The Other Side Of Hate And How To Heal – What To Do When You Hate Someone

Here is what I know about hate from the inside out.

Hate can feel super validating at first. It can feel really good when those surges of disdain tell you that the objects of your hate are wrong and that you are are more in the right. The problem is, the longer you hold onto your hate for them, the more room they take up inside your own thinking. The hate allows them to become locked into your story and gives them more power then you realize.

Now all of the emotions are designed to be indicators that help you navigate your life. The positive emotions and the negative emotions are all meant to be tools to help you.

The emotions that fall on the positive side of the spectrum indicate when things are going right. You can use them to help you navigate toward what you want in your life. They help you identify when you are in a place of inner alignment and tending to your own heart and story. You may enjoy those emotions and choose to keep creating them because they build thoughts and experiences that feel good.

The emotions that fall on the negative side of the spectrum indicate where things are off track and not going so well. They help you know when something isn’t safe for you, wrong with a situation, or need your attention. They are just as powerful of a tool to help you navigate towards what you want in your life.

The thing that trips us up about negative emotions is that we start to take directions from them rather then using them to help us navigate to a better place in our lives.

So what do you do when faced with a negative emotion like hate? Well use it to help you better understand what is going on in your own heart and story. Realizing that if you keep your focus on the hate, it will keep you linked to them.

So you pull your attention back to your own heart and story and get curious about why the hate is there. The sooner you can figure that out, the sooner you unlink them from your story. You may even find that you become part of a bigger picture solution in the process.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you activate curiosity:

• What is it about them that’s off putting to me?
• What is the hate telling me?
• Does the hate feel like it is protecting me emotionally or physically?
• Will it help me make better-informed decisions moving forward?
• What about it can help me become a better version of myself or understand myself even better?
• Am I feeling the hate because I disapprove or feel alienated from that is fundamental to me?

Remember no matter where that inner curiosity takes you, your emotion is not only valid for where you are, it’s an important tool designed to help you.

I want to tell you a story about how carrying hate changed me and how, once I used it as a tool, it helped me heal.

I went through a phase in my 20s where I hated my mother. It wasn’t just the typical passing adolescent “I hate my mom” kind of hate. It was the kind of hate that penetrated deep within my heart and started to change me.

I hadn’t really carried the weight of hate till then. My mom was the one constant in a revolving door of parental people who had come in and out of my life. She was supposed to take care of me and when I went to tell her about the sexual abuse I was suffering at the hands of her husband she did nothing. Looking back I can see she was barely surviving her own life. In that survival she had become as verbally and physically abusive as he was and she was in no way equipped to keep me safe.

You might think the hate would have come into play then, but it really didn’t. It was a couple of husbands later when I was out of the house and living on my own that it set in for me. She had decided to rewrite history because she was ashamed of who she had been and the things she had done and allowed.

In a conversation she told me that I had never been abused verbally, emotionally, physically or sexually by anyone in our house. She said that I had made the whole thing up for attention and to make her look and feel bad.

After that the hate set in and let me tell you hating her felt so good. It was validating. The surge of hate when I thought about or was around my mom validated a history that she tried to erase. That hatred I had for her helped me feel like I had taken back the control over my life and story. At the time I didn’t notice or care that the hate kept me tethered to her and what she had done, because I couldn’t imagine a life not tethered to the suffering she caused.

Hate builds momentum and can change you. My hate for her had been building and it needed an outlet so I went to her and broke her walls of lies down. I let her have it. I wasn’t going to leave until she recognized the truth for what it was. I shattered the illusions she had created to make her own life feel better.

She was a puddle of tears begging me to tell her how many times she would have to apologize for the things she had done in her past. That just fueled the hate inside of me. Could she not see that trying to erase what had happened to me so that she could feel better was never going to put her in the right with history or me?

It felt like the hate was offering me power over her. I shamed her as I claimed my truth and held it over her head. And while it was validating, I didn’t recognize myself. I was not an aggressive person who held grudges. I had never treated anyone like that before. I don’t even fundamentally believe in people having power over each other. What I didn’t realize was that I had been slowly changing, hardening in a way to match the hate.

It wasn’t until I went to visit a friend who had just had a baby that I realized that my hatred for my mother had become a noose around my own happiness. I could feel that the hate had been chipping away at my intrinsic joy, trying to rob me the things that felt good.

