Haters have corrosive effect on everyone
“My husband is a hater,” Lynn told me, downcast.
“If you disagree with him, you’re an idiot. If you care about people, you’re a bleeding heart. If you have different opinions, he calls you every name in the book and wishes you were dead,” she explained.
Lynn’s spouse spews invective on social media, plasters his car with “up yours” stickers and has castigated his adult children for seeing the world differently.
“He scares me,” she confessed. “When he’s raging at people or the world, his whole body shakes and his eyes … well, if looks could kill, he’d be a murderer.”
Lynn has long since abandoned efforts to open a dialogue with him, having learned that doing so ignites an emotional wildfire.
Instead, she keeps her head down, steals away when he is fuming and struggles to stay sane.
“Has he ever assaulted you?” asked.
“Not physically, but verbally,” she answered. “Not as bad as all the people and groups he hates, but enough to worry me that he could cross over that line.”
Living in fear is a deeply corrosive mental state. Think of when you’ve felt in danger and were on high alert. For folks like Lynn who live with a hater, that’s their modus operandi, one that takes a heavy toll on both emotional and physical well-being.
“Every time I hear about a hate crime, I think he might be capable of that, and it just triggers me,” she explained.
Her concern is not over the top. Hate is among the vilest of human emotions, one that too often translates into violent behaviors, including mass murder. It’s one thing to have a fit of anger or even rage that subsides when the situation abates. It’s another to live in a constant state of malice toward others.
Of course, a hateful person pays his or her own price. The body does not take well to emotional toxicity, and research bears out the physical wear and tear that comes from making acrimony a lifestyle.
IOf course, a hateful person pays his or her own price. The body does not take well to emotional toxicity, and research bears out the physical wear and tear that comes from making acrimony a lifestyle.
What’s more, at a core level, most of these people are unhappy with their lives, often feeling marginalized, disrespected and victimized; a recipe for caustic bitterness.
Haters shift blame for their misfortunes onto some external bogeyman. In doing so, they avoid accepting responsibility for the unhappy state of their existence, negating the opportunity to turn things around. What would otherwise be self-hate becomes other-hate. While many haters fit the stereotypic profile of a loner, estranged and troubled, some are successful by socioeconomic standards. But they feel entitled to more, whatever more means in their minds, and believe some “them” are in the way.
Of course, hate often begets hate, as we’ve discovered in our body politic with the breakdown of civil discourse in favor of acrimonious mud-slinging. Worse still is when it erupts into violence against innocents — children, worshippers, shoppers, concertgoers, and the like.
Nonetheless, this malevolent aspect of our nature has power over us only if we give it license.
As Johnny Cash said: “All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate. I choose love.”
Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. Email Chard at outofmymind@philipchard.com or visit philipchard.com.