Self Loathing

Self-loathing is something I have struggled with since I was a young child. On the whole, I am highly critical of my appearance, thoughts and actions, often taking on large amounts of guilt for things that are probably beyond my control and placing unrealistic expectations on myself. While I am aware of the potential flaws in this thinking, it has become ingrained in me and negative self-talk feels as natural as breathing making it a very difficult habit to stop.

When I am in a mood episode it can improve or get drastically worse, mania gives me a lovely glow of false confidence but depression reminds me that I am not worthy of life every chance it gets. When I am in a ‘mixed manic episode’, the self-loathing can become downright dangerous as I become far more volatile and reactive, the negative self-talk gets spoken/ screamed out aloud in front of whoever happens to be there at the time and I am far more likely to self-harm as punishment for my ‘stupidity’.

This is something I wrote a while ago while experiencing a mixed mania, this is the time where my bipolar is most likely to make me a danger to myself as I become extremely impulsive and reactive to my environment. In this particular note, I was feeling intensely angry with myself over something that in the scheme of things was minor, I had been having a good day and was quite happy when I accidently cut this guy off in traffic who was in my blind spot and he beeped at me – that was it. We didn’t crash, it was just a near miss but as you can see it was enough to tip me over the edge:

“I can’t do this anymore, I hate being so fucking stupid all the fucking time! People get angry and annoyed with me for being an idiot and I get that, believe me I do, because, man, have YOU ever tried BEING that idiot? Have you ever been that God awful pain in the ass person where all fucking day all you do is cause problems or upset people without even meaning to?

I didn’t want to be this way, it just happened. I hate me so much more than you will ever hate me because you get to walk away, not be around me anymore. I can’t escape myself, I will have to live with being this stupid ugly pathetic piece of shit of a person 24hrs a day for the rest of my life, do you know how that feels?

 Do you know how it feels to know you can never ever escape this prison because that dumb stupid bitch that can’t do anything right lives inside your body, she controls all of your thoughts and your actions?

I really hope you don’t know, nobody should have to know because it’s fucking awful and to make matters worse I had children and now they have to live with a bitch whore of a mother who is ruining their lives too.

 No matter how good my intentions are there, they’re never going to be good enough to cancel out the intense stupidity that lies within me. I am a lost fucking cause.

 Try hating all of the words that come out of your mouth the second you say them, cursing yourself for breathing and when you finally do try and end the suffering of yourself and everyone else around you, you can’t even get that right.

I am a complete fucking failure and I can’t stand it for another second, why would I want to try anymore when every passing moment my heart still beats is simply another opportunity for me to cause hurt and pain to other people. That isn’t fair on anyone.”

This particular incidence had left me planning a suicide attempt for the following day as (thankfully) I wasn’t able to act immediately for whatever reason and the volatility of the mood fluctuations being what they were at the time, by the next day I was over it and probably channeling my spirit animal or something.

So, you can see how I can go from 0 to 100 in breakneck speed when I am in that mood, in fact, all of my suicide attempts have been during mixed mania’s when something that normally wouldn’t make me blink is suddenly enough to trigger me and I have difficulty reality checking the intensity of my emotion with the actual situation.

Do you struggle with self-loathing?