Ep 199: Why You Hate Yourself and How to Start Loving Yourself Instead

When something goes wrong who’s the first person to feel your wrath? If you’re like most women, it’s you. The viper tongue shows up with a barrage of ways you’re not good enough and it’s all your fault.  In this episode I talk about why we, as women, are so mean and full of self hate and how to switch the narrative learning to like (and hopefully even) love yourself. 

In this episode I confront the damaging societal influences that often lead us to undervalue ourselves, and I'll share practical steps to help you recognize your inherent worth. By challenging the negative self-talk that haunts many of us, we'll foster a kinder, more loving relationship with ourselves.

This episode focuses on the deep-rooted struggle many we encounter when learning to love ourselves, particularly after a divorce. 

You’ll come away from this episode: 

• Understanding the psychological effects of societal expectations on women's self-worth 

• Identifying the "mean girl" voice that perpetuates self-hatred 

• Encouraging self-appreciation through daily lists of love and achievements 

• Emphasizing the importance of self-validation and recognizing intrinsic worth

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List to the full episode:

Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.

4. Haven't left a review yet? No problem. Click here to leave one.

Full Episode Transcript:

When you're going through a divorce, sometimes what you want most is a giant hug from somebody who's been through it and knows exactly what you're going through. Becoming you Again this podcast you're listening to right now is that giant hug you've been looking for. You are listening to episode number 199, and I am your host, karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My lovely, lovely ladies, I am so glad to have you back here. Okay, let's talk about the title right now.

I named this when I wrote it, when I was like laying all the things out that I wanted to say yeah, I have to write my podcasts. You guys, some people are really good at just like going off the cuff and thinking about something and just knowing exactly what they're going to say, and every once in a while I can do that, but most of the time. If I try and do that, I will literally forget like 90% of the things that I wanted to say in the podcast. So I usually write out maybe not word for word, but I write out like at least some kind of bulleted points that I want to go over. But this one I actually wrote out because I think it's important. Like I didn't write this part, obviously because I'm saying words like like a lot and just kind of going off of what's really on my mind. But when I wrote this podcast I did come up with a title and I thought that it was really important to grab your attention, because I know so many of you hate yourself and I want you to know that it is not necessary that you're allowed to love yourself, that you are allowed to believe wholeheartedly, 100%, that you are worthy of love and that it has to start with you. You have to give yourself that love first. You are deserving of being loved. You are deserving of knowing your worth and your value. That always starts right here at Basecamp with you. You're number one in your life, right? You're the number one relationship that will be with you for your entire life your entire life and you are important and worthy and valuable and unique, and I want you to know all of those things.

And so I I kind of like had to grab your attention with this title why you hate yourself. I'm going to talk to you about why you hate yourself, and then, of course, I'm not just going to leave it at that. Of course I'm going to teach you how to start loving yourself or even just liking yourself a little bit. Sometimes we have to start small. Most of the time we have to start small, and that's okay, there is nothing wrong with that, that's beautiful. So I'm going to teach you how to start doing that, okay? So let's get back to all of the things that I wrote now, because I just went off the cuff and just said all of these things and now I'm like, okay, where am I at in here? So, anyway, I definitely understand that this title could be a little bit polarizing, but, like I just said, I really wanted it to be kind of like the metaphorical slap in the face that you might not even realize you need right.

You might not even realize that you've been living a life where you're just mean to yourself all the time, you feel self-hatred and you have, like this mean girl on replay talking shit about you all day long, and I really, really, really want you to know. Hear me when I say this you do not have to live that way. You do not have to talk to yourself that way. You do not have to live that way. You do not have to talk to yourself that way. You do not have to treat yourself that way. You are allowed to be kind to yourself. You are allowed to love yourself. Even and here's the thing Maybe no one ever told you that, or maybe you heard something like that and you kind of hoped that it was true, but you don't know why you still have like this viper's tongue when you think about yourself or about your worth or your value.

And maybe you've been saying affirmations to yourself of love for years but, for whatever reason, you just don't feel like they're working. Maybe you just aren't sure how to start loving yourself or how to like yourself, because you're afraid if you do, you'll turn into some like weirdo, narcissistic woman who only thinks about herself, or maybe something else. Right? And if any of those things are true for you, or if it's something else that has brought you to this podcast, just know, number one. I am sorry for the figurative slap of this title, but if that's what got you here, I just want to say you're welcome because you deserve to know that you are worthy of love and we're going to start with you so like loving yourself, not just you personally like we all need it, right. But here we go, let's dive in.

Okay, so there are lots of reasons why we hate ourselves, and I'm sure most of you know there are a lot of self-help books dedicated to why this happens and how to overcome it. But I definitely think that there is one reason that we, especially as women, tend to hate ourselves, and I think that this reason isn't talked about as much as it should be. Every once in a while you'll find somebody talking about it, but it's not as talked about as prevalently as it should be. Every once in a while you'll find somebody talking about it, but it's not as talked about as prevalently as it should be. And I do think that it's the missing piece that you've been needing so that you can stop hating yourself and start loving yourself instead, and that piece is the socialization that you have received as a woman in this society that we live in. Because the truth is, even if you were raised in a great home and you had all of the things that you could ever want or need and you had great, amazing, supportive, loving parents who did a pretty good job right, they're not perfect, but they overall did like a pretty good job and you had good friends and you felt safe and you had like all of the advantages that could be afforded to you. Okay, even if you had like all of that, chances are that you still end up, in many ways, not liking yourself, not accepting your worth and not accepting your value, and that, my friends, is largely because of the way we, as women, are socialized.

