Hi Gavin,

I could say that I am paying for my sins of the past and I feel I do deserve this self torture. I cannot get out of this place of self-loathing and it is eating me alive. … I have such rage with myself.

The feeling of self-loathing is familiar. I too hated myself when I was suffering from an eating disorder and was ruining my health with binges and purges. I knew it was destructive but I couldn’t stop. You too knew it wasn’t good how you were treating your girlfriend, but couldn’t help yourself.

What I want to tell you is that our self-destructive tendencies were not because we are bad, immoral people (I constantly question where my moral compass was), but because we were hurt. Our crooked, self-destructive behavior, was, believe it or not – a defense mechanism.

I was preoccupying myself with food, so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of feeling unloved by my mother. It could be that you were running away from even the slightest argument, so you wouldn’t feel the pain of the constant conflict that you grew up in. We both needed an escape from the horrendous pain we were feeling.

I hated myself for my eating disorder… but then many years later I’ve realized it was a way I was hoping to numb my pain. It was my defense mechanism. And I stopped hating myself. I started having compassion for the little girl, who was not loved by her mother, and in so much pain.

I hope you can find the way not to hate yourself for trying to escape pain. You were trying to protect yourself, or to be more precise – to protect the little boy inside of you, who was traumatized by living almost in a “war zone”, in the constant state of conflict.

And another thing: children usually blame themselves when their parents don’t show them love. So perhaps you blamed yourself for your parents’ constant fighting, just like I blamed myself for my mother not loving me?

I would dare to say that your present self-loathing and self-blame are in fact the self-loathing and self-blame that you felt as a child, but perhaps were not aware of? But this breakup brought it up to the surface…

I feel I am sick or my have BP disorder or even a deep routed evil part of me that is prone to self-sabotage.

This “evil” part is our misguided way to try to protect ourselves from pain. As I said, mine was an addiction. Yours is perhaps running away from conflict and perhaps not being able to hear any criticism, because for you, being criticized meant being unloved?