Gemma Speck

I'm going to hate them for it.

A really interesting study published in 2014 actually summarizes

looked at the way that both guilt and shame manifest in social outcomes.

And what they found was that actually, whilst guilt can fuel more pro-social behaviours,

Shame was more associated with maladaptive social patterns.

So things like aggression, withdrawal, judgment, not because people wanted to be these things.

They didn't want to do these things.

They don't want to be that person.

Nobody wants to be that person.

It just felt necessary to protect themselves and to protect the inner critic from having to admit that maybe it was wrong.

Maybe there was a better way of living that wasn't just hating ourselves into existence.

It never stays internal.

A feeling as heavy and harsh as self-hatred is going to show up in friendships.

It's going to show up in work.

It's going to show up in how generous you are, how understanding you can be.

It's going to show up, especially in those situations, because we begin to think, well, if I'm killing myself, if I'm holding myself to such a high standard...

How come others aren't doing the same thing?

Like how come they don't feel the shame and the sadness and like the anger that I feel about myself?

How come they feel good about themselves?

And we don't want to rethink that key metric or key part of our identity that self-hatred is helpful or useful.