How do you gain self love/esteem/etc if you never had any to begin with?

[Chr0nicAnhedonic]

Title, basically. I apologize for this being way too long, but the main question is: how do I like/accept myself if I've spent my entire life hating myself?

Part of my suicidality comes from the fact that I hate myself on a fundamental level. It's been like this for as long as I can remember; I genuinely cannot list any positive qualities about myself, and even if I could, those qualities are easily made into negative ones. For example: I'm autistic, and "positive" qualities that come with it are passion (for certain things) and honesty. However, those qualities in me often display as arrogance and dickishness. This, combined with all of the dysfunction that comes with my autism, means to me that there's no real upside and it's another in my long list of negative qualities. I also used to pride myself on my empathy, but that's faded over time as I've grown more and more bitter, and me consoling someone oftentimes means me hijacking their misery with my own.

I never feel accomplished if I somehow manage to accomplish something. Oftentimes, it feels like a complete fluke or I'm just catching up to a basic level of function. Why should I feel proud of myself for managing to brush my teeth, when that's something basic everyone does without thinking? Why should I feel good about finishing my work, when that's the baseline expectation of me? Why should I be happy with my accomplishments, when those accomplishments are something most people can and already have done? And when I inevitably regress and fail to do those basic things, what does that say about me?

Success is fleeting, but failure is utterly devastating to me. Logically, I know that failure is (contextually) not a complete endpoint and is a learning tool, but it completely crushes me. Failure feels like evidence of my deficits, of which I have many, and haunts me long after whatever I've failed at. I'm extremely emotional as a result of failing, and I am constantly berating myself for both failing and letting that failure affect me. Even something as small as misplacing my phone leads me to insult myself for being stupid, incompetent, and anything else I can negatively associate myself with. People I happen to be around are definitely put off by this and are increasingly impatient with me as a result (among other reasons to be impatient with me). Failure doesn't just happen to me, it defines me. I don't just fail, I am a failure.

I know that I as a person am not the sum of my actions, and that every person has worth regardless of their shortcomings. Still, that doesn't feel true to me, if that makes any sense. I can't separate my worth and my sense of self from my actions (or lack thereof). I can't believe that someone who is as toxic and self-loathing as I am would have any value to anyone. I can say that I'm "working on it" all I like, but this hatred is an inherent part of me and I can't let it go.

I've run the gamut on treatment options for this, I've been in and out of the mental health system for 15-ish years (since I was about 12-13). Medication didn't help and oftentimes exacerbated these feelings. Therapy gave very cookie cutter responses and methods on tackling this. Meditation felt nice in the short term but those thoughts would eventually come back and I can't stay consistent with it, journaling felt cathartic but honestly put those thoughts into actual text and thus gave them extra power, talking about my trauma didn't really address my ongoing issues, challenging my negative thoughts just meant those thoughts would clap back even harder because I don't have evidence to disprove them (and the negative thoughts do have evidence), etc etc. The only methods I haven't tried are the more "novel" methods like ketamine and psychedelic treatments, but I'm incredibly wary of them because of the lack of data and the price for them.

I really do want to recover if I can, but that's looking less and less like a possibility. I've been trying to better myself, and even though I am in a better spot in my life than I was last year, it still feels like my efforts are ultimately fruitless since this rot inside of me is still going and is still strong. I feel like that I'll end up going through with my CTB plan anyway.

 

[Mirrory Me]

Hello! Like you, I'm also autistic (and schizophrenic), or in other words different from others in my own way- even if I try to be like others. It is difficult to change oneself, so that things just happen as if by themselves, or as "easily" as for other people. However, it is possible if you make it your goal to learn to love or like yourself, without judging yourself, but rather to work at your own pace in life as best you can.

 

[RosebyAnyName]

One thing that stood out to me is when you said:

and the negative thoughts do have evidence.

A lot of the most common and researched advice for recovery is one size fits all, and that often doesn't account for the specific, real, and lived struggles of individuals. A lot of therapeutic advice also relates to sweeping things under the rug, which doesn't really work when you have tangible problems.

I think there's a disconnect between your sense of logic and your emotions, this is very common in autistic people (I'm also autistic). You know logically what "should" work based on the research, but you don't actually feel the result emotionally ("Reframing autism as a positive thing is said to help me cope with it, but I don't feel that way based on my experiences with autism," "I should acknowledge my small accomplishments, but it feels demeaning because others don't struggle like I do," "Reframing failure as a learning tool is supposed to help me, but it still hurts me emotionally no matter what I try to think about it.")

Once I started to acknowledge that there's only so far I can "think my way out of my suffering," is when I started to make more progress with recovery. I started by setting aside my ideas about what "should" work and focusing exclusively on my emotional response to things to gauge what works and what doesn't.

Here's my personal list of things that "should" work based on common advice but that I found DID NOT work or just made me feel worse:

• Journaling (made me think too much about describing my emotions, therefore making me want to criticize them instead of just trying to feel the emotion without needing to explain or "justify" it).
• Most self-care advice like taking baths or doing a "relaxing" activity (too much work, and one of my stressors is executive dysfunction and overbooking myself. It makes me feel worse when something is described as "easy" but to me it's actually difficult)
• Guided meditation (just felt like a waste of time honestly)
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (always just made me feel like anything bad that happened to me, and my emotional response, was "my fault")

It took a long time to discover (multiple years), but here's what I found worked for me that a lot of the "common advice" normally advises against:

• Giving myself permission to (temporarily) ignore problems (learning to "ignore" problems is actually a great skill that is necessary for prioritizing tasks. I've slowly been learning how to put aside my general anxiety to do menial tasks like cleaning and cooking instead of just getting overwhelmed, which in term has helped me manage my executive dysfunction, which has improved my self-esteem.)
• Isolating from others (emotionally disconnecting from my family made me realize how bad they were for me, and now their abuse doesn't personally affect me as much anymore. I've also disconnected with lots of people that I realized were bad for me emotionally. I feel more confident in myself and my abilities now that I am more emotionally independent, and ironically I'm more sociable than ever because being away from people helped me unmask and develop more confidence).
• Pursing "shallow" hobbies like fashion and food (Novelty makes me happy. Deal-hunting is exciting and gets my brain working with math and decision-making. Getting / trying something new makes helps me see "what's out there" and made me feel more connected to the world outside my personal bubble. It's helped me overcome the fear that I "don't deserve" nice things, and that I can have nice things without severely limiting my financial situation as I now have more specific knowledge about what I can reasonably afford).
• Spending the entire day not doing anything (Turns out I have insomnia and sometimes I just need an entire day to "catch up". It also gives my overactive mind a good period of rest).

You probably have different things that will work for you, but you can't love yourself / develop your self esteem without knowing yourself, so you will need to experiment instead of just following the common advice.