I hate myself and don’t know how to feel or fix it

Happiness is a choice.  You may not be aware of that or able to see it right now.  If you are not happy and hate yourself, it is important for you to think about the choices you are making and the thoughts you lead to your choices.  So far, you have made timely progress by identifying that you feel jealous of your family, feel depressed at work in a way that you cannot hide from your guests and feel unhappy that your boyfriend enjoys his job while you do not enjoy your job.  You can get better, and you can learn to like yourself.  You describe the way your self-hate is affecting your relationship with your family, your work guests and your boyfriend.  It’s good that you can clearly see the problem.  This is an important first step. 

The next step is to know that you are not doomed to unhappiness, and you can figure out how to find the happiness that is your choice.  You have a family; you have a boyfriend and you have a job.  Those are positives in your life, even if you are only seeing the negative.  You do have a foundation to grow from your self-hate to learn to see your value and purpose in the world.  You can learn to see the importance you have in your work with your family and with your boyfriend.

When you say you are depressed at work and your guests recognize that you are down, do you have any other symptoms of depression, such as change in appetite (either eating more or eating less), change in sleep patterns (sleeping too much or unable to sleep), trouble concentrating?  I mention these symptoms of depression because those are indicators that you are not just having trouble with self-hate and jealousy, but that you might have a brain chemistry imbalance.  If your symptoms point to major depression, it is important to begin therapy right away.  Depression has a good prognosis if you get the help that is available to you.

I believe therapy to discover your self-hate is essential to your pursuit of happiness whether you are suffering from major depression or not.  You will never be happy about your life and happy for your family and boyfriend’s success until you learn to love yourself.  Therapy can help you see what it is that you hate about yourself and what lies you believe about yourself that keep you from seeing the things you have going for you.  Your therapist will help you learn to see the lies you believe that are causing you to be unable to choose happiness.  Your therapist might suggest self-affirmation.  A lot of my clients use apps that are available to them to receive daily self-affirmations.  These self-affirmations help you replace your negative self-hate self-talk with truths about your value and worth.

You are different from your family members and from your boyfriend.  You are not doing yourself any good by comparing yourself to them.  They may go through a down time like you are having now, and you can be there to show them how you worked through it.  Right now, you are the one suffering from your depression and self-hate, but it may affect them in the future.  It’s not helpful to compare yourself with them and their jobs.  It is important to have their support.  Can you tell your boyfriend or your family that you are struggling?  It seems that you need some support from people who love you and see your value and worth. 

In vocational counseling we teach that not everyone can have a perfect job that fits with their passions and desires.  Maybe your job is the opposite of what you love.  Think about what you love doing?  What gets you motivated to get out of bed in the morning?  If it is not something that you can do in your job, but you need your job to survive—make money to live, then it might be helpful for you to pursue your passions in your free-time.  Not liking your job can create a lot of stress because of the number of hours required for work.  It is important to think of five things that you can do to destress from work.  What do you enjoy doing?  What feeds your soul?  Think of five simple things and make sure you do them daily, it will help with your depression and with your stress.  These soul-giving activities can be sitting in nature, taking a slow walk with your dog, reading a book, listening to music.  What are your five things?

I hope you will see that your plight is not hopeless but that you might need a little help to show you what is possible and that you really can love yourself.