Then, very gently, we should start to wonder how a self-loving person might behave and look at matters if they were in our shoes. When panic descends, we should try to reassure ourselves not with logical arguments about the grounds for hope but by wondering what a person who didn’t loathe themselves might be thinking now. If we could reduce the element of internal punishment and attack, how would the situation appear?
A dialogue with another person can be of vital help. An outside eye, of a good friend or – ideally – a good therapist can break us out of the closed system of our own interpretations and help us to notice just how peculiar, and masochistic, our analyses are proving.
To correct self-hatred and shame is a life’s task. We are back to an all-too familiar theme; that most psychological problems arise because people have not been empathetically cherished and reliably loved when it really mattered1