Women are socialized to believe that our value comes from how useful we are to others and what other people think of us we are to others and and what other people think of us, if you want to think about it in terms of like, how the world sees us. Often the world sees us as kind of like the supporting actresses in a world where we get value because we are useful to those main actors in some way, and main actors meaning men, but also main actors meaning like our children or the school, the PTA, everyone else, literally everyone else in our lives is needed to be put before us before we think of ourselves and when we think about the way the world needs us to be useful. That can look many different ways, right? That might mean you're going to be useful. That can look many different ways, right? That might mean you're going to be useful by looking good. Like how often are we told that it's our physical appearance that makes us valuable? I don't know, maybe like our literal entire lives.

There are multi-billion dollar industries that tell women how to fix getting old, how to stop looking wrinkly, how to lose weight, how to eat correctly, how to be better so that you'll be accepted, because whatever you've got going on right now is not acceptable. There's something about you that needs to change so that you can be lovable, you can be worthy, you can be useful to us in some way, and that usefulness comes in making our eyes want to look at you, right? If you haven't watched the movie the Substance and you're okay with, like some body horror or body gore, then I definitely recommend watching this movie. It is so eye opening and like. The bottom line of that movie is basically, it's like an allegory of the price we, as women, pay in order to feel valuable and in order to hold worth in this society as we grow old. So if you're okay with some body gore, body horror, watch that movie. It's called the Substance. It stars Demi Moore. She actually just won a Golden Globe or something for this a couple of weeks ago. Watch it and then go watch her acceptance speech for winning the whatever prize it was I'm pretty sure it was the Golden Globe and take her advice, because it's really really great advice.

But okay, so there's. There's that socialization, right, the socialization of we've got to be useful by looking good. There's also the socialization that we believe that it's our job or our duty to make other people feel happy and comfortable, to take care of others, to be nurturing. There is a myth and I promise you this is a myth that has been perpetuated over the years that mothers are the nurturers and it comes naturally to us. While men are more cognitive, they're more logical and that means that they're less emotional, and so nurturing just doesn't come naturally to men and they have to work so much harder to display that trait, and so it's just better if women take care of the kids, right?

However, this has been debunked by studies over many, many, many years, and if you really just think about it, it's also common sense. First of all, men are humans, in the same way that women are humans. We are all humans and humans are emotional beings. We all feel emotions. We all feel the whole gambit of them, negative and positive. And for society to pretend that men don't feel emotions because they're just more logical, that is a myth, and that myth has been passed down since, I mean ages, eons, greek philosophers right, maybe even before that, but it was the philosophers who decided to attribute men as the thinkers, and so hence they're just more logical, and women as the feelers, and hence they're just more emotional. Again, as women, we have been socialized to believe that we are in charge of others' emotions, and so we need to take care of making other people feel comfortable at all times, even if that means we feel discomfort, we feel uncomfortable, we put ourselves on the back burner the back burner.

I want you to notice that this value that we, as women, believe we have or don't have comes from how other people think of you, or how other people view you. Do other people see you as helpful? If yes, okay. Other people think I'm pretty Okay, good I can, I'm acceptable. Now Other people think that I'm worthwhile because of the good that I'm putting out into the world by being a mother or being a helper in some way. Great, now I can like myself. Now I can see myself as worthy or have achieved the worth at some, like rung that I didn't have before. And this doesn't even take into account if you have, like, a further marginalized identity where you don't fit in. You're not seen as desirable. That even adds more layers to this idea of value and worth. That becomes even more complicated.

Typically, most of us, as women, we're not just sitting around thinking how valuable do I feel today? Hmm, let me think about it. What should I be doing to make myself more valuable or more worthwhile? Most of us aren't just sitting around thinking that right, we're just living our lives. And then there's just like this narrative of thoughts that just show up out of nowhere while we're doing our life, while we're living our life, and these types of thoughts show up in many different ways. Maybe you might think something like you're just not smart enough to get a better paying job, or your kids don't want to hang out with you because you're boring, you're not really that cool. Or if you're going through a divorce, like most of you listening to this are. This divorce means that you're going to be a single woman for the rest of your life, because nobody wants to marry an old, divorced woman with kids. Or you must not be worth very much if you don't have kids to take care of or to parent every day like you used to. Or you might even start to question things like well, if I had just tried harder or if I had just done something different, then maybe they would still love me, maybe I wouldn't be getting divorced, maybe I wouldn't be going through this Like.

