Understanding The Psychology of Hate
Haters come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types but they have something in common…
"Love your haters. They're your biggest fans."
Hate is almost impossible to avoid and the more you excel in life the more you will get of it. So in some sense, hate is a pretty reliable indicator of success. But to have a better understanding of what that means we need to take a closer look at this phenomenon. So let’s get into this!
Most Common Causes of Hatred
People start to hate when they are unable to cope with:
- Low sense of self-worth
- Lack of self-esteem and inferiority complex
- Envy of someone else’s success
- Lack of self-compassion
- Abuse-related trauma
- Humiliation or mistreatment by another person
- Fear of “The Other”
No one can make you feel inferior without your permission
The Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Dealing with Hate
- Try to figure out the mind of a hater
- Start doubting yourself in nearly every way
- Strat questioning the rightness of your decisions and actions
- Start looking for faults with yourself
- Start thinking that you deserve the hate
- Give up on your dreams
- Alter your decisions, goals, opinions, and approach with others
Hater or Emotional Projectile Vomiter?
Have you ever talked to someone so convinced that they know you better than you know yourself that it made you feel extremely uncomfortable? I mean this kind of conversation when you speak openly about your thoughts and emotions making yourself clear and then the person comes up with something about you which is completely ridiculous and does not fit who you are at all? And what’s worse, the more you try to correct them the harder they try to prove you’re wrong. What a pain in the neck.
This sort of situation occurs a lot and it’s called „psychological projection”. It’s a defence mechanism we all employ to defend ourselves against undesirable qualities, emotions and thought by denying their existence in ourselves while accusing others to have them. We use this mechanism to reduce anxiety, embarrassment, and discomfort without even realizing this. However, the problem comes when psychological projection employed by one person harms another person. Examples of this kind we can find easily in both online and offline worlds. It becomes particularly clear when you read savage hate comments full of obnoxious and ridiculous accusations that clearly have no basis in facts. People project their own issues and difficult emotions they cannot deal with others all the time. And trust me once you learn how this psychological projection works you will spot an emotional projectile vomiter a mile away. But most importantly you will never fall into their trap again.
Because the only way to win with the emotional projectile vomiter aka hater is NOT to play! There are other great ways to deal with a hater, bullies or any type of toxic people you will sooner or later come across in your life. And here there are:
How to deal with Bullies, Haters & Trolls
Use The Gray Rock Method
Gray rock is a great method to deal with a hater when you have to interact with them. Sometimes the luxury of not paying attention or simply ignoring a negative person is the luxury we don’t have. I am thinking here of dealing with a boss that is not your biggest advocate, your co-worker who doesn’t acknowledge your presence for no apparent reason. Of course, escaping from a hostile working place or neighbourhood would be a preferred yet in most cases impossible option. What, then you can do to improve your situation? Well, you can use the Gray Rock Method to deal with negative, difficult and extremely toxic people.
The Gray Rock Method is essentially about coming across as a boring, uninterested, indifferent and monotonous person. It is intended to make a hater lose attraction to you. Toxic people love creating drama because they feed on negative energy. They feed on your emotional reaction that’s why they try to get you into twisting exhausting mental spin of argument.
Haters are all about winning and feeding their sick ego. They will do anything they can to prove their right even if their arguments against you are completely ridiculous. They want to see you in a losing position because that makes them feel they’re in power. They want to see you’re being hurt because it gives them a sense of control. If you don’t want to give your power away, what you should NEVER do, you have to act sensibly.
When dealing with a hater you want to present yourself as someone cool, indifferent and almost bored. You cannot give them an emotional reaction even if they push your buttons like nobody’s business. You want to cultivate neutrality and come across as a calm, confident and strong person. If you show a hater that you don’t dwell into drama they will lose interest in you. If they cannot provoke you into getting angry, make you emotionally react and act impulsively they will not be able to feed on negative energy. So in other words, they will lose. Being able to use the Gray Rock Method is a great skill in general because sooner or later you will have to deal with a negative, difficult or extremely toxic person. And when it happens, don’t feed a hater with your emotional reaction, starve them with your indifference!
