Denial - Page 2

I think hating actions makes more sense than hating a person. Mostly because an action doesn't make up the whole person, therefore you are hating someone based on one or a couple of aspects of them. Which is basically what hitler did, you know. He stopped seeing the people he was condeming as actual people. He saw them as vermin.


Remember that hate and anger are two different things. You can be angry at someone, but that doesn't mean you hate them. I'm not telling you that you can't hate anyone, my opinion is just that it's not healthy to hold onto hate in regards to a person, because then you are more likely to be blinded to their humanity. And what happens when you can't see someone as a real human being? Well, I think hurting them badly comes more easily, and the want to keep hurting them. Because hate is a very passionate emotion.

Now I'm definitley not saying that because you understand where someone is coming from, they should then be accepted into your life. I don't think that at all.
It just means you understand them enough to not want to kill them or hold extremely hostile feelings toward them. As with my parents, when I say a superficial relationship, I mean that they will not be involved in important things in my life, I'm not going to talk to them about very important decisions. I just want to have that simple connection to them, to know how they and the rest of the family are doing.


I think it would hurt me more to do ostricize myself from them, to be honest. Really, I think I will try out the distance and superficiality before I do something so drastic. Indeed, if it goes horribly wrong and they actually still turn out to be a very negative influence on my life, I wouldn't want to keep them in it.

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When someone does wrong to you it is perfectly normal to not like them. Hate has accomplished many things, its a statement that you will not put up with peoples actions and that consequences and responsibility are important. Had the russians not hated hitler perhaps hitler would rule the world. If you do not hate people and fight back you are weak.

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Definitions might be tripping up our conversation.

I agree, you don't have to like anyone just because you can understand where they are coming from. You can understand where they are coming from but still think they are assholes.

But disliking people and having hate for them are very different things, in my opinion. Dislike just means that you don't want to be around them, you don't want to hang out with them, but you will still be civil to them and treat them as human beings when chance brings you into contact with them.

Hate for a person, on the otherhand, goes out of its way to show extreme measures of dislike and disrespect. If you hate someone, you want to hurt them, and seeing them in pain brings you some sort of victory and pleasure. If chance brings you near that person, you will not respect them as human beings, nor treat them civilly.

Now hating actions is perfectly healthy, since you're channeling your hate toward a concept and not a live, thinking, feeling human being. Hating negative actions and fighting against them is how we strive toward attaining better things within the world, so it makes more sense to invest your energy in negative concepts that poison peoples minds, more so than hating a person who can be cleansed of that poison. If they cannot, and if they stand directly in the way of change for the greater good, then comes the need to bring them down, humanely. If that is possible.

In other words hatred is an extreme form of dislike. In the case of someone who causes great damage in your life hatred is only natural. You should hate someone who causes extreme distress in your life because it is natural to counter with an extreme dislike. You accept the case that if someone is causing minor distress in your life to dislike them then why not the extreme case? In extreme cases it is only perfectly natural to hate that person. The truth is bitter my friend!

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You should hate someone who causes extreme distress in your life because it is natural to counter with an extreme dislike. You accept the case that if someone is causing minor distress in your life to dislike them then why not the extreme case?

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I feel as though you are throwing the word "hate" around without giving it the proper weight that it deserves. Do you agree with my definition of "hate"?

My experience has been that when I have been caused extreme distress, my natural reaction is to have extreme anger toward the person or people who caused it.

Okay, so that is the initial reaction.

Moving past initial reactions, the abuse has made you feel inferior in your own perception of yourself. You start to ask yourself why it is that they have done this to you and for a long time, you may think that they did this to you because you were simply just that "bad" and deserving of such abuse.

Hopefully one day you reach a point where you question their abuse again and realize that you should not feel as though you deserved the abuse.

Gaining an understanding of why they have done this to you, aids you in moving past the feelings of guilt and worthlessness that they have inflicted upon you.

With this understanding comes empathy and you start to understand that they are putting you in pain, because they are in pain themselves.

And so you empathize and love them and you want to care for them.

To hate would be taking a step backwards in the process of healing yourself. For me to have hate towards a person, I think I would have to have a huge lack of understanding about why they do what they do.

If I lacked that understanding about my parents, I think I would not have the proper knowledge that I have needed, in order to move past the negative effects of the abuse I have experienced.

If I do not understand that their abuse towards me was unjustified and wrong (& remember that lack of understanding is something I think is needed in order for me to have hate), I would most likely feel that the abuse was justified. And therefore, I would conclude that there must be something horribly wrong with me.

And since I feel that I understand the reasons for my parents actions towards me, I really do not feel that I deserved the abuse, nor do I have hate for my parents. I can tell you sincerely that I am not suppressing anything here, it is truly how I feel.

I am not emotionally ready to turn my back on my parents just yet. Even though yes, logically you should not include people in your life who have had a negative effect on it. But it is true that all of my history so far is tied up with my mother and father, and as silly as it may sound to you, I am not ready to let go of this and stunt it before it truly needs to be.

