Tag Archives: relationships

On Self-Hatred

In my forty years of work as a psychotherapist, I have come across countless people who are extremely unhappy with themselves. Their dissatisfaction varies, but the overall impact is that they feel depressed.

The late Theodore Isaac Rubin, MD, and Psychoanalyst, addressed this self-dissatisfaction in a book entitled Compassion and Self Hate. Dr. Rubin wrote the book “Lisa and David.” which became a Hollywood movie named David and Lisa. It is still a movie worth renting and viewing. 

Dr. Rubin borrows from a great psychoanalyst of the mid-twentieth century, Karen Horney. Horney asserts that we have three selves:

1. Actual Self: Who we are with our physical and emotional abilities and disabilities or limitations.

2. Real Self: Who we could be if we freed ourselves from our self-dislike and unrealistic fears.

3. Despised Self: Self Effacing and very neurotic.

4. Idealized Self: The illusion of glorious goals that are impossible to achieve but that we believe we should achieve.

Dr. Rubin reduces this formula to two selves, the Actual Self and the Real Self.

Actual Self: Who we are with all of our talents, limitations, and illnesses, both physical and psychological.

Real Self: The illusions we believe in about who we should be, being wealthy, powerful, lovable, and independent.

If we hold on to illusions about our Real Self is the extent to which we reject our Actual Self and feel self-hate.

For example: 

An individual may cherish the belief that they should be happy. After all, pursuing happiness is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. But what is happiness? As Dr. Rubin states, “For me, happiness is feeling good, nothing more… feeling fairly comfortable and relatively tension-free.” 

He then says that we can sustain happiness only for a limited time. Life is not perfect, and moods change. However, the illusion that one should be happy all the time creates self-hate. If someone clings to the illusion that they should be happy all the time, and they are not, they will condemn themselves for not achieving this goal. The problem is that the goal of feeling happy all the time is not achievable.

Perhaps people hold on to unrealistic beliefs about themselves, which explains the epidemic of addiction. Substances offer a temporary that causes a person to feel joyful and omnipotent. When the drug wears out and reality sets in, the self-hate reasserts itself.

To continue the analogy of the drug abuser, the sense of self-hate and wish for joy that propels the addiction also serves as a powerful source of self-punishment. Drug addiction carries with it lots of physical and emotional abuse.

Looking at the dynamic of self-hate in another way, Dr. Rubin talks about the illusions we have about money. There is a commonly held illusion that money can solve all problems. Many patients have told me they would feel free of their problems and suffering if they had enough money. However, real-life tells us a different story.

Lots of people love to play the lottery, hoping to become millionaires. We read about poor or working people winning the lottery and going home fabulously wealthy. Oh, how many of us wish for the same fate? You know the old saying, “Be careful of what you wish for.” It may come true.” The fact is that the lives of many people who won the lottery ended in tragedy. Some of them spent every dollar they won and became bankrupt. Others committed suicide, became addicted to drugs, or suffered an abysmal fate. Money did not solve their problems. Yet, we convince ourselves that it will solve our problems and beat ourselves for not earning or winning a fortune.

The same phenomenon occurs with marriages. Many people enter into marriage with illusionary expectations. These expectations often have perfect bliss, constant sexual fulfillment, and a regular flow of nurturing and love. However, actual life is not this way. Yes, marriage can bring lots of satisfaction, but it also brings many problems and difficulties. Married couples disagree and quarrel, deal with difficult children, and have work and family issues.

The more significant the gap between expectations and reality, the greater sense of disappointment, bitterness, and failure we will experience.

Dr. Rubin states that to be compassionate to others, we must learn to be compassionate to ourselves. The way to be self-compassionate is to learn to accept the Real Self with its limitations.

Accepting who we are instead of wishing for something or someone else is the road to compassion. It means ending self-hatred. Part of the way to end self-hatred is for a person to identify mistaken beliefs and make changes. 