"How beautiful it is to stay silent when someone expects you to be enraged."
Respond Instead of Reacting
Haters try to provoke you and draw you into their game. They’re doing this because they hate themselves and instead of working on themselves and change their status quo they choose to destroy the lives of others. Why? Probably because it’s much easier to them. They are targeting you because they’re jealous of you. You have something they wish they had and it’s making them extremely uncomfortable. They’re jealous of you because they’re living your life, having a good time and feeling good about yourself. And they’re not. Anybody in their right mind would start working on themselves but not haters.
Haters gonna hate. It’s a sick game they play. You cannot let these people provoke you and draw you into their sick game because you will lose. Just like George Bernard Shaw said:
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.”
Don’t play their sick game. Don’t let them provoke you. Don’t give them ANY emotional reaction because it’s exactly what they want from you. Don’t feed into the drama. Instead, take a deep breath before you do anything. “wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear” and then decide the best course of action based on reason. Choose to respond instead of letting your emotions influence you to do or say something you may regret later.
Don't Take Hate Personally
Do you get the judgmental or dirty looks from people when you go out? I mean, this kind of weird, evil look that almost makes you freeze. Someone is staring at you trying to intimidate you. A complete stranger you’ve never met before in your life for some reason tries to communicate their thoughts and feelings with their eyes. They just stare at you trying to make you feel uncomfortable and at the moment they’re succeeding because you cannot ignore them. Or so you think.
Intrusive thoughts popping into your head create a loop in your brain that feels difficult to escape. The situation is becoming an impossible one.
And you start asking yourself: What’s happening? What’s wrong with me? What I’ve done wrong?
Your heart starts to beat faster, your breathing becomes erratic and cold sweat starts running down your neck. You feel like you are about to have a panic attack… And all because of an evil look of a complete stranger.
Of course, an evil look is just an example. The same goes for getting a hate comment or being disrespected (and not only by a stranger!).
What if you could just ignore it? Ignore a random person, a complete stranger than obviously have some serious issues with themselves but instead of addressing them they’re projecting them onto others…
I know, easier said than done. But here’s a thing, if you let other people’s negative energy affect you, their problems become your problems. How crazy is that, right? Don’t take their criticism, evil look or hate comments personally. Don’t let negative energy affect your state of being. Don’t give people power over your life. Stop playing their sick games.
You create your reality and not someone else. Reclaim your power. Do you.
“We all have limits, and boundaries communicate that line.”
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Set Personal Boundaries
Personal boundaries are our guidelines for what we will and won’t accept in our interpersonal relationship interactions. They not only protect our individuality, personal values and beliefs but also separate our physical and mental space from others. Without them, we run the risk of confusing our feelings, beliefs, needs, and responsibilities with others which is a real threat to our integrity.
So as you can see setting personal boundaries it is not an option but a necessity. You need to establish this clear-cut view of what kind of treatment and behavior you will and will not accept. You need to show people how to treat you and what to expect from you to be able to build and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships based on mutual respect and understanding. And we’re not talking here only about setting personal boundaries in real but also in the online world.
The Internet has long ceased to be just a way to spend free time. The Internet has changed our everyday life and we cannot ignore it anymore. It has become not only a global means of communication but also a great way to earn money, meet new people or get an education. In other words, we are already living in virtual reality. That is why we must set personal boundaries also and above all in our virtual dimension. If you’re still not convinced, think about receiving hate comments on your social media accounts. If you have never got a negative, aggressive or offensive comment on your social media profiles it’s just a matter of time, unfortunately. And when that happens, you will want to or have to react somehow. We talked earlier about the gray rock method but when a hate comment becomes a hate speech ignoring it’s not an option. So what are the options?
- Ignore
- Block
- Report
"I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes."
