How To Deal With Self Hate As An Overthinker

Relatability 

The best way I can describe really hating yourself is that it feels like an anchor. It is something that can drag you down so quickly, it feels really heavy, and it feels really complicated to get it off of you. It can also be really sneaky and creep into your mind throughout your day until you come to and realize how out of hand your mind has gotten. 

Living in a mind with self hate, makes it difficult to stay in your head and it makes you want to run from yourself. I know I did this for a long time due to the hateful way I would talk to myself. It makes sense to want to leave an environment that feels really heavy and hard to deal with. 

I will also add that typically overthinking isn’t filled with wonderful, happy thoughts is it? Overthinking is typically creating scenarios or having conversations with yourself over and over about something. So I have seen my overthinking and self hate go hand in hand as well. I remember something about myself and it plants a seed of the beginning of a hateful overthinking spiral. Somehow, that small seed that was once just a thought grows into an uncontrollable web of thoughts that just stick to you. 

It’s a hard thing to admit that you don’t like who you are, but what I’ve gathered is that when you are so disconnected from yourself it’s easier to just accept and fill yourself up with what’s around you. So one day you look at yourself and you don’t like what you see because it is far from who you actually are. When I had this realization is when I started looking for tools to change this way of thinking. 

Reflection

Since it takes time to develop a deep dislike for yourself, I’ve found that it does take time to reverse this accidental practice too. While it can take time to reframe a mindset around something, it can be done. When I was really thinking about the effects that overthinking my way into self hate had on me, the best way I found to begin questioning these thoughts were tangible tools and workbooks. 

One tool that really resonated with me was, “automatic negative thoughts” work or ANTS. I found this when Dr. Amen mentioned it in a video I was watching. He explained how your automatic negative thoughts about yourself or even life can plague so much of your mind. These thoughts can cause anxiety, depression, and helplessness. 

He goes further to explain that your thoughts can lie, and they lie very often. So, he created a framework that guides you to question your thoughts. The workbook is free and it’s a downloadable template that guides you through the whole idea of automatic negative thoughts. 

For me, this was such an important tool when reframing something that was very automatic to me because when I did notice the negative thoughts I had help on what to do to redirect. There are also different types of automatic negative thoughts and it’s interesting when you start to do the workbook of reframing them you notice a pattern of common automatic negative thought types you are used to using. Which gives you something tangible to work with to help you not spiral into this negative way of thinking. I talk about my most common negative thoughts here. 

The workbook can be found here:

https://kerbyandcristina.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Killing-the-ANTs-Workbook-DIGITAL.pdf  and if the link doesn’t work for you type in “Dr. Amen Killing the ANTs workbook download, and you can find it that way too. 

Another tool I used when reflecting on my thinking patterns about myself was self compassion work. I specifically used The Mindful Self Compassion Workbook by Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer. I just bought it on Amazon. I liked this book, because you learn about a topic on self compassion and then you have a reflection portion as well. Education is power in changing a behavior, and then adding on the personal touch to you and your situation of the reflection part is what made this book work for me personally. It isn’t long or intimidating, it’s really easy to digest and leaves you with meditations or practices to help you be more compassionate with how you speak to yourself. 

These two tools worked well by recognizing and naming the way you’re speaking to yourself, and then learning how to speak to yourself kindly and compassionately. This is strictly just mental work, but of course you can add in meditations, therapy, movement to really ease into this new mindset. I think they key is to focus on being 1% better than you were yesterday with this change. 

Reinvention

I believe a big part of shifting how you speak to yourself, and how you view yourself is to balance focusing on “fixing” yourself and simultaneously appreciating the good qualities about who you are. So as you’re learning your ANTS and practicing self compassion, focus on one thing you do admire or appreciate about who you are. These good things about you may have been covered up by shining a light on only what you think is terrible for so long, but being really intentional with noticing your automatic negative thoughts like I spoke about above did really help me shift into admiring myself more and more. 

Just like you work out at the gym, retraining yourself to love and appreciate who you are is a literal workout and it is intentional work. Until you put in the reps of catching “I don’t want to talk to myself like that”  to “how can I redirect” it will be something to pay attention to. 

It’s also freeing to realize that just because its a thought doesn't make it true. You have the power to decide what thoughts are yours and what is not. You are not your thoughts, and you have the freedom to change any part of yourself that isn’t working for you anymore.