Journaling and Mental Health

For example:

“You have been through a difficult and traumatizing divorce. When all was over, you felt a sense of relief besides exhaustion and some depression. Several months have passed and you continue to feel the lingering effects of having been through something very stressful. A friend of yours suggests you write about the experience of the divorce as a way of feeling better and putting the episode behind you. You do some investigating and discover that there is solid evidence to support friends’ suggestions.”

Were you among the many young people who kept a diary when you grew up? It’s probably something that more females did as compared to males. Research shows it’s something all of us can benefit from in our adulthood. Rather than a diary, it’s called a journal. Writing a journal can have therapeutic benefits and, perhaps, be a way to change one’s life story or narrative. Clinical Psychologist James Pennebaker, University of Texas, is the leading researcher using physical and mental health journaling. He has completed many controlled research studies documenting the benefits of writing daily. Many other researchers, such as Joshua Smith, Ph.D., and Lauren Smith, Ph.D., have further documented the benefits of writing.

Pam Trachta, owner of Through a Different Lens, a consulting business, reports that “When I journal, or when I teach others to, I strive not to be intellectual and logical and articulate, but to feel the wave, the energy behind an event and to summon images of what that wave feels like, acts like, what it’s saying to me and what I would say to it.” Do not worry about grammar, spelling, or sounding literate. Just write.

According to Pennebaker, developing a deeper understanding of an event and the emotions it generates helps the brain digest the information. Pennebaker thinks that your brain turns it into a more easily stored story when you analyze a traumatic event. “Storytelling simplifies a complex experience,” he says. Turning the memory into a story can be painful at first. It can take weeks or months to notice an improvement. Smyth and Pennebaker report that patients often feel worse when they journal. 

Here are some suggestions for how to journal:

1. Write for yourself

2. Write about all the emotions associated with the event.

3. Set aside 30 minutes at a regular time for three or four days in a row when you won’t be disturbed.

4. Explore how the topic relates to other aspects of your life, such as your childhood and relationships.

5. Write continuously and don’t think about spelling or grammar.

Journal writing about traumatic events can be difficult, time-consuming, and careful. Writing about the worst events of your life can dredge up solid emotions, and healing doesn’t follow. For example, journaling therapy doesn’t seem to work by itself with people who are severely depressed or who have post-traumatic stress disorder. Smyth suggests notifying either your health care professional or someone close to you before attempting this exercise. Let them judge if it’s helping or hurting you.

Also, keep your healing journal private. It’s okay to tear up the pages or burn them once you’ve written about the event. Showing them to anyone who isn’t a therapist or healthcare professional could make matters worse–it could be hazardous for a battered woman to show the pages to her spouse.

Some therapists integrate journaling into their therapeutic practice. Journaling is something you can look for in a therapist if interested. You can certainly do something while in therapy to discuss with your therapist if you are experiencing difficult emotions. Remember, one does not have to be in therapy to write a journal.

Psychotherapy help is available. Email Dr. Schwartz at dransphd@aol.com

What is Love

What Is Love?

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing, and forgiving. Through good and bad times, it is loyalty. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” Ann Landers.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Emily Bronte.

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Aristotle.

Webster Dictionary Definition of Love:

1. strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. Maternal love for a child.

2. attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers after all these years are still very much in love.

3. affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests love for his old schoolmates

4 .warm attachment, enthusiasm, or love of the sea.

Love:  

After several years of marriage, we take our spouses for granted.

I recently had a case of a married couple who had been together for 18 years. The husband, an amiable and sensitive man, forgot to send his wife some kind of gift for Valentine’s day. She felt hurt and disappointed. We discussed it in couples’ therapy. Clearly, he had no intention of hurting his beloved wife. While he intended to send her a gift, he forgot as he played video games with friends on the Internet. She was very hurt. As his therapist, I joked with him he had better have a good life insurance policy because she retaliated in a deadly way. 

He understood the joke and felt terrible about overlooking the import of expressing his affection, especially on Valentine’s day. 

We take a lot of things for granted, both husbands and wives. Yet, it is essential to express affection and love for our romantic partner. It’s just a reminder that we care. And it means a lot to our spouses. 

