Top Quotes: “Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself” — Anneli Rufus
Background: I’ve been working on treating myself how I would treat a best friend and transforming the voices in my head to be kinder to myself, so I decided to check out this read from Anneli Rufus that offers stories from readers who have suffered from self-hatred and tips on how to be kinder to yourself. It ended up not being as relevant to my goal — going from treating myself ok to treating myself very kindly — since the book is only focused on going from despising yourself to treating yourself ok…but it was fascinating (and heartbreaking) to read the stories and I did indeed get some good insights I can apply. The quotes are referring to people who suffer from self-hatred.
“Once — we were weak; someone seized advantage of that span, perhaps not even consciously. Whatever they said, we believed. It happened all at once or bit by bit.”
“Our stories are codes crucial to our recovery. Crack those codes and the lies all fall apart. Someday we will escape our stories.”
“We crave encouragement and comfort but are actually incapable of giving those things to ourselves because we are the very ones we fear, who make us insecure. We are the ones we trust the least. The ones we’ve been running from.”
“Some people have lost patience with our ask ask asking for acceptance because our unplumbed need is one more thing we fear about ourselves, it muzzles us. We stop asking for help.”
“When someone criticizes you, you feel a tensing, a sense of closing down. If you can see it just as you’re tensing, there’s the possibility of catching the urge to do the habitual thing and not do it.”
“When you feel bad, think of what you’d say to a child or good friend who was suffering and say it to yourself. It is the adult you who learns and grows from the experience of being a caregiver.”
“We give ourselves compassion to acknowledge when we’re feeling bad and mindfully accept what it is.”
“Interrupt the self-loathing voice, remind yourself that in the world at large nothing has much to do with you. Ask yourself ‘Is this is in any way a nice day?’”
