So after many many weeks of therapy I, together with my therapist of course, have unearthed a biggie. Before I say what exactly, I want to say up front that I kind of both agree and disagree with the conclusion that she and I came to.

I hate myself.

Short and sweet though it sounds – and to those other more experienced self-haters out there perhaps not such a realisation and more of a “yep…and?”moment – it does, for me, present itself as a more of an ‘ohhhh, so that’s why I feel like I do’ moment. It’s both a kind of validation of my illness (I’ll explain what I mean by that in a sec.) and, more importantly, it’s a root cause which I can now (apparently) begin to pick away at, and eradicate from the hard-wiring of my being. Those words are of course easier to say than believe – much easier.

I’d really welcome any feedback at this juncture – y’know reply, respond, comment on this post – because I’m a little in the dark about whether I am alone in believing, as I said just now, that this realisation of my self-hate is a ‘validation’ of my illness. Is that just me? I say it because all the way through this period in my life, I have had a very strong belief that my thoughts, feelings, actions were wrong; wrong in the sense that I had no right to be experiencing them; wrong in the sense also that I was in some way over-dramatising in my own head the fact I was perhaps simply feeling at odds with myself. Even when I’ve been at my lowest and wanted to end it all; that that was just a way of simply feeling sorry for myself. I know. Even as I write that I know it’ll sound daft.

And I know that I have an illness – one of those quiet, non painful (physically) ones. And I know that my referrals back to the CMHC are for real. That my medication is for real. That, thanks to talking to others and reading other blogs I’m not alone in experiencing the things I do. Yep. Rational me knows all of that. But another me also doubts, maybe? So I do feel validated by this realisation of self-hate – every cloud? And as I say, it perhaps gives me a root cause to work on. I may share my findings as I begin to pick away at this with my therapist, or I may not – depends if it’s something I want to share or if it’s even worth sharing i.e. it’s something that I feel might help anyone else out there.

Before I sign off on this, I said at the start that I both agree and disagree with this discovery. That’s difficult to explain. I agree that there is an element of self-hate within me that was unearthed through admitting a few things to myself and through some difficult thought processes, but I also find it hard to agree with the idea. But I think that’s probably because I’ve got used to masking it all and bouncing along with life. Is that what we all do? I don’t know.