If you're thinking about ending your life right now, please stop reading and reach out. In Canada or the US, call or text 988. In Québec, call 1 866 APPELLE (1-866-277-3553), text 535353, or chat at suicide.ca. If you're in immediate danger, call 911. Anywhere else, the numbers are on the Get help now page.
I know the voice. The one that wakes up before you do and has already decided what kind of person you are. Mine didn't sound like a monster. It sounded like me, which is what made it so convincing.
In 1998 I tried to take my own life. I'm in my mid-fifties now. I'm still here, and I'm glad I am. I'm telling you that first because if you hate yourself enough to be reading this, I want you to know that the feeling lies about how permanent it is.
So, what do you do when you hate yourself? The honest short answer: treat it as a symptom, and go get it looked at. Self-hatred very often travels with depression, or with something nobody ever diagnosed, or both. Those things respond to treatment. Tell one person. See a doctor or a psychologist. And if the hatred starts turning into thoughts of not wanting to be alive, call a crisis line that day.
Self-hatred is a symptom worth taking seriously
When you're inside it, self-hatred feels like a conclusion. You looked at the evidence and reached a verdict. That's how it felt to me.
It's usually something else. Hopelessness and harsh self-judgment are common in depression, and depression is a medical condition with real treatments. CAMH's depression page describes symptoms that have to last more than two weeks and get in the way of your life. A lot of people in that state never ask for help. CAMH cites a 2016 survey where 40% of Canadians who'd had feelings of anxiety or depression never sought medical help for them.
If you're autistic, or wonder if you are, this matters even more. Autistica says autistic people are four times more likely to experience depression, and that about 40% of autistic adults will have it at some point. It can also be harder to spot, because a lot of us have trouble naming what we feel.
I didn't know I had ASD until I was 50. For fifty years I had a running list of everything "wrong" with me and no explanation. The voice filled in the explanation for free.
What it was like for me
The voice used real material. That's what nobody tells you. It didn't make things up. It took true things and stacked them.
I did explode at people. Robplosions, a friend called them, back when I was running a company in Vancouver. I did use drugs. I did self-harm in high school. I did start things with huge energy and then crash and leave them half done. I did leave people before they could leave me. All true. The voice took each one and said: see? This is who you are.
It got loudest right after something went wrong. After a blow-up, after a crash. The shame would come in and the voice would ride in with it.
What I couldn't see then was that the list had a pattern, and the pattern had causes. Undiagnosed autism and depression, mostly. The drugs were, at least partly, me trying to turn the volume down. None of that excuses what I did to people. It does explain why I was so sure I was garbage.
What helped me
Not one thing. Several, over a long time, and none of them felt like a breakthrough while it was happening.
Asking for help out loud. In 1998 I voluntarily committed myself to a psychiatric ward so I could recover. I don't tell that as a dramatic story. It was one of the first times I acted on the idea that I might be worth fixing. If you've never thought of the hospital as an option you choose for yourself, read I checked myself into psychiatry.
Therapy. Slow and sometimes annoying. Also useful. Having someone outside my head look at the "evidence" with me changed how much I believed it.
Getting away from the drugs. I haven't touched cocaine or heroin in sixteen years. I can't tell you the voice disappeared. It did get quieter once I stopped pouring fuel on it.
The diagnosis. Getting diagnosed autistic gave me a different explanation than "defective." Same life. Different reading.
Noticing the voice as a voice. This took years. Learning to say "that's the voice again" instead of "that's the truth." Some days I can. Some days I can't. The days I can are better.
If self-hatred is where you are, and not thoughts of suicide, the post on building self-esteem after 50 has the slower, everyday stuff.
When self-hatred turns into thoughts of suicide
This is the part I most want you to hear. If "I hate myself" has started to become "everyone would be better off without me," or "I don't want to be here," that is the moment to reach out. Not later. Not when it gets worse.
You don't have to be sure you're "suicidal enough" to call. Crisis lines take calls from people who are scared of their own thoughts. That's what they're for. If you're nervous about what happens when you call, I wrote about what actually happens when you call a crisis line. If the hard part is telling someone you know, there's how to tell someone you're thinking about suicide.
Dr. Stacey Freedenthal's site, Speaking of Suicide, is written by a clinician, for people who are suicidal. It's warm and it doesn't preach.
Where to get help, today
- Québec: 1 866 APPELLE (1-866-277-3553), text 535353, or chat at suicide.ca. 24/7. For distress that isn't a suicide crisis, Info-Social 811 is also there day and night.
- Rest of Canada and the US: call or text 988. In Québec, 988 calls get transferred to 1 866 APPELLE.
- Everywhere else: the numbers for your country are on the Get help now page.
- Immediate danger: 911 or your local emergency number.
I'm not a crisis service and I can't answer emergencies through this site. The people on those lines can. Call them. I'm in my mid-fifties, and on some days I still have to remind myself the voice is lying. Those reminders are easier to believe now than they were in 1998, and that happened because I got help.