The Truth About Hatred - WARNING: GAME CHANGER

The Truth About Hatred – WARNING: GAME CHANGER

A few days ago, I was in tears again over some issues in the past.

I am one of those people who has a hard time letting go of anything, and I mean, anything.

Even my dingy car that stopped working was hard for me to let go of, even though to most people it was a piece of junk. The front part of it was smashed in, the headlights didn’t work properly, and I had to individually undo every bungee every time I needed to see the engine, which was bound to stop working at any moment. If I didn’t bungee it properly afterwards, the hood would fly up while I was driving and could smash the front windshield! (It happened one time, but unfortunately the pictures I had of it went missing)

And yet, as I was posting the ad on craigslist to sell my beloved car, I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of grief on the ending of one phase of my life. A part of me just wanted to say no to selling it completely, and keep it as a car to live in...

As some may have read, my dad has been very abusive to me for most of my adult life. In fact, I started this blog as a way to help other people who find themselves in a similar situation of feeling hopeless when recovering from abuse.

For the outsider, it should be a no brainer that that being yelled at, physically hurt, and denied any apology is not okay, will never be okay. We think it should be the natural course of things to walk away from these toxic people and situations. Easy enough, right?

But for those of us who have been in such a situation ourselves, we find quite the opposite is true! Our brains are built in such a way that it will try to explain why it was okay that such things happen. What we find is that it’s actually much harder to see what is happening to us, if the things that are happening to us are painful.

The advice that we’d give to a friend if they were in a similar situation is usually a no-brainer. But when abuse is happening to ourselves, it’s quite difficult to be able to admit that what we thought about someone was wrong, and they actually turned out to be quite abusive to us. It can be hard to tell what’s okay and what’s not when we base all our experiences of what’s normal from our childhoods; childhoods that in fact, could be anything but safe.

Not to mention that many children living with abusive parents usually have no other option but to sink into fantasy. When we feel trapped in a situation, our mind will try and change the story we tell ourselves about it as a protection mechanism.

 We tell ourselves that they are punishing us because they love us. We tell ourselves that we deserved to be hurt. We may even go on to repeat the same patterns of hurting those close to us, simply because with time we begin to associate love with abuse.

Our minds will literally tell any story at all it takes to make the truth of being abused less painful.

Many who are spiritually inclined find themselves having a face-to-face moment with themselves, however. Realizing that no matter what happens in life, pain cannot be avoided, gives way to a shift in which suddenly there is no reason to run from pain any longer.

A willingness to feel pain gives way to being willing to sort through the safety mechanisms of our own minds and risk coming face to face with our own darkness. These thoughts (that are, at this point, completely subconscious) have usually been suppressed because there is an aspect of them that is quite painful… So painful, in fact, that we can’t look at them at all.

Yet, if a truth we find whilst in meditation is painful, I have often found that the painful truth isn't the entire truth about something. If a thought is painful, we simply haven’t thought about it deep enough.

Speaking with a close friend, I couldn’t help but cry. The words came out on their own… “I don’t understand why these people hate me so much… They don’t even know me! I didn’t do anything to hurt them! It doesn’t make sense at all!” I shuddered. "I don't even need them to love me, I just want them to not act like they hate me..." 

He kept his cool,as he said in a matter-of-fact sort of way, “Well, if they didn’t really know you, they couldn’t really love you...”  I nodded.

“Well…" He continued, "If it couldn’t be real love, then how can you be so sure that it’s real hate?”

Days passed, and I found myself still thinking about his words.

What is hatred? What is real hatred? Where does it come from, and why does it matter?

There have been so many days in my recovery from abuse where the only thing I could feel was hate for my father.  I wanted him to die. I could care less what happened to him. Weeks went by of feeling this way and after some time I just kind of accepted that I was just always going to feel this way.

Feeling intense hatred is difficult enough, but add to that the fact that it is socially taboo to hate, and I found a layer of guilt mixed with the hatred. 

Even though I had good reason to hate my abuser, I felt guilty for feeling that way. 

There came a point where I decided that instead of using my spirituality as a way to deny these very real feelings of hatred, I would dive into them. It seemed like the feeling would never go away, and I was just always going to hate the people who intentionally hurt me.

Why did I hate him? 

The answer appeared in a flash. 

I hated him because he represented everything that I hated. 

From this realization, a larger truth emerged...

We hate people because of what they represent to us.

What had my abusers represented to me?

They had become a symbol in my mind, of hypocrisy, oppression, and abuse itself. By taking a stand against them, I was actually taking a stand against hypocrisy and abuse itself.

I then asked myself this simple question:

What did I represent to my abusers?

I realized to my dad I represented childishness. By taking a stand against me, he was taking a stand against being irresponsability. He had made it not okay to be childish and immature himself, because from his perspective he was forced to grow up too fast. He learned at some point or another that being immature and being vulnerable was weakness. 

To see me living the way I was threatened his worldview. I reminded him of his inner child that had been repressed. By hating me, he was unleashing his hatred for his own inner child, which he felt was a nuisance that prevented him from living to his fullest.

My other bully saw me as an oppressive force that wants to control everything. He saw my careful eating habits as rigid and elitist. He misinterpreted my happiness at conquering sickness and wanting to help others feel better as me thinking that I am better than other people and they are incapable of helping themselves. By taking a stand against me he was taking a stand against elitists and manipulators everywhere who treat people as being incapable of helping themselves and who feel the need to intervene in others' lives before they are ready.

Gasping, the thought came to me....

I hate all the things that they hate, too.

 I hate the principles that I came to represent in my bullies' minds. As much as I can try to control how I am perceived, nothing I could do would touch their individual perception. Beyond that, any attempt to directly influence how I am percieved is controlling behavior.

I hate how eating healthy is associated with being elitist. I hate how offering to help people overcome their own sickness can, on some level, send them the message that they are not capable of healing themselves when in fact, we all are.

This explains the phenomena of people being capable of hating someone they have never met before.

Many people have extreme hatred for public figure icons. Donald Trump is perhaps the most relevant person I could mention here. 


To many people Trump is a symbol of oppression, racism, sexism, and corporate greed. By hating Donald Trump, we are taking a stand against those very principals. (Also, by loving Donald Trump, we are welcoming brutal honesty, deviation from the norm, and extreme change).

Even more interesting, many of us can 'bond' emotionally over hating the same person. Has anyone ever said they hate someone that you hate, and you felt an instant kinship with them as a result? 

By hating the same person we can see that we share ideals in the same way.

 If someone says, “I hate Hitler,” We on some level hear them saying, “I hate the ruthless oppression and singling out of any single group based on their religion.” Or even, “Killing people is not cool.” We think, ‘Hey, I think those things are messed up too, me and this guy who hates Hitler share a common ideaology!’

This explains the phenomenon of being able to supposedly love, or supposedly hate, those that we have never met, and who, in reality, don’t know at all. We love and hate strangers because of the ideas those strangers represent.

Ideas never die. People do.

We kill people because we want to kill the negative qualities they embody to us. 

 We would literally kill to create a world without suffering. Isn't that ironic?

However, we can halt the cycle by instead becoming aware of our own sources of hatred. By bringing our own hatred to our awareness, we can transmute those feelings with the understanding cast by the light of our consciousness.

Have a lovely week...

~Tessa Rae~