A superficial relationship could work out very well, only time will tell. I love my parents very much and will do what is realistically within my power, to sustain a healthy, if superficial, relationship with them. If this fails, I will see that I have to move on for my own benefit, and by then, hopefully the negative experiences I have had with them to make me feel this way, will render me emotionally capable of detatching myself from them completely.

Of course, I really do hope it does not have to come to this.

that could be the healing process. But, really the most important step to the healing process is to hear someone apologize. Why shouldn't you hate someone who wont let you heal? Really time is the healing process when an apology is not evident. It just takes time and over that time you realize it does not matter. But, you should hate that person and gradually that hate becomes less. You should hate until you are healed because those people hurt you. Letting it go is not the first step, it is the last step. This way you do not feel inferior, you do not feel guilty you feel resentment to those that hurt you, the natural reaction as a human being.

I was, perhaps still am, furious that they wouldn't apologize and accept that they did anything wrong. Incredibly angry. Since you posted on here, I assumed you read through my posts, or at least my first post, because it's essentially a rant about my parents denying everything. Perhaps I was wrong in my assumption?

The reason I started this whole thread was to work through my anger

For me, there is the difference between hate and anger.

You need to differentiate between hate and anger. Or at least come to understand my perception of the two.

Do you agree that there is a difference between the two?

I may have come close to hating my parents at a younger age, because I understood them so much less back then. Indeed, I feel I had my moments where I did hold a certain degree of hate for them. Yes. Because I couldn't understand their actions past the point of myself being the sole problem.

Through the process of healing myself, I came to understand the reasons for their actions more. So then I still feel anger towards them because they would not accept responsibility of the wrongs they committed against me, but I do not hate them whatsoever, because I feel that I understand why they do not accept responsibility.

Hate and anger are different things. And this is why I will not concede to your point that I should hate my parents.

I think that anger is a necessitated condition for hatred. In other words you need to be angry at someone to hate them.

There is no way you can say that anger and hatred are mutually exclusive. There is definitely overlap on the definitions.

Sure, they can overlap.

But I do think you can have anger without hate.

Otherwise, you can be angry at someone and that automatically means you hate them?

But that's not always the case is it? You don't hate everyone you get angry at.

We have confirmed that cases of anger also include hatred.

We have also confirmed that anger is a necessary condition for hatred.

What is anger? Anger is a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath according to dictionary.com

what is hatred? the feeling of one who hates; intense dislike or extreme aversion or hostility.

Anger is essentially the reaction to a wrong and hatred is intense dislike of something.

When you are angry is it not that you intensely dislike what that person did? In order to be angry you must intensely dislike what that person did. In order to be angry you must hate what that person did. Hatred is the underlying emotion to anger. Hatred leads to anger.

Okay, I hate the actions my parents took towards me, but I do not hate my parents because I have more understanding now of why they acted the way they did.

Now I have anger towards my parents because I hate that they are not admitting their own wrongs.

So, I have hatred for wrongful actions, and I have anger towards people for committing those actions or not recognizing them.

You can hate an action without hating a person. Do you agree?

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Why shouldn't you hate someone who wont let you heal?

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I'm going to pre-empt this question from you, because I honestly think this is what you're going to go back to asking me.

My answer is (still) this:

If you hate someone, I think it is important to work at understanding why they act as they do, because I believe hate carries with it a whole set of negative actions that will be embedded within your behaviour. I've said this before. If you hate someone, your intentions in your interactions with them is to hurt them and keep hurting them. That's not only destructive for them, but also for you, because after all that hate dissipates (when you start to understand why they are seemingly incapable of allowing you to heal), you will feel immense guilt for hurting them. Unless you actually hate that person forever and never reach that understanding.

Hate towards another person is destructive for everyone involved.


Hate toward abusive actions and understanding why people commit abusive actions, protects you from becoming victimized by those actions in the future. In regards to hating a person, that hate becomes illogical and unnecessary once an understanding of the circumstances and emotions that drive that person, has been established.

Without hatred than people could get away with anything? If someone breaks the law the government throws them in jail. A mild form of torture, an act of hatred, an act of revenge. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. People need boundaries, they need barriers and rules!

I don't even believe you have ever tried hating someone. You just assume that such instances are wrong and destructive.

Really, I don't think it's truly hatred that seperates people into jails, it is a logical measure taken with those that would cause us harm. The system isn't ideal and prisoners get harmed on purpose, and though such instances are not just, it is currently all we have.

You're right that I don't try to hate others. I don't believe in forcing myself to feel an emotion that I don't actually feel.

I think we both just see hate completely differently. We've had different experiences with our emotions and have come to understand them differently, so it's probably fair to say we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Jacker Jones what have you done for this post, your motto is obviously an eye for an eye and hers is the whole world will go blind so drop it and agree to dissagree not move on to prisons ect. ect.

Chained Wings you dousche I agree with you written form would bypass the emotional discourse and personal level these things take, but it shouldn't be from a forum site, it should be a genuine letter. A very objective one.

