I Hate You!!

_________ : “I hate you!”

Me: “Why?”

_________ : “Because I know you hate me!”

Me: “What makes you believe that?”

_________ : “Because you’re self-righteous, and you’re bitter and jealous, and you think you know everything, and that everybody’s beneath you, and that you don’t make any mistakes!”

Me: “Ah… I see that you’re in defense mode right now and trying to protect your identity. You’re trying to protect your sense of value self and worth by trying to steal value from me in the form character attacks and berating. Do you know how to lower your defenses, or do I have to disable them in order for us to have an honest conversation?”

_________ : “Disable what?! There’s nothing wrong with me! I’m not defensive, you are!! You just…”

Me: “Okay, so it looks like I’m going to have to bypass direct communication with you, and use this dialog to hack your subconscious. I’m taking your reactive mind offline now so that we can get to the root of this problem. **Click** Okay, now I have you booted up in safe mode. So tell me what’s actually happening with you…”

_________ : “I hate you.”

Me: “Why do you hate me?”

_________ : “Because you hate me.”

Me: “Why do you think I hate you?”

_________ : “Because I know what you think whenever you look at me. Deep down I know I’ve done bad things — things to hurt you and others, and I know that I hate and want to hurt anyone who hurts me. You hate me because my behavior is worthy of nothing less.”

Me: “Well, you have done some awful things. You’ve hurt others, myself included, but that doesn’t mean that I hate or want to hurt you.”

_________ : “If somebody hurts you then you’re supposed to hurt them back. That’s how life works. So I have to prepare myself for your inevitable attack.”

Me: “I see… And what happens if I don’t attack you?”

_________ : “If you don’t attack me then I’ll continue to attack, steal value from and try to destroy you. If you don’t attack me then it means you’re okay with my behavior. When people don’t respond with violence to bad behavior I’ve learned to interpret that as license to do and take more from them.”

Me: “Why is that?”

_________ : “Because that’s just the way life is. I watched people in my formative environments benefit themselves by taking from others and taking from me — that is, until I was either strong enough to take from others myself, or escape from the circumstance. I got Stockholm syndromed into seeing this approach to life — this practice of benefiting self at other people’s expense as being fair, rational, and I’ve even come to accept it as an inescapable fact of life. People get hurt and exploited until they’re either strong enough to hurt and exploit others or escape from the circumstance. This is just the way of the world.”

Me: “Well, you’ve identified part of the problem, and I’m certainly glad we addressed that, but it goes even deeper than that though. You said you hate me because you believe that I hate you — and you believe I hate you because you’ve done bad things to hurt others, including myself. So a good deal of your hatred towards me is based in fear of reprisal. You believe that if I get an opportunity to hurt you back that I’ll necessarily do bad things to you, because in your mind vengeance is a nonnegotiable fact of life. But that doesn’t fully account for why you hate me though. What else is going on in there?”

_________ : “I hate you because every time I see you I feel guilt.”

Me: “There we go. Keep pushing…”

_________ : “I feel guilt for everything I’ve done to you, and everything I’ve done and continue to do to others in general. I feel guilty for being who, what and how I am. I feel guilty for not being better, and not doing enough to get better or become more than what and how I presently am.”

Me: “…and…?”

_________ : “Guilt makes me feel shame, and shame hurts.”

Me: “Exactly. Guilt is the recognition of wrongdoing, and shame is the pain of self-judgment, which is attached to feelings of anxiety we experience at the thought of facing punishment (physical or emotional assault, humiliation, ostracizing, withholding, etc). Shame brings expectation of punishment, and punishment brings distress. To the perceiver good means ‘source of comfort’ and bad means ‘source of distress’ — hence, why shame makes you feel “bad”. We’re doing good here, but we’ve gotta keep digging into this…”

_________ : “The shame I feel whenever I’m around you almost feels like you hurting…you attacking me directly, so your presence alone makes me want to attack, diminish and destroy you in efforts to protect myself from my own shame. I want to hurt you because being around you, or even seeing you hurts me.”

Me: “Ah. You’re getting closer…”

_________ : “I hurt things that hurt me, so I abuse and misuse you because you’re like a mirror to me. You reflect everything that I don’t want to see within or acknowledge about myself back to me. So attacking you is me trying to release all of the emotional pain and fatigue I feel from carrying all this shame around in me every day.”

Me: “Just a little bit further…”

_________ : “Plus hurting and taking from you makes me feel secure — at least by comparison to you, and the idea/feeling/belief of security brings me comfort and joy. Comfort and joy bring me pleasure, so my mind truncates the experience and causes me to unconsciously equate hurting (abusing: punishing, humiliating, physically and emotionally injuring, arresting, delaying and excluding) you with pleasure, joy and satisfaction. Seeing you suffer makes me feel good.”

Me: “Yes! We’re just about to cross the finish line…”

_________ : “In order to protect myself and preserve my value I must subdue, invalidate and destroy you and yours. I believe that I can empower myself by stealing power and presence away from you. Plus, if I let you become stronger (more potent, capable and thus worthy of attention and authority) than me then you’re going to do to me exactly what I did to you, and try empower yourself by stealing power and presence away from me — just like people did to me in my formative environment.”

