I hate who I am- how do I change and make amends?

[Ihatemypersonality]

I am 100% certain I am a horrible, bad person and I really don’t like who I am. I have destroyed so many of my friendships and family relationships over the years. I am argumentative, mean, rude, over dramatic and too forthright. I have come to realise that all of the fall outs, arguments, being pushed out of friendship groups is my fault, I’m the common denominator. It’s because I’m a horrible, bad person. My personality is basically garbage.

I’ve had years and years of counselling, where my therapist tried his best to help me and convince me I’m not a bad person. He also tried to convince me that I didn’t deserve to be treated how I was as a kid, but now I feel like I’ve wasted his time, because it’s me. I AM that person, I deserved what I got as a kid because otherwise why would it happen? No one is kind to a horrible kid are they? No one wants to be friends or family with a horrible person.

I need to change.

I don’t even know where to begin with this, but if anyone else has ever managed to change their personality for the better, how did you do it?

@Ihatemypersonality i literally could have written this.

I had a very glamorous but privately toxic childhood. Was yours similar? No child deserves it, that’s point one and unfortunately something you have to drill into your head, easier said that done. I did find counselling a waste of time, but one thing that did help was imagining yourself in those childhood scenarios but you’re the adult… then you play out how you needed to be treated by that adult. It does help see that the child/you is not in the wrong.

Next as trite as it sounds you have to love yourself. Feeling shit? Do something nice for you. Made a mistake? Get yourself a cake/coffee/whatever lifts your mood. Because you have to go against your instincts to self destruct further. This is literally practice over and over. It took me a few months to get used to it but it made me a better person because mostly people treat others how they treat themselves. You have to start with you. Sounds really cringe doesn’t it, but it works.

Lastly you must have some good qualities as it’s impossible not to. Everyone does. Even if they done shine all the time, what are yours?

*dont

Lots of people are horrible to kids, Op, that's exactly what child abuse is about. You need to be kinder to yourself.

No kid deserves to be badly treated. None of that was your fault as you were depending on the adults to be kind to you. As said above ..love yourself. Forgive yourself and decide to treat yourself well. Others will follow.

Yes, people can be horrible to kids OP. They were horrible to you when you were little and that wasn't your fault, so the first step is to forgive yourself for that. You weren't to blame, they were.

In terms of what that abuse did to you and how useful counselling is, that really depends on the counsellor, I think. It doesn't sound like the one you got was much good at helping you address your issues, so you could try and find another one, or you could take some of that self-awareness that you now have and start applying it to your life.

You are not an intrinsically bad person and the first thing to do is to acknowledge that. Abuse means a person develops certain coping mechanisms and some of those can make the person difficult company. How do you turn that around? You stop and think before you open your mouth or reply to a text or an email or whatever. Put yourself in the position of the person receiving your words and think how they'll be made to feel. Watch how other people, people that are well-liked, interact with others. This is a skill you can learn, if you're prepared to do it. We can all become more patient, more empathetic, less selfish, less dramatic, if we try. I'm sure there are useful books out there and perhaps another poster will be able to help with this, but you can turn this around if you do some work on yourself. Acknowledging your issues are the first step.

You're not a bad person if you feel bad about your negative behaviour. You acted badly but that doesn't mean you're horrible.

You've recognised it now.

I'd make some apologies and work on acting in a better, kinder way.

I'd also seek therapy to discover why you acted as you did and to improve your mood and self esteem.

Sorry seen you've had therapy. I'd change therapist or the style you're getting and go at it with the new point of view.

The thing is though, I wasn’t a very nice child. I had a lot of tantrums and tended to be over dramatic about stuff. I threw a tantrum because I didn’t want to give away toys in a shoebox one Christmas. My parents went no contact with my grandparents after an argument that was over me. My parents said it’s because I was over dramatic and it caused an argument. My parent still blames me, has said to my face many times my grandparents hate them because of me. I deserved all of the horrible thing they said to me, cos I caused that argument and made my family not talk to each other anymore. I should have just left home when I was told to by one of our parents at age 15. It would have saved everyone years of being upset by me.

At the weekend my sibling said to me they wouldn’t talk to me anymore if I wasn’t a blood relative. Because I was really horrible to our other parent a few years ago over something that wasn’t there fault. I’ve apologised to my parent for it since, but my sibling said I’m emotionally abusive and a gaslighter.

my therapist was amazing. He did so much work with me and almost had me convinced I wasn’t a bad person. But this week my sibling said what he did and now I know my therapist was wrong.

Okay OP, look you are literally never going to turn things around if you keep looking back on your life and using past examples of why you're a bad person. You are stuck in the past and will be forever condemned to relive mistakes of the past and keep beating yourself about them and not moving forward and changing things if you can't just leave those things in the past.

In order to make changes, you have to put those things in a box marked 'the past' and resolve to change things going forward. How do you think alcoholics and drug addicts kick their habits and forge new, healthy ones? They apologise to those they've wronged, they kick the physical habit and they resolve, every day, to be a better person and to never stop working on themselves. That's what you need to do.

Jesus, your family sound shit. Could you pick therapy back up with this therapist as it sounds like your therapeutic alliance is pretty strong, which may take a while with a new therapist as I may not be far off the mark if I hazard a guess that you have some issues around trust. I do agree that you need to put the past back where it belongs, but that is, in my opinion, fairly near impossible to do unless you are ready. And this will vary from person to person. No child deserves the sort of dialogue you seem to have grown up with tho. Part of being human is accepting that have various different aspects of self, some we like and some we don't. You deserve to know that about yourself OP. Good luck.