You see at the time I didn’t know that hate was a tool. I was just taking direction from it allowing it to rule over me. It would keep me linked to the suffering and to all of the negative parts of my mother until I used it to help me heal.

Seeing my friend with her new baby cracked me wide open and harked to deep place within my own heart and being. In the early morning I had woken up and then gone back to sleep. It was in this early dawn slumber that I had the most vivid dream that unraveled the hate that had been holding my own happiness hostage.

I dreamed I was on a beach basking in the sunshine. My feet were nestled in the warm sand. When I looked down I could see all of these suitcases lying in the sand around me. They we all connected to me by crystalline cords. I ran my hands over the cords and noticed a comforting feeling in my heart. I didn’t know how, but it seemed as if the bags were protecting me in some way.

After a few moments I notices a man coming out of the water and walking over to me. With the waves crashing on the shore in the background, he asked me to come play with him in the water. I looked up and the rays of sun were blocking his face but I was drawn to him. I longed to go with him and play in the surf.

I placed my hands on the suitcases and I told him that I couldn’t go. The ocean glistened behind him and the idea of freely frolicking in the water was irresistible. The inner pull to go was almost as strong as the pull the bags had over me.

He told me that life was waiting for me and that I had the power to untether myself from the bags. They were too heavy for me to carry any longer and it was time to let them go so that I could finally be free.

“Don’t you know all of the marvelous things that are waiting for you? Everything you have been dreaming of is within your reach. Don’t you want to come play with me?”

I did want all of that. So as he disappeared back into the water I dragged the bags with me to the shoreline. I sat down again, this time with my feet in the shallow water. I cried and I let it all out. As the tears fell they cut through the crystalline cords and one by one as the bags broke free, I tossed them in the water and let the tide pull them away.

When I woke up my pillow was wet with tears and my heart felt both achy and free. I got up and journaled about the dream, my mom, and what it all meant to me. As I tossed the first bag into the water, the ocean whispered back to me that it is time to forgive her. “Don’t forgive her for her, forgive her for you. It is the only thing that will truly set you free.”

When my friend woke up we talked through the whole thing and I felt like I was coming back to myself. I could finally understand what the hate was trying to show me.

You see my journey of healing started around the age of 17. Up until the dream I had been looking for outside sources to validate my healing. The hate had been trying to show me that finding my validation in her was never going to work or feel good. It was trying to get me to focus where it felt better and where I had power, which was my own heart and story.

Only I had the power to validate my healing journey. The moment I let my tears cut through that cord and let the bag drift into the ocean; I was able to let go and just let her be her. And in doing that I became free to be me. That is what I found on the other side of the hate. I no longer needed her to validate any part of my story or me. I was now able to do that for myself. My true power came from me focusing on my heart and my story.

It was in that freedom that I could really see that she had done the best she could. Was that good enough? The answer was no, but we all do the best we can in any given moment. I had made it to where I was, and with the wisdom and healing I had already done, I knew that there would be purpose in it all for me.

Now, I listen carefully to hate when it knocks at the door of my heart. I feel hate when I see or hear about black people senselessly dying, living in fear for their safety as they walk through their everyday lives. I feel hate when I hear of the Epsteins and Weinsteins. I feel hate when I think about the people who set up the systemic inequality that humanity suffers through still today.

I feel it but then I use it. I don’t let the hate build momentum within any part of me anymore. Instead I build momentum to what the hate is trying to show me. The hate is telling me to pay attention to what is off and not right.

So rather then focusing on the people doing the wrong, I focus on what I can do to help the people who are being affected. I stay curious and open to finding ways to better advocate and listen, so that I can be a stronger part of the solution. I would rather put my attention on supporting the people who deserve my energy, than on the ones who don’t.

I get to choose who takes up space in my story, my heart, and my mind. I have to power to use the hate as an indicator to see what’s wrong so that I can make adjustments. And I want you to know that you have the power to do that too. I want you to know that you don’t have to be tethered by hate but can use it to help you heal and maybe even become part of a solution to something bigger than yourself along the way.

No matter what your relationship is to hate I want you to know that you are worthy, valuable and significant just as you are