Vigil, in order to give advise its always good to have some backround on where it's coming from, my parents divorced when I was six, my stepmother verbally raped my fathers mind and mine as well as time to time physical abuse from my father. My mother was hardcore irish catholic, talk about denial. I am bi-polar and events in my life where kept completely away from her side of the family until things came to a head. Whenever I confronted her about things that she had said or done she would flat out deny it with the old I have no idea what your talking about. My stepmother on the other hand would be malicious in her retorts even passively aggressively telling me to commit suicide and pretending i had hit her in front of my father.

I hope that you understand that I have some idea where your coming from. I detest my step mom but she makes my dad happy, I love my dad and my mom very much and realize that I would be lost without them yet would not have all of these memories and expierences with them. All of our parents cause us tremendous psychological trauma, it shapes who we are, we look up to them as children and look for guidance until we see where it stops. Where our perceptions differ and blur until the day we realize that no two people expirence the same reality, no two people see the same things.
The way you can try to bridge this, or the way I have anyways, is talking about things like iraq, gay marraige, civil rights, the economy, religion. Get inside your parents heads one on one with focus not being on anything personal, just find out who they are as people first. What is there philosophy on different specific aspects on life. If you can do that and voice your own intellegent opinion on these benial topics then, eventually, you can work on making objective arguements regarding personal matters.

Get to know them as human beings and always remember that they gave you life, and despite whatever friends you choose that they will always be there unless you do something drastic. At least thats what it sounds like. Parents are from a different age, there like aliens haha

The thing that will make them respect you is if you go out there and succed in life, for there are losers and winners, them being the pessimists will tell you how you can lose, but if you ignore them or use there help to win then they will respect you.

The truth is we are lucky we have parents who love us unconditionally despite what we think, they could have thrown us out at 18, but they still allow us to grow. Many aren't as lucky.
Be grateful for what they have done for you, and stop looking to place blame and living in the past. Thats like being a rock on the bottom of the river being erroded away, its wearing you down.

Instead just try to go with the flow and look here and now, plan for the future, fuck the rest. you know why your self esteem is down, instead of dwelling on it you should find ways to pick yourself back up.

music is passion here are some songs to help you think it out

drive - incubus
sowing season - brand new
hole in your soul - SNFU
the scientist - coldplay
mad world - gary jules

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Get inside your parents heads one on one with focus not being on anything personal, just find out who they are as people first. What is there philosophy on different specific aspects on life. If you can do that and voice your own intellegent opinion on these benial topics then, eventually, you can work on making objective arguements regarding personal matters.

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I feel that I already know quite a bit about what my parents think about certain things and what kind of people they are. They're from the stone age about mostly everything.

Knowing who they are and what opinions they hold about things, let me assure you that they are definitley not the kind of people who you can engage in an objective debate with. They're quite narrow minded and don't really respect others opinions if it doesn't coincide with their own dark-aged views of the world. From where I stand now, I feel I have moved away from seeking some form of validation for my feelings from my parents and in starting this thread, I feel I have succeeded in giving myself that validation.

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The thing that will make them respect you is if you go out there and succed in life, for there are losers and winners, them being the pessimists will tell you how you can lose, but if you ignore them or use there help to win then they will respect you.

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It sounds like you're assuming that what they think makes me successful and what I think makes me successful, is completely the same. And since this couldn't be further from the truth, I'm going to say that gaining my parents respect in this manner is certainly nowhere near the top of my agenda. It's not even on the list.

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The truth is we are lucky we have parents who love us unconditionally despite what we think, they could have thrown us out at 18, but they still allow us to grow. Many aren't as lucky.
Be grateful for what they have done for you, and stop looking to place blame and living in the past. Thats like being a rock on the bottom of the river being erroded away, its wearing you down.

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This statement makes me feel like you really haven't payed attention to my first few posts, where I was actually discussing the issue. Or perhaps you interpreted something differently to what I actually intended.

If I could have you interpret my writings in the way I was meaning them to be taken, I would have you understand that I am grateful for some of the things my parents did for me, and that my purpose to starting this thread was to move past this whole situation that, yes, has been wearing me down. I wasn't looking to blame my parents for my problems, but rather to have my problems respected and accepted by them. There's a difference.

It actually annoys me when people say something along the lines of "we should consider ourselves lucky to have parents who didn't abandon in a dumpster and leave us to fend for ourselves". Because, you see, I fully expect people who have children, to be responsible with those children. In a sense, we're not really lucky because as children, it's expected that we are to be taken care of by our parents. You don't award someone a medal just because they could have raped you, but decided not to. Do you see what I mean? I expect people who have children in any western society, to be capable of looking after them both physcially and emotionally, and if they are not capable, to give those children away to someone who is. What does make me lucky? That I have this life of being born and raised in Australia instead of a third world country.

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you know why your self esteem is down, instead of dwelling on it you should find ways to pick yourself back up.

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Getting passed these kinds of issues, does just that. A lot of the time, we do need to dwell on things (with the purpose of trying to move beyond them) that cage us and make us feel inferior and undeserving of our own self acceptance. This is my way of figuring out how to pick myself back up, and in the process, I do actually feel that I have gained more confidence in myself, because I no longer feel like my feelings are unwarrented.