I had a similar realization after reading Radical Compassion by Tara Brach. The concept of the two darts of suffering in Buddhism has also been extremely valuable to me. The first dart is the immediate pain (laundry didn't get done) and the second dart is the self-inflicted pain caused by the stories we tell to ourselves ("I can't even get a simple load of laundry done, I am a terrible person who will never accomplish anything.") It's usually the second dart that causes the most suffering despite being entirely created in our own heads and self inflicted.

My personal mantra is (roughly):

Be forgiving with your past, disciplined with your present, hopeful with your future.

I'm not a Buddhist or religious at all for that matter. But I've come to appreciate the power of rituals, prayer, meditation and spirituality in some sense. In the Sermon of the Mount it is said that sin starts in the mind (very roughly paraphrasing). In Buddhism there is the concept of planting seeds, karma, with our thoughts and actions.

I understand these things as powerful concepts, packaged as stories and metaphors. They can help us to face difficult emotional challenges (fear, hatred, pride etc.) in two ways: By preparing our minds through a form of mental hygiene and by drawing from fantastic/spiritual frameworks in overwhelming situations.

So the mantra above is a way for me to operationalise a kind of healthy self-reflection (I tend to over-reflect) and put different types of thoughts and motivations into context. It helps!

Counter-acting this negative train of thought is a goal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression, and it's very successful. But also way more expensive than pills.

I had an interesting experience with this a few years ago when I went through some pretty bad depression and anxiety. My first step of getting better was rejecting the bad feelings saying to myself "These feelings don't make sense. Stop feeling them" and that made me feel a bit better. But to really improve I had to make the realization that the feelings are a part of myself even if I don't want them to be, and that I can do better even if I don't feel good.

>>goal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression, and it's very successful. But also way more expensive than pills.

short term, maybe, but I bet its cheaper long term :)

Thank you for this reference - it's taken me on a lovely journey of reading!

When I punish myself I find I shrink or cringe away from the subject of concern, rather than motivated to engage with it

Depression is the greatest enemy of doing anything, feeling bad is basically always a net negative on productivity

I identify strongly with this. I’m overall functional, even reasonably successful, in work. But in work and even more strongly in personal matters, I can shrink away from unpleasant items well past the point of it being reasonable.

I’ve literally wasted dozens of hours avoiding a task that ends up taking 15 minutes. Could be a phone call, dealing with some minor tax or DMV issue, writing a simple but important email, or whatever. Often paperwork or tedious phone call related, but it’s clearly not productive behavior.

Yup.

One of the most eye-opening perspectives for me was to ask myself -- how would I judge a friend if it were them rather than me? In this case, if a friend didn't do their laundry that day?

Suddenly I realized I was holding myself to a standard 10x what I was expecting of anyone else. And stopping that was life-changing. It just took deciding to treat myself as kindly as I treat others.

Just like you -- I still get basically the same amount of stuff done, or maybe 90% of before -- but stop feeling horribly guilty about myself all the time. And if I lost 10%, it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

This is the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT); hating oneself or forgiving oneself are behaviours of the mind (cognition), and the idea is that we can fall into negative behaviours and get stuck there, and can learn positive behaviours instead.

A realted sticking point is when we can't learn positive beahviours, because we don't want to give up the negative ones - e.g. "I deserve to hate myself for not doing the laundry, only a disgusting slob does no laundry and is happy about it, at least I have the virtue of self-hate" and then changing involves debugging why that behaviour is stuck and unsticking it.

Ten common cognitive distortions that lead to self loathing, anxiety, depression, and others are described here: https://www.verywellmind.com/ten-cognitive-distortions-ident...

Dr Burns' podcast talking through all the techniques he's developed for identifying and changing and overcoming these is here: https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/ he also has a new book out, and charges therapists for using his materials, but the podcast is entirely free.

I think Dr Burns' development of techniques to unstick the "I want to change but I don't deserve to change" predicament is something which could help lots of internet people who are depressed, anxious, miserable, self-loathing, and lots of people who have been going to therapists for years talking over issues but unable to change them, and is something that overlaps with what people want from meditation and from gurus like Eckhart Tolle, but is much more practical with techniques you can try (probably with a therapist, but maybe alone) and confirm whether they worked not in minutes rather than years.

Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), as a further development of CBT, seems to be even better geared towards forgiveness, acceptance and commitment to the goals you actually deeply care about. (Haven't tried it personally though)

A great overview here: https://www.metafilter.com/182938/We-Hurt-Where-We-Care

I can recommended ACT for folks with depression largely stemming from life situations (as opposed to clear medical issues).

The death of my parents (among other life events) has been difficult for me and ACT has helped.

But if you don’t mind me asking—what happens when you, well, don’t have the laundry done, and you realize you actually really need a clean shirt? (Or whatever.)

At the risk of being ELIZA, what is it you are afraid will happen which you think self-hate is protecting you from? The answers are probably distorted by fear instead of a realistic appraisal of what will actually happen. How often do you "actually really need" a clean shirt as a matter of serious consequence? And when you do, do you really have no options? Could you beg one from a neighbour or buy one at short notice or wash one quickly? If you don't NEED one could you wear a jacket over a less clean shirt? If this is going to worry you could you keep a clean or unopened shirt in the closet for emergency "I didn't do any laundry" wear only, just to guard against this situation?

> "what happens when you, well, don’t have the laundry done, and you realize you actually really need a clean shirt? (Or whatever.)"

Sensible answer, ideally you say to yourself "I don't have a clean shirt, what options do I have?" and consider the best available option and use it, absent the self-hatred and judging and putdowns and bad feelings and stuff which isn't helping anyway.

[Edit: I missed something major in this response; it's not necessary to make all the bad feelings go away entirely and be happy with everything. It's more that you can choose - if feeling bad does help motivate you to do the laundry, keep some of it. It's the "I didn't do laundry, I'm 100% a terrible person, a lazy slob worse than everyone, I fail at everything I don't deserve to live, woe woe" spiral which is an overkill response. You might decide to keep 50% intensity self anger, or 10% intensity self-ticking-off or 5% intensity self-eye-roll. Whatever you decide is enough suffering to be motivating, if any.]

As I understand OPs story, that happens with or without the self hate.

Figuring out a way to get the laundry done should in theory be easier once you are not being bullied by yourself.

I think this approach only works if you're already too hard on yourself. If you live like a slob and tell yourself to continue living like a slob then it's not going to help you much.

You can alternatively decide that despite the fact that you "live like a slob" you are sufficiently happy, healthy, and productive. And that the standard that says "this is slobbery" (which comes from projecting an external viewpoint) is not relevant to you, so you can ignore it.

(You can also substitute any X, where X is not harmful behavior, for "slobbery".)

speaking as a procrastinator. I wear a dirty shirt (or whatever). And no one cares, or probably notices, and the world doesn't implode.

Speaking as somebody who used to have to sit close to others in a cube farm; we do notice, you stanky bastard.

Does it stop at not doing the laundry “or whatever”? Or does your procrastination sneak into other aspects of your life?

Pretty much everything. It sometimes causes mild annoyance to people, or forces me to drop everything to get something done. But as a wise man told me "if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.".

I definitely fall into some of these patterns; that being said there’s a pretty likely chance of me just buying new clothes

> Downsides might include being overall more apathetic and possibly less motivated (but that might also be an illusion

FWIW, Sidartha might say “You’ve given up frivolities and potentially closer to giving up desire. You’re one step closer to enlightenment.”

The symptoms of enlightenment (“a positive”) are the same as apathy and lacking motivation (“a negative”). Everything is a matter of framing :). I’m glad you’ve chosen a mental model that frames your imperfections as learning opportunities rather than justification for self-punishment.

Be good to yourself, this is the true antidepressant.

The problem Is I see reminders to my failures constantly (I have mint.com open on one of my monitors). I can’t easily escape being an abject failure because of my lack of social class and status.

That’s why people do things like religion—it gives you a way to establish purpose and meaning that is independent of your economic standing or potential.

It sounds like you are being unfair to yourself, perhaps brutally so. Would you consider others of your social class and status abject failures?

That sounds deeply painful. Why choose to keep a constant reminder up? If you're lucky you'll be able to forget about it for a brief instant but it sounds like you have intrusive thoughts that won't let you forget. There's medication for that, among other things, if you so choose.

Recognizing failure is a good thing. Now it really depends how we see failure. I like to see it as opportunity to grow.

The worrying thing here is that you associate a specific failure with your being: "being an abject failure". Ridiculous! You know better. Class and status are just smoke and mirrors.

I sincerely hope you realize that you are not defined by the numbers on some website, will face your challenge head on, grow stronger on every step and most importantly recognize that you are not alone with this.