Whatever the scenario is on how you question your own value and your own worth, the bottom line is so much of how we define our worth and our value as a woman is based on how we are socialized to believe where that worth and value comes from. So let me say it in other words. In other terms, we hate ourselves because we believe we're just not good enough compared to the standards that society has given us to base our worth from. We just don't think we're good enough. How many times have you just thought I'm just not good enough. I can't keep up.

Society doesn't teach us, as women, how to think about ourselves. It only teaches us how to think about ourselves based off of what other people think of us. So, instead of producing a relationship with yourself where you're going to trust yourself and where your opinions, you feel confident in them and you feel confident in voicing them, and you feel like, strong and powerful in your capabilities and what you can accomplish in your life, instead of believing that you're worth more than just being a vessel to bring other people into this world yes, that's important, but you also are important Instead of creating that society has helped you produce a relationship with yourself where you don't advocate for yourself, where you don't use your voice. You think it's bad to take up space. Don't use your voice. You think it's bad to take up space, where you will often even throw yourself under the bus, take the blame, pile on the self-hatred and then spew that hate onto other women, because then maybe you can feel good, maybe you can believe you have some worth in this world.

Society teaches us to put ourselves on the back burner and completely forget about ourselves. Completely forget that we have wants, that we have needs, that we have desires and that, if we do, if we didn't think about those for one second. We are bad. We should feel guilty because we are not allowed to be first in the relationship that we have with ourselves. Let's break that pattern of social conditioning. Let's teach you how to stop hating yourself and start loving yourself instead. The only way to do that the only way to do that is to have a better relationship with yourself. It's to learn to tune out as much as possible Probably not going to be perfect at this, but as much as possible what other people may be thinking of you.

The first thing that I really really need you to wrap your head around is to believe that you are worthy and valuable enough to Just as you are. You are allowed to be a human who exists on this planet without being useful or helpful to anyone else and without accomplishing anything additional. You are allowed to do that. The concept of worth and value it's made up like as it concerns humans, right? This concept of like you're worthy, you're not worthy, blah, blah, blah. That's a made up concept. Somebody came up with that idea and even if they say that it was told to them by God, either way, it's still made up. It's something that has been generated to help us understand why we're here or what purpose we have as humans. To help us understand why we're here or what purpose we have as humans. So, knowing that it's a made-up concept, it would make sense that either everybody has it or nobody has it. So if it feels believable and better to you to decide that human worth is a thing, then I want you to work on believing that everyone has intrinsic worth, just for being born, just for being here.

I really want you to think about this. There is no helpful place in creating self-love, in creating self-acceptance that tells you that some people have worth but not you, that, no matter what you do, you'll never have it. Like that literally doesn't make any sense. And when you believe that, it will only keep you stuck in a cycle of self-hate and keep you feeling inadequate as a human. Who's living life, who's living life you and everyone else has intrinsic self-worth. Even if you were born and then you never accomplished another thing in your life, you would still be good enough to be allowed to exist, to live a life, to have your own friendship, your own relationship with yourself. So how do you build a better relationship with yourself? How do you continue to build off that idea that you have intrinsic self-worth, you start by building more respect for yourself and you start to like yourself more than you do now.

I have said this many, many times over my almost 200 podcast episodes, but when I was going through my divorce, one of the first things that I decided I needed I knew I needed that I really wanted to work on was loving myself more, liking myself more, being okay with just being with me, and I started that by telling myself five things that I loved or appreciated about myself every single day. You can do that, too. You can do exactly like I did. You can start exactly where I started. Say these things out loud to yourself, write them down. Whatever you decide, do this Actually do this. It made a monumental difference in how I started to see myself from the inside, from my own eyes, instead of how other people saw me and how I defined myself. And then you can take it one step further and you can write down or say five things that you can give yourself credit for.

Think about ways where you are just like killing it in life, where you are just like going above and beyond. You are doing amazingly. Think about skills that you develop, that you've developed, or things that you've learned, or stuff that you're really good at. Because the reality is, we're usually very, very hard on ourselves and we hate certain aspects about ourselves, but we also tend to like overlook things in our lives that we're really good at or things that we're doing just fine, and so start to pay attention to the places where you are doing amazing, the things that you really love about yourself, and write those down, brag to yourself about yourself for a couple of moments every single day, and then come back to these lists every day and read through them and say them out loud and feel into them and then add to them. That was one thing that really helped me is, for the first little bit, I could only find five things that I liked about myself. It was really hard for me, but the more I did it, the more my eyes opened to seeing me as me and appreciating me for me, and I started to add things to that list.

Let these truths, as you say them, as you feel into them, let them wash over your body, feel neutral and then feel good, even. Allow yourself to feel great when you tell yourself these things. This is how you build a stronger relationship with yourself and you learn to love yourself. This is how you stop believing everything that you have been socialized to believe and instead step into your power and your authority over yourself. This is how you know that you are an intrinsically worthwhile human woman. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I love you. You are worthy exactly as you are. Now. All you got to do is start to believe it. Thank you for being here. I will be back next week. Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening.

I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real-life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoachingcom. To KarenNelsonCoaching dot com. That's W-W-W dot. K-a-r-i-n-n-e-l-s-o-n. Coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.