Anneli Rufus - Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

Introduction

The most terrible and violent of our own afflictions is to despise our own beings.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

F or more than forty years, I hated myself unreservedly, as if it was required. Why? Was I a murderer? A thief? Had I committed genocide or bombed the Prado? Was I mean? Did I have seven swollen, scaly heads? Whose children had I thrown down wells? Which city did I plunder? Had I put soap in a swimming pool or slaughtered fawns?

No. None of those. I hated myself because Mom hated herself and, meaning no harm, taught me how. Self-loathing spreads that way, from heart to heart and hand to hand. For decades, I avoided mirrors, called myself the worst words you can think of, skipped meals, and stared jealously at strangers, wishing I was anyone but me. Spectacles of my eighteen thousand days of hate.

Ive seen what self-loathing can do. Ive seen it steal the light right out of eyes. Ive watched it drive the beautiful, the brilliant, and the kind to places from which they could not come back.

What if, instead of what actually happened on those days, I had drawn eighteen thousand portraits or learned eighteen thousand Estonian words? I would be fluent now! I would have a portfolio!

What would you do today if you did not despise yourself?

Science tells us that no one is born with low self-esteem. Recent research suggests that some people are genetically more susceptible to develop low self-esteem at some point in life, just as some people are born more likely than most to sing well or go bald. But in this crowded, complex world, self-loathing can seize anyone at any moment. No one is immune.

Five people I have known:

On her first-ever ski trip, Cara teetered at the top of the bunny slope, took one tentative step, then fell face-first into the powder. Twice she struggled back to her feet, only to fall. Her fianc and their friends offered encouragement, but Cara unlaced her ski boots, ran back to the lodge sobbing, and stayed in her room for the rest of the trip.

Accepting his third annual Teacher of the Year award, Jeremy gazed out at an auditorium packed with wildly applauding children, parents, and colleagues. Silently he mourned: I was supposed to get my doctorate. I should be famous by now, not teaching fourth grade. I was supposed to have made earthshaking discoveries. It was expected of me. And I failed.

Rachel held in her stomach as Mister Married Guy slid his hand under her blouse. Sexy eyes, murmured Mister Married Guy. Rachel laughed. My best feature. My only feature, compensating for this fat gut and these giant thighs. Mister Married Guy was not listening. Hours later, home again, Rachel hurled books at the wall while screaming, I wanna diiiiie.

The boss rebuked Nate for his new designs: Clearly you lack the skills claimed on your rsum. Nate flinched, remembering what the neighborhood bullies used to say as they spat into his lunch. Youre right, Nate said. I suck. His coworkers gasped as Nate snatched his designs from the boss and tore them up, growling, I suck! Screw you! Screw everything!

Handing the clerk her credit card, Alison hoped her new friend Skye would like the gift. Just as she hoped her sister had liked the Herms scarf that Alison had sent her from Paris. And just as she hoped her son liked his new Air Jordans and private tennis lessons. Watching the clerk wrap Skyes gift, a two-hundred-dollar designer handbag, Alison hoped it was enough.

, Mariah Carey said in an interview after having released eleven CDs, acted in five Hollywood films, and won more than two hundred music awards. And I still do.

The weird thing about self-esteem is how little connection it bears to reality. Many burglars and murderers feel great about themselves. Yet many upstanding citizens whom a jury of sages would declare kind, wonderful, and worthy hate themselves.

A silent epidemic grips the land. The afflicted include many whom you would least suspect, even the ones you think have everything, even some of the bravest and (in your eyes, but not theirs) the best.

The hoary stereotypes of the person with low self-esteem as a timorous Woody Allen character, beaten wife, serial killer, or Dickensian waif are exactly that: hoary stereotypes. The real picture includes Cara, Jeremy, Rachel, Nate, Alison, Mariah, you, me, and who knows how many more of us, of every stripe. What are we doing here together, side by side? We share something. Not something you would notice right away. Not something we discuss or something you could touch. We dislike ourselves for no valid reason. Monitoring ourselves and regretting nearly every act, some of us even loathe ourselves. Despise ourselves. Call ourselves names you would not call a dog. We do this, or we did. We are six among multitudes.

In this book I say we who hate ourselves in the present tense, although for me it is no longer eminently true, at least not all the time, at least not as it was. But we who hate ourselves was for so many years the only legion I had ever known. Its refrains remain in my mind forever fresh. If marching with my former legion can lead it to freedom, march with it I will.

We who hate ourselves think we have huge flawsugliness, say, or sloppiness. We think these flaws legitimize our self-loathing. We focus on them with obsessive tunnel vision, which obscures our other, better qualities. We do not realize that our flawsand who is flawless?are not our big problem. Low self-esteem is.

Imagine having little or no self-esteem when everyone expects you to have lots. Self-esteem is an industry these days, a given, the major religion of this erayet we have little or none. Not in a good way, not as in some kind of ego-shedding Buddhist selflessness. Its not as if we who hate ourselves have