Hating A Person Keeps Us Attached To Them

We tend to think that hate is the opposite of love. We believe that when someone seriously harms us or betrays us, our only response is to hate that person and hold a grudge, because that’s what they deserve. We don’t realize that hating a person keeps us attached to them, and that the only way to set us free is to forgive and let go.

Each of us reacts differently to an offense, as we all have our own coping resources. It is true that, at times, anger can be more functional than sadness, as the former gives us the impetus and strength to move forward.

However,  when this feeling is sustained over time, it only poisons our soul and keeps us stuck in that painful past.

Why do we hate?

Think about the people you hate or have hated at some point. They are not irrelevant, right? They are certainly people who played or had an important role in your life.

Hate is a very intense emotion that, most of the time, is just caused by a very special kind of stimulus. We hate when we feel attacked, attacked, violated: when someone attacks our physical or psychological integrity.

Ultimately,  to come to hate someone, that person must be in a privileged position to harm us. Either because important emotional ties bound us to her or because, in one way or another, she exercised authority over us. So we can hate that parent who was supposed to protect us and abused us, that teacher who was supposed to teach us and lowered our self-esteem, or that partner who promised to take care of us and abandoned us.

Hate is nothing more than a condemnation. When someone harms us, we put ourselves in the position of judges and sentence the other for their mistakes. We believe that he deserves a punishment and we want to apply it, and since we often have no power over this other person, the only recourse we have is to hate.

Hating a person keeps us connected to them

First of all, you must know that it is absolutely human to harbor feelings of hatred for those who hurt us in a significant way.  Your emotions are valid and you have a right to feel them. It’s even understandable that you want to punish this person. However, the truth is that, when you hate, you are punished.

They say holding a grudge is like holding a burning ember and waiting for the other person to burn, and that’s absolutely true. It is you who live each day with this darkness within you, it is you who continues to relive the pain, betrayal and aggression daily. In this way, you remain chained to that person you detest so much, and their actions continue to direct and condition your gift. You are not free.

Maintaining such an intense and negative feeling over time causes great emotional exhaustion. While you hate it, you are still tied to your enemy. You continue to invest your time and mental energy  in it instead of using it to heal yourself. Only when you accept, forgive and reframe your experience will you be able to break the chains that still hold you back.

Free yourself

Not all offenses are equally serious; therefore, in some cases, obtaining freedom will be more complicated than in others. However, it is a worthwhile effort and one that we must do for ourselves. To do this, the first and essential step is to accept what happened. You need to stop resisting, stop obsessively thinking that things had to be different because the past can no longer be changed. Accept it as part of your story so you can move forward.

Then reframe your experience. This term refers to the ability of human beings to interpret the same event in different ways. Instead of focusing on the pain and injustice you suffered, focus on the lessons that experience left you, on how it helped you to mature or become stronger, to give meaning and meaning to what you experienced.

Lastly, forgive. This step is the most complicated to take because we can feel, in doing so, that we are acquitting the person, releasing them from their punishment or justifying their actions. However, by forgiving, you release the burden of continuing to feel hate. Forgiveness is not about forgetting the past, it is about preventing it from continuing to infect your emotional wound.