Internalized hatred is a force for evil. If you are LGBTQ or a survivor of rape or childhood sexual abuse, learning to accept yourself and taking claim of your own sexuality and learning to take appropriate care of your needs may be the hardest task you will face in life.
It certainly was my single hardest psychological and emotional moment when I realized that blaming my sexuality for what other people had done to me was just perpetuating the problem and deepening it. Realizing that I needed to somehow accept my own sexuality and be nice to it was kind of like being told "In order to get into heaven, you must first learn to love Satan."
Everything else I have ever done has been psychologically easier than that.
Some of the most monstrously screwed up people I have known have been people seemingly unable or unwilling to accept themselves. Somewhere along the way they got the message that being gay or whatever was so heinous that nothing else could possibly be worse.
Such a mental model tends to foster abusive behavior towards not only oneself but other people.
Whomever hurt you was probably afraid and not strong enough to face their fear and do something about what scared them. Maybe they had such feelings too and feared being ostracized or fired from their job or something.
If you got such messages while really young, it can be hard to let it go. I'm well aware of that fact.
But if you are, say, gay and have internalized homophobia, you and people like you are some of the most virulent means to spread homophobia and you do it by choosing to not take care of your sexual and emotional needs in a healthy fashion until you are incapable of not being hateful, sadistic and abusive in various ways.
If you are LGBTQ, the single most important thing you can do "for the cause" is learn to accept yourself and find healthy ways to get your needs met and stop having sex with people you don't actually like and feel scarred for having known them intimately.
Even if you remain in the closet and still refuse to ADMIT the truth to other people, at least admit it to YOURSELF and learn to watch appropriate kinds of porn or some such to get some degree of healthy outlet. STOP forcing yourself to play act at being straight while your sexual dysfunction grows deeper with each passing day because of it.
That latter path looks kind of like The Picture of Dorian Gray: You may look fine on the outside but somewhere in some hidden place, the real you is growing more warped with each passing minute.
And YOU are the ONLY person who can possibly fix it. If you are still living a lie because someone gave you a withering look when your were four years old or some such, the person who gave you that message is no longer the person ruining your life.
It's you ruining your life and only you can stop doing so.
It certainly was my single hardest psychological and emotional moment when I realized that blaming my sexuality for what other people had done to me was just perpetuating the problem and deepening it. Realizing that I needed to somehow accept my own sexuality and be nice to it was kind of like being told "In order to get into heaven, you must first learn to love Satan."
Everything else I have ever done has been psychologically easier than that.
Some of the most monstrously screwed up people I have known have been people seemingly unable or unwilling to accept themselves. Somewhere along the way they got the message that being gay or whatever was so heinous that nothing else could possibly be worse.
Such a mental model tends to foster abusive behavior towards not only oneself but other people.
Whomever hurt you was probably afraid and not strong enough to face their fear and do something about what scared them. Maybe they had such feelings too and feared being ostracized or fired from their job or something.
If you got such messages while really young, it can be hard to let it go. I'm well aware of that fact.
But if you are, say, gay and have internalized homophobia, you and people like you are some of the most virulent means to spread homophobia and you do it by choosing to not take care of your sexual and emotional needs in a healthy fashion until you are incapable of not being hateful, sadistic and abusive in various ways.
If you are LGBTQ, the single most important thing you can do "for the cause" is learn to accept yourself and find healthy ways to get your needs met and stop having sex with people you don't actually like and feel scarred for having known them intimately.
Even if you remain in the closet and still refuse to ADMIT the truth to other people, at least admit it to YOURSELF and learn to watch appropriate kinds of porn or some such to get some degree of healthy outlet. STOP forcing yourself to play act at being straight while your sexual dysfunction grows deeper with each passing day because of it.
That latter path looks kind of like The Picture of Dorian Gray: You may look fine on the outside but somewhere in some hidden place, the real you is growing more warped with each passing minute.
And YOU are the ONLY person who can possibly fix it. If you are still living a lie because someone gave you a withering look when your were four years old or some such, the person who gave you that message is no longer the person ruining your life.
It's you ruining your life and only you can stop doing so.