Me: “Yup! We’re cooking with gas now…”

_________ : “So now I have to prove that I matter more than you, and that I’m better, smarter, stronger, more righteous, prettier, more powerful and potent, and more worthy of praise and attention, and more deserving of freedom and even life itself than you are. And if I can’t prove that I’m better than you then I must still find some way to win — some way to claim power and authority over you. More often than not I’ll try to do this by attempting to weaponize others against you, or by showing support for people and things that serve to undermine your identity, presence and potency. My goal is to ultimately cause injury to you so that I can get high off of stealing security away from you, towards making myself feel more secure than you by comparison. I just want to feel good — and getting high off of your pain, humiliation and suffering makes me feel good. I’m addicted to feeling good, and thus, feeling empowered through your disempowerment.”

Me: “So you’re traumatized then?”

_________ : “What is trauma exactly?”

Me: “Trauma is an extreme phobia of disempowerment that sources to life events in which you either weren’t strong enough to protect yourself from harm, or strong enough to claim things you felt you needed for safety and survival.”

_________ : “Then yes, I guess I’m traumatized…”

Me: “Your trauma manifests as guilt, which becomes shame, and whenever you’re in my presence you feel shame, which makes you want to lash out at, attack, and attempt to neutralize me. This is all because through no effort of my own I’m reflecting parts of you that you don’t want to see, face or deal with back to you. You believe that I hate and envy you because deep down you hate yourself and envy me for not having to endure through the agony of shame you experience at the sight of your own reflection.”

_________ : “Yes.”

Me: “And because you’ve “been bad” and attacked me and others — just doing what you learned to do through the course of your life experience, you live in constant fear of reprisal, and you’re deathly afraid of people around you becoming empowered because with power you believe they’ll attack you in the same way you’ve attacked them — as you think this is the natural way of life.”

_________ : “Yes.”

Me: “That’s what we were looking for. Well done…”

_________ : “So are you going to attack me now?”

Me: “Fortunately for you I have no desire to cause harm to you. My mind doesn’t suffer from the same affliction as yours, so I get no pleasure from causing pain and suffering to others. That said, I can’t allow you to keep attacking, or doing direct, covert, intentional or unintentional things to destroy, test boundaries with or take advantage of myself and others. I can’t allow you to live and benefit at my or anyone else’s expense. Now I can certainly show you how to heal your mind from the psychological damage you’ve suffered through, but I can’t allow you to destroy me and everything else in some endless quest to satisfy the sickness within you.”

_________ : “How can anyone heal their mind?”

Me: “Well, you’ve gotta start by admitting it’s broken and in need of repair. You start with reasoning and honesty. That means no more deflection, or blaming and scapegoating others for your actions, or trying to shirk culpability for the negative impacts your attitude and behaviors make on others and the world around you. Healing your mind requires you to acknowledge, take ownership of and responsibility for what you’ve done, and then do what you can to repair the damage you’ve caused to others, towards healing and offsetting the imbalances you’ve created and contributed to.”

_________ : “But I’m scared to admit that I’m wrong and that I’ve done wrong to others, because when you’re bad it means you’re supposed to get punished.”

Me: “I get it… You probably learned to think that way from the people and circumstances that injured your mind. Listen, punishment is about using something somebody did as an excuse to take your own rage out on them. Anytime somebody wants to punish you all they really want to do is hurt you in efforts to make themselves feel better. The impacts you make on reality have real consequences though, which have absolutely nothing to do with anyone delighting in your misery. Consequence is a function of balance. There are consequences for actions or inactions taken in reality, irrespective of what anybody thinks, feels or believes about them. Punishment doesn’t exist outside of belief though. It only exists in idealism.”

_________ : “So what do I do then?”

Me: “I’ll make it real simple for you… If you make a mess, clean it up. If you’ve injured me or others then accept responsibility for what you’ve done and just resolve to make it right. The reasoning behind this is simple… Once you stop deflecting away from the impact your actions have made on reality and others performing in it your mind will stop retreating further into your identity, which means you’ll come out of psychotic state — the mind state that causes people to remain in a perpetual states of fear, shame, and over and undervaluation — which subsequently causes them to delight in the misery, pain and suffering of others. In the delusional mind state only you can matter; only you exist, and only you and those you feel connected to deserve to experience goodness, while everyone else both is and deserves badness. In the delusional mind state you make horrible impacts on reality just trying to benefit the character you want to see yourself as. The deeper you retreat into your identity is the more corrupt you become. The more honest you become is the more immune you get to psychosis, and consequently, corruption. Just think of it like AA… Perhaps the most important part of breaking your addiction to narcissism is talking about what led you to it in the first place. AA gives people space and opportunity to retrace their steps to their addiction, right? The addiction to self-worship and self-idealizing is an escape from what? What is that makeshift bandage covering up, and how infected has the wound beneath it gotten?”

_________ : “What happens if I just stay my course and keep doing what I’m doing?”

Me: “Well, what’s motivating you to hate and want to hurt me and others is a sickness that must be destroyed — purged from existence at all costs. If you choose to remain a host to it, and thus defend the illness as if it’s an authentic part of you, that is, as opposed to healing from it by recognizing and syncing up with reality, then you’ll have to be removed — purged from my space (and existence) along with it.”

_________ : “Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?”

Me:”In reality there is no forgiveness, only restitution. If you want to stop feeling the sting and pain of shame then just fix what you broke, or if that’s not possible try to repair something else — something of equal or greater value to offset the damage you’ve caused. Forgiveness is just an idea. In reality forgiveness can’t make shame go away, only making things right can.”

_________ : “I think I understand.”

Me: “Alright, I’m gonna bring your regular mind back online now. **Click** So what are you gonna do?”

_________ : “_____________…”