“I hate you”: a voice that is always with me

“I remember sitting on the couch and sobbing bitterly while my parents in the other room decided my fate. I silently screamed to myself: “I hate you!” and beat her hands painfully.”

Nata came to therapy complaining of depression and repetitive patterns in relationships with men. She fell in love with those who rejected her.

“My parents were always busy, I missed their warmth and attention. When I was eight, I started stealing money from them and buying myself sweets and coloring books. Life has become happier. When asked by my parents, where did all this come from, I came up with a good friend.

Childish stealing and imaginary friends are a sure sign that a child’s emotional needs are not being met. Trying to get a lack of love and attention, he “buys” good emotions in the form of sweets or fantasizes about close friends.

“The deception, of course, was soon revealed. My father punished me with a belt for the first time. However, this did not stop me, I continued to carry money. Parents threatened: if you don’t stop, we will send you to an orphanage. It was a very terrible threat. But then I again took money from them – as it seemed to me, imperceptibly and a little bit.

“On that day, when I was crying on the couch, and they were thinking what to do with me, it was not even the orphanage that scared me the most. I thought about him: okay, I’ll take toys and books with me; You might as well live there. Worse was their threat to reveal everything in my class. And then everyone will know how bad I am. It was an unbearable and tearing feeling of shame. I hated myself.”

When a child is criticized, punished or rejected, the first thing he feels towards the offenders is anger. However, expressing his anger to the parents he loves and depends on may be too dangerous for him because of his unconscious fear of losing them completely. Then the child suppresses his anger, takes the side of criticizing adults and agrees that he is bad. As a result, he is alienated from himself and his true feelings.

Many years later. At 32, Nata lived an ordinary life: home, work, friends. I didn’t think much about my childhood, I didn’t remember that incident. I did not expect much from life and from myself. Depression and apathy were her faithful companions. Sometimes Nata felt longing that life was somehow gray and meaningless.

It often happens that traumatic memories and feelings are forced out of consciousness and begin to influence a person’s life gradually, from the unconscious. Unconscious self-hatred can manifest itself in different ways. Ruthless demands on oneself and self-blame, inability to enjoy life, feelings of inferiority, self-destructive behavior – all this indicates a person’s rejection of himself.

Sometimes Nata had novels, but they ended pretty quickly. Another wound appeared in the heart, and the suffering dragged on for several years. Then everything repeated. Relations with men did not develop in any way. Those who liked her were not interested in her. The men Nata fell in love with didn’t take her seriously, and their relationship was short and superficial.

“All I ever wanted in life was mutual love. But that has never happened to me.” After another painful breakup, Nata fell into depression, which pushed her to come to therapy. And then the picture of her inner life began to gradually clear up.

Once Nata came to the session and said that she began to hear an inner voice saying “I hate you.” And the further, the more often. Sometimes, according to her, he appeared from scratch, for no reason. Then she began to notice certain situations and thoughts, because of which he began to sound again. The voice criticized Nata for any “misconduct”. From the unconscious, her true attitude towards herself began to emerge.

Nata remembered that childhood story and recognized the inner voice. Not only that case influenced her sense of self, but it was the most striking and revealing.

When the topic of self-hatred surfaced, Nata was at first perplexed: “Where did I get this from? Yes, there was that case, but in general I had a good childhood and a good family. My parents loved me, that’s for sure. But the time was difficult then, they were overwhelmed with financial and other problems. They just didn’t have enough time for me. And when there was time, they brought me up strictly, without sentimentality.

Some children are very sensitive from birth, and the same childhood conditions can affect the psyche of different children in different ways. The strictness and criticality of parents, lack of warmth and threats to hand over to an orphanage for one child can be traumatic, but for another they will not have a devastating effect.

Nata was sensitive. Then, as a child, trying to cope with the lack of parental attention and the feeling of rejection, she turned her anger towards her parents against herself. She began to feel that she was “to blame” and “unworthy of love.” Nata could no longer accept her love for herself. And, as a result, she could not accept love from others.

This directly affected her relationship with the opposite sex. The men interested in her did not evoke emotions in Nata – they were heroes “not from her fairy tale.” Instead, by rejecting herself, she unconsciously re-created a familiar scenario in which she would be rejected by men. Time after time, Nata played out her traumatic story. Although in the depths of her soul she always hoped for a happy ending, in such conditions, alas, it could not be.

It was not easy for Nate in therapy. Awareness and acceptance of one’s true “I”, understanding the origins of problems and experiencing repressed feelings required determination and inner efforts. “Sometimes I wanted to run away and close, and not raise all these painful feelings and experiences from the bottom. What made me stay? Hope my life could be different. And those first changes that I began to feel in myself and in my relationships with others. It gave strength and desire to move on. After all, as they say in advertising, I deserve it. Even though I didn’t think so before.