Hatred
I've been finding myself thinking a lot about hatred and how it applies to my clients lately. As a Couples Counselor in Seattle, I frequently wind up confronting my partnered clients about whether they experience hatred of each other. Most people have difficulty acknowledging that they do, at times, feel such intense negative feelings.

The issue of hatred has also come up in my practice as an individual therapist in Seattle regarding the hatred that some adult clients feel towards their parents. Many of these clients struggle with their hatred and deny its existence. Quite often, they do not realize that their parents may have them, too.

Part of accepting hatred as a healthy component in our significant relationships involves the acceptance of the paradox that both love and hate can exist at the same time. I might even argue love and hate must exist together in order for a relationship to thrive. Martin Buber writes eloquently on the mutual needs for both independence and together in a philosophical piece entitled "Distance and Relation". In his writing, he points out the unique quality of humans in their need for both distance from others--a sense of uniqueness--as well as the conscious need for affiliation. Given these dual needs and the obvious contradictions that they make, it seems quite reasonable that the very person who might invoke feelings of communion on some accounts might also invoke intense odious feelings in others.

We tend to deny this truth for various reasons, but perhaps the most important is the desire that somebody will love us unconditionally and will see all the good in us. Most relationships start in the euphoric state that denies that the other person has faults and, in the process, allows us to deny our flaws as well. In other words, initial love (whether romantic or parental) focuses on a sense of innocence and perfection. We develop in a way that initially accepts this idea of somebody being all good or all bad. Yet, over time, we know that as we get to know somebody else, we learn of their imperfections and their differences from ourselves. These differences highlight our own shortcomings and the initial ideals of unconditional love begin to fade.

As much as most people accept this notion of love fading, they do not accept the legitimacy of hating their loved ones in response to their disappointment and frustrations. I believe that we redirect those feelings in a number of unhealthy ways that may explain many of our psychological diagnoses and relationship failures.

For example, I see in my counseling in Seattle quite a few couples who feel that they cannot sustain their relationships because of the level of anger and hate they experience. Usually, one partner will declare this hatred from the other unacceptable and say that if it does not stop, he or she will leave the relationship. Because of the views of hatred as incompatible with love, this often resonates with the hating partner, who feels that (s)he must tone down the hatred in order to function as a reasonable partner. In a sense, the couple colludes to reduce the reality that hatred exists.

I believe that hatred may also explain some forms of depression. Often people talk about depression as anger turned inward or directed at oneself. In my practice, I have found that people often turn their anger inward because hating someone (especially a parent whom they view as loving) feels too dangerous and so they cut off their hating feelings and keep them inside. In these cases, I suspect that the client received overt and covert messages about the inappropriateness of hatred. Parents may have verbally condemned it. Or, in cases where children tried to express their hatred, the effect on the parent (who him or herself hoped for unconditional love from a child) proves to threatening to the child as the parent withdraws.

Anxiety sometimes seems to result from the fear of hatred. The anxious patient tends to fear the hatred of a parent and therefore feels an overwelming pressure to control his or her environment to reduce the chance of becoming the object of another person's hatred. Again, this effect might become enhanced by parents who themselves express their hatred but cannot tolerate the coexistence of that hatred with love.

Substance abuse and alcoholism seem to creep up around hatred issues. People drink (or use) to soothe their own feelings of being hated. They also rely on substances when they feel ashamed about their hatred. Because hatred has a taboo feeling to it, the cause of the seemingly hateful behaviors becomes the drugs. In other words, the excuse becomes "I don't hate you; I just act that way when I'm drunk". Coupled with our societal acceptance that addiction is a disease over which we have limited control, clients whose parents drank accept this notion that face value. Unfortunately, they also assume that they, too, will inherit the same lack of control. The result is a sense of powerlessness that helps to explain their parents hateful behaviors without acknowledging the actual hatred.

Through the discussion of hatred and the challenging of clients about their abilities to hate and tolerate hatred, people often find a deeper sense of meaning and explanation in their lives. Relationships that felt untenable become more acceptable when hatred can exist with love.

For more information on Marriage Counseling in Seattle, Couples Counseling in Seattle, or Therapy in Seattle, please visit my website at www.candell.org.

For an interesting read about Hatred, you might check out a book called Hatred by Willard Gaylin. Click on the link below to purchase it from Amazon.



- posted by Eric @ 9:24 AM