Focus On Your Reality
We create meaning. Yet nothing has meaning alone. We create meaning and we bring it to life. Things are just ordinary items and people are just random social beings before we give them a specific meaning. We create stories and narratives to make sense of the world. We create words to describe our experience. We create happiness and suffering. We create hope and doubt. We create self-love and self-hatred. We create success and failure. We create ourselves. We create our own reality. This means that we have the power to control entirely our internal world. Isn’t that great? What happens in the external world is beyond our control but still, we can control how to respond to things that we cannot control. If you don’t want your surroundings to affect the way you think and feel you need to look internally. Don’t give your power away by letting another person affect negatively your wellbeing and state of mind. Don’t let other people create your reality. Don’t give your power away. Don’t let negative energy to destroy your inner peace. Focus on what you can control and create a positive reality for yourself.
Your problems with me are not my problems, those are your problems.
Use it to your advantage
ht path towards success. So use it to your advantage.
- Establish strong personal boundaries and work on your self-esteem
- Practice self-reflection to have a better understanding of your feelings, emotions, and thoughts
- Be resilient and continue to work towards your goals
- Don’t let others demotivate you or shoot down your dreams
- Take ownership of your feeling and emotions
- Don’t let other people’s negative energy to affect you
- Look internally rather than externally (Control your reality and accept that you cannot control the external world.)
- Don’t dwell into drama
- Don’t let other people’s problems to become your problems
- and remember that YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF YOUR OWN REALITY!
Hate means that you are on the right path toward success
Best Posts About Wellbeing:
- The Ultimate Guide of Not Giving a F*ck about the Things that don’t Matter HERE
- Words of Wisdom about Social Media HERE
- The Power of Letting Go HERE
- Are You Suffering Unnecessarily - 21 ways you are sabotaging your happiness HERE
- 10 Smart And Powerful Ways To Deal With A Panic Attack In A Public Place HERE
- 5 Lessons I’ve Learned Overcoming Depression That Can Help You If You’re Struggling HERE
- 6 Simple Ways To Live A Healthier Lifestyle HERE
- Free Yourself From Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts HERE
- Put Yourself In A Positive Headspace HERE
- It’s Just A Bad Day Not A Bad Life HERE
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P.S.
Stay Positive
Be Mindful
Establish strong personal boundaries and continue going after your dreams.
xo Kate
2 thoughts on “Bullies Don’t Need a Hug but a Reality Check - how to Deal with Bullies, Trolls, and Haters Mindfully.”
It’s painfully sad, and beyond infuriating, that bullies aren’t just confined to the classrooms and school, because that’s bad enough. Nobody, at any age, should experience it, and yet it happens. Even if it’s not ‘bullying’ per se, there are a lot of ignorant people out there, those who comment just to hurt you in order to make them feel better about themselves. I think with the explosion of the online world and social media, the risk of bullying and trolls increases, too, because it’s easier to be nasty when you’re behind a screen. Great tips, Kate! And an interesting one about the ‘grey rock’ method; that’s one I’d suggest too, I just never knew it had a name! xx
Unfortunately, this is the type of society we live in. This is the type of society we all create. Bullies, haters, trolls and all kinds of people with sociopath’s characteristics are everywhere and the rest of society seems to do nothing about it. Because talking about bullying is not helping. There should be tough measures taken to crack down on these violent creatures who continue to destroy the lives of innocent/normal humans. Children are bullied in school, adults are bullied in the workplace, people are bullied on social media every single day and those who are responsible for all of this remain unpunished. We talked about it but nothing seems to change. Or I should probably say that the situation is only getting worse. Bullying and suicide are clearly linked and the people who make the law seem not to care about that. Honestly, I cannot understand how these things can happen in 2019!! Bullies should be held accountable for what they do. Nobody in their right mind would even think about hurting innocent people… I am sorry Caz but this topic triggers me… P.S. As always THANK YOU for your feedback! It means A LOT to me! You’re an inspiration to me! Have a wonderful weekend and take care!!😘