do this for many months. But I didn't stop. Every time, every single time, every several minutes throughout my entire day, over and over and over, I was feeling my utter worthlessness and utter hatred of myself and my actions/behavior/my life, I repeated the same sentence in my head: This in not about my worthlessness, it's about my Trauma. I was an infant and I was horribly abused. THAT IS WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I am suffering from Trauma. I didn't do anything. This is Trauma.

I did this for six months or more. It never stopped and little seemed to change.

Then one afternoon after again the same obsessing and pain, I stopped my work and sat on a bench and did Tapping (Butterfly technique, also known as EFT). I sat and tapped my shoulders and asked myself, "Ok, what do you need? What do you want? What could help? I'm here, I'm available. I'm giving over everything I have to you." And literally, like a blinding light I was transported back in time and met myself in my infant bed. I saw it all. It was all imagination but as real as the daylight and wind on my face. I was able to comfort my infant self for the first time of my life. I was able to feel a protector take me in his arms, myself, something I had never felt, never gotten. It was more real than anything I've ever experienced. I picked up my baby-self and just held him. And I felt what it means to be loved, just for who I am, finally, after 55 years. No infant should be made to wait so long. My biological father was a horrible suffering terrifying abandoning sad excuse for a human... and certainly no father to me. Bad luck, that's what I got. And bad luck, that's what I have to rewrite. In my words, in my soul, and in my neurons. It's a sh*t-long job. But it CAN be done.

That's my story so far. I've cut my demoralizing obsessing 80%. I'm still having light EFs and depression, and pretty intense Fear in the mornings, but I'm breathing again and have hope for dealing with the next steps in healing.

I'll repeat what everyone else has said here and hopefully is sinking in at least a little bit: You are in reality Beautiful...

But what you are feeling, is Trauma.

You, we, everyone with Cptsd must first make the distinction between these two fundamentally critical aspects of their condition. What you are feeling is not what you are.

[Lonewolf86]

Hey Rizzo,

I'm new here so I'm just learning a lot of this stuff but I wanted to tell you that I know how you feel.  For me, the single worst thing I've been dealing with and the thing that pushed me to keep looking for answers, is the horrible inner critic that I have inside me.  It is a very dark and cruel entity and for most of my life I just knew it was there and that I hated it.  I didn't know this was one of the key symptoms of childhood neglect and abuse and when I learned that it was such a relief.  I still am dealing with this critic ALL THE TIME.  A good example from just the last couple days is that every time I post anything on this forum I immediately start berating myself for all kinds of things.  My self talk is SO dark.  I dont even want to share the things it says but it hurts me deeply and I need to get a hold of it.  (Like you) 

Reading Pete Walker's book had a lot of answers and validation esp around the inner critic, which I want to read it all again, but that was super enlightening. He says that "grieving" is the way out of this.  Something I'm just starting to be able to do

If you haven't read it then I recommend it.  Also, what I find is that I can cognitively know certain things like "negative self talk is bad" and "I'm really a good person" and "This inner critic is a result of my toxic childhood and caregivers" -- I *know* these things but that doesn't mean that the inner critic magically goes away.  What I try to do and sometimes this feels like I'm a flea fighting an elephant but I try to talk back to that voice and say "no shut  the * up" and even though the impact is barely noticeable I can feel that on some level it is starting to have an effect and I can only hope that if I keep working on healing and keep challenging that voice, it will eventually subside.  I also pray for help from above on this issue.

I don't know you but I know you're not a bad person and I know you're not all those bad things you tell yourself. I know because I live this too.

 

From Complex PTSD: From surviving to Thriving

"Successful critic shrinking usually requires thousands of angry skirmishes with the critic.  passionate motivation for this work often arises when we construct an accurate picture of our upbringing.  Natural anger eventually arises when we really get how little and defenseless we were when our parents bullied us into hating ourselves. p180

"These losses have to be grieved until the person really gets how much her caretakers were not caretakers, and how much her parents were not her allies.  She needs to grieve until she stops blaming herself for their abuse and/or neglect.  She needs to grieve until she fully realizes that their abysmal   parenting practices gave her that awful gift that keeps on giving: c-ptsd.,  She needs to grieve until she understands how her learned habit of automatic self-abandonment is a reenactment of their abject failure to be there for her." p218