There are many ways for couples to express their love for one another. For example, ordering flowers, sending a loving card, cooking dinner for that evening, possibly ending in a sexual episode of lovemaking. These things mean a lot to people. There is more to love and romance and simply sex. People want to know that their partner is highly valued and appreciated. 

Love is a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust. Love can vary in intensity and can change. It is associated with a range of positive emotions, including happiness, excitement, life satisfaction, and euphoria. Still, it can also result in negative emotions such as jealousy and stress.1

It is said by many that love is one of the most important human emotions. Yet, despite being one of the most studied behaviors, it is still the least understood. 

Types of Love

Not all forms of love are the same, and psychologists have identified several types of love that people may experience.

These types of love include:

Friendship: This type of love involves liking someone and sharing a certain intimacy.

Infatuation: This is a love that involves feelings of attraction without a sense of commitment; it usually takes place early in a relationship and may deepen into more lasting love.

Passionate love: This type of love is marked by feelings of longing and attraction; it often involves an idealization of the other person and a need to maintain constant physical closeness.

Compassionate love: This form of love is marked by trust, affection, intimacy, and commitment.

Unrequited love: This form of love happens when one loves another who does not return those feelings.

The Many Meanings of a Smile

A Smile Can Hide More Than it Reveals

1. “smile though your heart is breaking, smile even though it’s breaking….” Nat King Cole song.

2. “Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

3. “Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”

Greta Garbo

4. People also smile when they’re lying, a fact not lost on Shakespeare: Hamlet marvels at how “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” Shakespeare: Hamlet marvels at how “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

5. Finally there is The Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile.

Have you ever been told, “Hey, what’s the matter? Smile, smile!” How can there be such varied quotations about smiling? Much like Thich Nhat Hanh states, aren’t we told that a smile lights up the world, reflects happiness, and gives love to everyone?

In actuality, smiling, like all human nonverbal communication, is highly complex and open to many interpretations. 

A notorious police mug shot of Jared Lee Loughner, the mass murderer and shooter who killed several people and wounded a congresswoman in Arizona is grinning. Revisit the picture on the Internet, and you will observe how wicked that smile is. Yet, his defense attorneys are trying to ban the mug shot because it reflects poorly upon him. “But he’s smiling, isn’t he?” 

Studies show that smiles express many more emotions than happiness or contentment. The basis of a smile can be conceit, embarrassment, shame, deceit, grief, tension, and uneasiness. How often have you smiled when you are with someone who has said or done something that makes you feel outraged? In this type of circumstance, well known to most of us, there is a need to smile to cover the anger. Perhaps we are not comfortable discussing our natural reaction? There can be a multitude of motivations but, the smile is not friendly.

Then, there are cultural variables regarding the smile. I was startled to learn from Russian friends of mine that in places like Moscow and other big cities, a smile is viewed with distrust unless it is personal and meaningful. Americans might smile out of politeness, but that will leave a Russian suspicious. While Americans might smile while walking down the street, the Russians do not. That is why some Russians view American smiling as false.

In Japan, people restrain their smiles. The Japanese control their emotions. When they view a person smiling, they focus on the upper part of the face, especially the eyes, to understand the true meaning of what the person is conveying. Americans focus on the lower part of the face, particularly the mouth. The reason is that, while the mouth is flexible and can take many shapes, including a smile, this is far less true of the eyes. In addition, unlike the Russians, the Japanese smile to convey politeness.

It’s essential not to come to conclusions too quickly when you meet someone smiling. Yes, mainly that person is conveying a happy state of mind. But listen to your instincts when they tell you that something is wrong or doesn’t fit. On one occasion, I asked a friend or family what was wrong, even when smiling. There is something not quite right about the smile. The mouth has the correct shape, but the eyes, eyebrows, and tone of voice suggest something other than all is well.

Finally, are you confident that your smile reveals or expresses what you feel? Perhaps it would be better for you if it did. If you are distressed, why not say so instead of hiding your emotions by smiling? In reverse, are you sure you are smiling when you feel good? Feeling good can also be covered up.

What are your experiences with smiling persons, be they children, friends, family, or people at work? 

Address comments to Dr. Schwartz at dransphd@aol.com