Is it OK to always hate some parts of yourself?

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Something, which angers me about society, is how people expect you to love every part of yourself - and how some will love you for your flaws, expecting you to take pride in some things so ugly, which you fight against every day.

There are some things about me which I will despise and fight against till death. But the things I love about myself are more important than the things I despise.

I just wish to be loved precisely for the things I love about myself, and for people to accept that hating some parts of yourself is OK provided that the things you love outweigh the things you hate.

I didn't vote because I don't really accept the question as it is posed.

I think it's perfectly normal to dislike certain parts of yourself, whether that's a physical attribute or a personality trait.

I think it's important to recognise which parts can and can't be changed. For example an overweight or unfit body can be trained (assuming you can do the physical work), and you can learn to change your behavioural response to personality traits. But your height you cannot change, and if you're ASD you will always be etc.

For things you can change, know that you can change them. If the work to do that is too hard, then you need to accept that about yourself.

For things you don't like about yourself that cannot be changed, I don't know that learning to 'love' them is the answer. But you'll be a lot happier if you learn to at least accept them.

Hating them seems to be a path to self-loathing, and that can't be good. Can it?

There has never been a single person that has ever walked this earth who hasn't had at least a few (though most likely a laundry list of) things they hated about themselves. The indiscriminate reality is that everyone is a flawed being, whether they like it or not. Everyone has strengths where others don't, and also weaknesses where others don't.

The reason why you see so much of this "forced positivity" in society is because everyone is trying to put that reality as far out of their mind as possible, and nobody likes having it brought up and out in the open. It gives a feeling similar to being stripped down and pushed out onto an open stage for all to see, which is understandably a feeling of vulnerability that no one wants.

As we get older, we find our own way of doing what we can to address the things we may be able to change, and try to find some method of coping with the things we can't. Some use religion/faith, some turn to substances, some to self-help support groups and such. Personally, in my own experience, while I would certainly advise against substance abuse (for obvious reasons, since that only brings far more problems and doesn't solve a single one of them), as long as you're able to find a means of establishing some measure of peace and hope in your life, how you go about it in your own life is nobody else's business and no one can tell you you're wrong (some will try to anyway, but that doesn't mean they're right).

There isn't a soul that can judge you for any of your shortcomings who doesn't have a list of their own, and should anyone judge you for yours, it only means they are that much more afraid of their own.

It is a good thing if the part of yourself that you hate can be mitigated or fixed.

It is fine.

No need to be so conditional of "if" it's alright to outweigh what you love against with what you hate.

Just as long as you don't end up harming others and yourself, whether it's because of the trait you hate or that expression of that hate.

Usually, that's how it happens -- in which self hate expresses as a form of lashing out onto others.
Whether it's feeling unworthy and making others put up with forms of rejection, or just overall defensiveness turned attack.


As much as it is a compass of which what you want or don't want, which will you change or not change...

If it's unchangeable;
Acceptance, as it should be, have to be seen as a form of acknowledgement; an unconditional agreement that it is there and will be there as fact of one's present -- it doesn't have to mean resignation nor itself be a form of self love, but simply a fact and an outcome, however undesirable...


I myself am never a positive person.
I do not understand the concept of self love, in short of egocentrism, narcissism and solipsism.

To be honest, the type of self love that leads into pro social preferences, serving and loving others has it's own prerequisites; one that makes one "worry less about self, and be allocentric" thus people assumes that loving one's self, leading into less self worry, will lead to those pro social behaviors and ways of being.

That prerequisite that translates self love into pro social behaviors, I think, is missing from those with issues with balancing over a concept of wanting and not wanting people at the same time (people with CPTSD, dependency, asociality, etc...).
The other way past that prerequisite is being in love with the higher self and life itself, but that's not about this thread.

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Thank you all for your replies!

It is interesting to consider the difference between hating, and accepting, but disliking the parts of yourself, which cannot be changed..

I guess, I find calamity in finding the Soul root of my hated parts, and believing, that God will send me someone, the flaws of whom would complement my flaws.
I believe the body is connected to the Soul, so anything you hate physically must have a Soul/karmic root to it: perhaps, something your ancestors/relatives did, you did in your past life, etc.
No matter how much hatred you may feel towards some parts of yourself - no matter how heavy your karma may be - there will always be someone with an equally heavy karma, who may be meant for you - who you would be able to feel free with again, develop with, repent with, against all the evils you once kept locked inside..

It's probably OK, but almost certainly counterproductive. Being aware that there are things that are problematic is a good thing, but attaching such a strong emotion to it is likely to cloud your judgment. At the end of the day, emotions are just information, we just get somewhat less control over what we do with it the closer it gets to the brain stem.