Don’t be afraid of Hate.

Hate on the surface can feel and seem like a scary emotion. Especially, if you are like me and you learned that hate was bad and that you shouldn’t feel it. In fact, you shouldn’t even say the word.

So instead, you suppress it and try and will it away.

But the truth is, if you are human then you have and probably will feel hatred at some point or another.

For years I thought I was doing the right thing by denying that it was there and that it ever existed for me. I was living in Lala land.  

Until I got older, and my awareness changed. All of a sudden it seemed like there was nowhere to hide from hate. I was overcome with hatred and the scariest part was sometimes it was in relation to people that I loved dearly.

One day, I had no other choice but to acknowledge it.  I thought, “I am feeling hatred right now. Why am I feeling this?”

My next thoughts were, “I am a terrible person. I shouldn’t be feeling this.”

I couldn’t handle it. These thoughts made me try and suppress it even more.

I noticed it would go away for a while, then it would come back. And I would try and will it away again and again until finally I realized it was making it worse.

My approach felt all wrong. So, I decided to do what I always do in situations like this, and that is to learn more about hate.

I remembered reading about hate in a book I had already purchased years ago, so I referenced it again. The book is called, Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren. Right off the bat she describes hate as “a natural, healthy, and exceptional emotion.” 

I can remember a feeling of powerlessness during the moments I was feeling hatred. McLaren states in her book that, “Hatred is laser focused form of rage and fury that arises when your boundary is devastated, not through an attack per se, but through a more intimate and interior hazard that you’re not yet able to confront. “

She connects hatred to the shadow self, the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden and out of consciousness. When we feel uncomfortable feelings such as hatred it is usually a projection of what we consider to be the bad parts about ourselves.

Hatred is a powerful entryway into shadow work.  Some of the questions she suggests asking ourselves are, “what brought your hatred forward in the first place?” “What has fallen into my shadow?” “What must be reintegrated?”

Something important that she mentions is that “What we repress and ignore becomes dangerous, not because the material is dangerous in itself, but because we take such great pains to banish it from our consciousness.”

And that is exactly what it felt like to me. The harder I tried to will it away, the more power it seemed to have over me.

When I dropped the fight, everything changed. I began to use my hatred to identify the things I was struggling to accept in myself.

We can’t talk about the shadow without mentioning Carl Jung. Jung stated that we use psychological projection to avoid facing our shadow or the unacceptable parts of ourselves. But he stated that projection was inevitable and necessary for our psychological development, because it is one of the primary means by which we can gain an awareness of parts of us that reside in our unconscious. He encourages us to “withdraw our projections and become aware of the faults we previously projected onto others.”

About hatred in loving relationships I found a book called, The Dark side of Love, by Jane G. Goldberg (I just love this book). In her book she says that hate can heal. She states that, “love was never meant to be, and cannot be, all of what we want it to be.” It seems that most of us aren’t great at handling when love does not live up to our expectations.

One of my favorite statements she makes is, “Just as gold and silver must be mixed with less valuable metals and fired and hammered to give them the strength to be useful in the real world, so must love be tempered with hate to be whole, enduring, and strong. “

There is so much in this book that I could not possibly even do it justice in this post. Some of the other points that she focuses on are the hatred of a mother towards a child and vice versa, hate and narcissism, hate in romantic relationships and marriage. I would recommend checking it out if you are interested in learning more.

After reading and learning more about hatred, it seems that hate is not something to fear but something to honor and befriend. A necessary emotion that surfaces to help us get more in touch with the parts of ourselves that we have cast aside.

Trying to avoid and deny and blame your hatred on others, only seems to give it more power. When I began to look at it through the lens of curiosity and to take responsibility for it, things began to change.

I asked myself questions like what behavior is this person displaying that I do not like? Why does it bother me? Is it possible that these behaviors exist in me? And the answer was always yes.

I learned more about my hatred as the weeks and months went by. I noticed that hatred came up at other times too, not in relation to people I love but in situations I did not like. When I would be in traffic or had to wait in line for something for a while, I would hear myself saying, “I hate this.”

It was during moments where I was unable to accept the present moment that hate sometimes came up.  Knowing this allowed me to shift my thinking and say, “oh, ok I am not accepting what is happening right now.” This proved to be much more helpful than hating what was happening (which was usually something I had no control over).

Hatred came up in moments when I felt powerless, which seems to relate to McLarens view that hatred is boundary devastation. Over time, I was able to see that it wasn’t the person that I hated, it was the behavior. And I hated the behavior because it was something I had not yet accepted in myself.

Shadow work was a necessary component to loosen hatred’s grip. My relationship to hatred has changed thanks to the fearless ladies that have come before me. I no longer want to banish it and deny its existence. I just want to learn everything I can from it.

Conclusion

Hatred does not have to be a scary emotion. But when you try and will it away, ignore it or suppress it, it can feel more powerful than you. If you can take responsibility for it and approach it with curiosity, it will introduce you to parts of yourself that you weren’t aware existed. Getting to know and accepting these parts of you can loosen hatred’s grip on you. Over time, you come to know parts of yourself that have been longing to be healed.

References:

McLaren, K. (2010). The language of emotions: What your feelings are trying to tell you. Boulder, CO. Sounds True.

Goldberg, J.G. (1999). The dark side of love: The positive role of negative feelings. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Carl Jung article:

https://academyofideas.com/2018/02/carl-jung-shadow-dangers-of-psychological-projection/