I tried really hard to put it all in the past. But this weekend my sibling brought it all up again. We were having a fairly normal Sunday lunch and a minor disagreement turned into me being told I’m emotionally abusive and a gas lighter, argumentative, nasty. I really think they’re right. I tried so hard to put it all behind me. I promise, I did.

Wow, your parents really did a number on you, didn't they?

Think about it logically for a moment. Does a child really have the power to permanently sever a relationship between 2 sets of adults?

Or could it be that the parents and grandparents are such toxic shits that they chose to blame a child for their own failings?

Most children aren't nice - simply because they don't have the capacity to regulate their feelings or to control their behaviour. That's what GOOD parents are supposed to teach them.

Have a look at these videos are negative core beliefs;

All that you are is entirely because of your childhood. You can change this by firstly understanding nothing was your fault.

You are choosing to believe your sibling (likely also affected by awful parenting) rather than your therapist. Have a think about why that might be. Then go back and continue the therapy

Can you give examples of your behaviour

People abuse kids because they are easy targets and cannot defend themselves. It is horrendous, cowardly behaviour.
You cannot possibly blame yourself for the break up of family relationships. You were a child you had no concept.
Stop blaming yourself and believe that you can change and have a better life, one where you respect yourself.

Thanks for the videos. I’ll watch kater

I guess, I just can be quite strong with how I communicate. I don’t mean to be, but I’ve been told that if I seem upset I can be quite loud and black and white about things e.g. I had an argument with person A. Person B said they had been in contact about the argument and I said “person A is a cow”. Apparently that shut down all the conversation and made me difficult to talk to and comes across as rude because I don’t care what other people think.

Another one, that I mentioned above, I found out something about a different family member, basically that they were able to do something I can’t but have wanted for a long time. They had got someone pregnant and I can’t have kids. I was jealous and upset. I ended up arguing with my parent because I was so upset and told my parent to fuck off and never speak to me again. My parent was very upset. My sibling says I’m evil because of that and gave it as the main reason he says I’m emotionally abusive. I apologised to my parent after that, and we patched things up. I’m ashamed of what I said to my parent and I said sorry so many times.

I guess also, throughout my life I’ve had lots of friendships get ended in my childhood, teens, early twenties because we argued a lot and the friends Sid I was difficult to be around and hard work, too many petty arguments over things. Someone once said I’m homophobic, but I’m really not. I don’t care if someone is gay or straight, or anything, trans, whatever, just be who you are. Apparently I rolled my eyes at their boyfriend and then didn’t speak to them another time when they came to our house to visit, and so I was being homophobic? I don’t really know. I don’t remember either of those things happening, but if they did happen it wasn’t because I didn’t like them because they were gay.

I’ve been told I can go on and on when I’m upset. I guess like I am now, and it makes it hard to like me. I don’t know. I’m the common person in all of these scenarios so there must be some truth to it, that I’m not a nice person or hard to get on with because of how I am?

My sibling said I behave horribly and talk to people like they’re dirt but expect everyone to forgive me and just move on. It seems like he thinks I can’t talk to people if we fall out, and I don’t know if I shouldn’t be talking to people anymore. I’ve withdrawn loads over the pandemic, because it’s easier just not to talk to people. This weekend at this family Sunday lunch was unusual to be with so many peoPle at once for me. Another disagreement broke out ( I can’t even remember what about, someone said something to me that I felt was quite rude I think) and yet again it seems to be me at the middle of it all.

Have you looked as ASD?
My daughter sounds just like you and has struggled with relationships and via a lot of hard work she’s getting there now, but still can come across as rude and forthright.

@Threelittlelambs no I didn’t think I have autism. I don’t know. I think if I said to people I think I’m autistic they’d just think I’m trying to make excuses?

I’ve re read the other replies now I’ve had a coffee and calmed down a bit. I was really upset this morning.

@coffeeisthebest youre right, I do have trust problems. Mostly I don’t trust myself these days. I don’t like to get close to people anymore, because it all just goes wrong and I’m usually left being blamed and told I’m hard work.

@TheWayoftheLeaf if I apologise to people will they just think I’m doing it for myself? Someone once told me that apologies for past behaviour only make the person apologising feel better cos they’re annoyed to be in trouble. I do apologise for stuff if I know I’ve done wrong, but after a long time is it worth contacting people to say sorry for old stuff?

@Reattle ive lost sight of anything I think might be a good quality in myself. I just don’t know.

The fact that you want to break the cycle of your past actions and behaviour is proof you're not a bad person by any means.

The first thing you should do is have compassion for yourself. If you have none for YOU, how can you have any for others?

You've taken the first step and I hope you find some good, valuable advice here.

Ok gotcha. Firstly, stop listening to people like your sibling. They no longer get to contribute to your self narrative. Secondly, get back to your therapist, who does. Lean into that relationship until you believe and trust them. It just takes time. The fact that you know it's yourself you don't trust is great news. You need to learn to trust yourself, how to self regulate, how to embrace yourself.

Children are allowed to be tantrummy and dramatic - that is NORMAL FOR CHILDREN!!!

Even if you look back at that behaviour and regret it, that was then. A child doing childish things.

do you want to stay in contact with your family?

I do want to stay in contact. I have nephews I love very much.

thanks for all the help. I think I’ll take a step back from my family again for a while. Speak when I’m spoken to, I need to avoid more problems.

the best advice i heard for this was 'don't feel bad, do good'. instead of spending all your time ruminating about how shit you are, give money to charity, write a list of things you can do to help others.

build yourself into a person you like and work at it.

it's actually an incredible opportunity to take stock and start again. along the way, you'll find some compassion for yourself. because you wouldn't be questioning any of this or writing to strangers on the internet about if you were truly a bad person.