Living With Self-Loathing (and Trying to Stop It) Takes Courage

There is trauma and there is TRAUMA. These days, everyone seems to be engaging in a race to out-victimize each other, what with all these “trigger warnings” I keep hearing about. Is self-loathing a form of trauma? Yes. But how can we get the non-self-loathing, high-self-esteem public to understand and acknowledge this?

I know that I have suffered, and my mother suffered, but we suffered at our own hands, because basically we were crazy, if pointless lifelong self-loathing is insanity. But what right have I to sob about my suffering when I know how many people have suffered, and are still suffering, much more obvious and visible traumas such as physical illness or destitute poverty? Here in my middle-class life, with my pleasant husband. Ooooh, I have suffered.

Yet I have. This is my current quandary: trying to understand, and explain, that for some people — in this case, people who hate themselves — courage can mean just getting out of bed, getting dressed and walking out the door. Courage for soldiers or the seriously ill is one thing. Courage for us is another. But it’s still courage.


Comments

Living With Self-Loathing (and Trying to Stop It) Takes Courage — 3 Comments

  1. piled on and it is clear that in this world, we get a lot of gunk. But after her realization, just like that, she wahess it all away and purifies her image. Didn’t take the same amount of time, was quick. Instantaneous. I was really happy to share this video on a facebook page called To Write Love on Her Arms actually because I felt like it was more relateable.I am glad there is different perspective on this. I really love this idea from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy’s book quoted in the video. “Beauty is a thing of life,” it says, “which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness.” p 247 |

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