“Does everyone hate me?” may have gone through your head at some point or another. Maybe it’s a recurring thought that consistently gives you anxiety, maybe it’s a symptom of mental health struggles, or maybe it’s just the consequence of a bad day. Regardless of the ‘what’ behind these thoughts, it’s important to try and understand why you feel this way and what to do with it.
While there is no clinical definition or diagnosis for thinking everyone hates you, there are quite a few mental and psychological issues that play key roles. These can range from depression and paranoia, to anxiety and feelings of insecurity. These different factors can become so overwhelming at times that they give rise to extremely negative thoughts.
Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist and director of Comprehend the Mind in New York City, shares that logic and common sense are often outweighed by worries. This can cause people to feel overwhelmed and distressed to the point where an idea or worry becomes the centre of their lives. As a result, this idea of feeling like everyone hates you becomes all that you think about, which only further fuels the thought and conditions your mind to focus on nothing else. Hafeez adds that constant stress from mulling over negative thoughts can adapt the way you think and transform thoughts into ones that aren’t rational or healthy.
This eventually leads to a very harmful pattern of picking apart every detail of your life—your conversations with people, going over and over every little detail of your day, what you said and did, and overall constantly criticizing yourself and being hyperaware of everyone and everything. It’s exhausting and can become so frustrating when you find yourself second-guessing your words and actions as your every move becomes dictated by the fear of being disliked.
I have struggled with this issue myself and have often discussed it in therapy. With time, I was able to identify the two biggest reasons behind my feeling that everyone hates me: I care a lot about what people think of me and I have convinced myself that everyone thinks the way I do.
We always hear about how everyone needs to stop worrying about other people’s opinions and focus on themselves. While it has become a cliche, it doesn’t make it any less true. There are so many people in this world, many of which won’t be of any importance to you in a few years, and it isn’t reasonable to make them the centre of your life.
Most of the time, the people who impact you negatively in this process of approval-seeking will not be in your life in a few years. On the other hand, your friendships with the people whose opinions impact you positively will continue to provide value to your life as you get older. These friendships are the ones that matter, and will only become deeper and stronger with time. By disregarding those who impact your self-perception negatively, having only those who make you feel positive about yourself allows you to have more confidence in yourself and in your friends. With time, you will only grow more aware of their love for you.
Looking back to just a year or two ago, I have already completely forgotten about the people whose opinions I cared so much about that affected me in a negative way. I have grown closer to the friends I was convinced were lying about liking me and have recognized that it was all just in my head.
As for thinking everyone thinks the same way I do, this is a completely human thing to do. We can’t help that we are the main characters of our own lives and have no other perspectives and thoughts to mull over but our own. It’s only natural that we convince ourselves that our thoughts are the centre of the universe and that everyone must feel the same way.
The reality is that this is completely unreasonable.
While you may look in the mirror and see a bunch of flaws or look back and cringe and what you said last week, you are truly the only one doing that. If we are all the centre of our own lives, does that not mean that we are all too busy focusing on ourselves to criticize others? I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend my spare time remembering something weird someone said last Tuesday at 10 in the morning; the same way I do to myself.
Ways to Cope
Maybe your reasons for feeling like everyone hates you are the same as mine, or maybe they are completely different. Regardless, it’s important to know that there are things you can do and steps you can take toward overcoming these feelings.
Identify the Roots of your Feelings
What is it that’s triggering you and making you feel like everyone hates you? Is there a specific person or friend group that you often get these thoughts around? Does it happen often when you’re in a bad mood, or feel overwhelmed or stressed with school or work?
It is a lot easier said than done, but if you really start paying attention to your surroundings and emotions when you get those thoughts, you can determine the cause and perhaps even how to eliminate it.
Check in with your Body
Once you’ve checked in with yourself mentally and your environment, it’s important to recognize that your physicality plays a role as well. Sometimes feelings of anxiety or worry can be a direct result of being in a poor physical state.
Ask yourself: Did you sleep well? Have you eaten? Have you had water? Are you feeling physically okay? Have you put aside any time recently to just relax and do some self-care? If the answer to any of these questions is no, perhaps it’s a sign to remedy it and see if that does anything to better how you feel and think.
It sounds so simple but it happens all too often. Time and time again I have found myself spiralling and feeling extremely anxious—like the whole world is against me, only to realize that all I need is a sandwich and a nap.
Reframe your Situation
Try and identify a few alternative explanations for why you feel the way you do. Give people the benefit of the doubt instead of making assumptions and deciding things rashly. Do you feel hated because your friends aren’t responding to your texts? Maybe they’re busy with classes. You sure don’t respond to your texts quickly 100% of the time, it’s only fair that you consider that others do the same. Are you feeling disliked because someone gave you a weird look? Consider that you might just be reading into something that isn’t there. Was it really a weird look? And if so, are you just assuming it was for a negative reason? Did someone say something to make you feel uneasy? Maybe they are having a bad day and feeling snappy or off, and can’t help but express that in their words and actions, and it has nothing to do with you personally.
With time, practice and patience, you can reframe how you look at a situation and transform your negative self-perceptions and thoughts.
Make a mental list
Finally, one of my own most used strategies to stop thinking negative things is to make mental lists: 3 pieces of evidence that support my conclusion that everyone hates me, and 3 that refute it.
Usually, I can’t even find 3 for the conclusion that I’m hated. This makes me take a step back and come out of my head and back down to reality. By doing this, you get to realize that the majority of your thoughts are baseless and are mainly just you overthinking and looking way too deeply into things. This is what causes your thoughts to spiral out of control. There’s a big chance that a lot of it is just your imagination going crazy because you focus on the fear of being hated so much it puts your thoughts into a chaotic jumble.
At the end of the day, the straightforward and most basic truth is that it is impossible to be hated by everyone in the same way it is impossible to be loved by everyone. You cannot be liked by everyone you meet and that’s okay, but it also means that you also can’t be disliked by everyone. There are far too many people in this world each with their own issues, feelings, struggles, and responsibilities and far too little time to address all our own personal things. This leaves little to no room for hating people without a viable reason.
The people around you, friends or not, have too much going on in their own lives to spend time thinking so much about you. I promise that you think about them thinking about you way more than they actually do.
You are not alone in feeling the way you do. Please be gentle with yourself and take care of yourself. With time, everything will make more sense, and you will grow and learn to adapt and overcome these thoughts.
Please seek outside help if you need it. Friends, family, specialists, etc. For mental health support in Ontario, seek out local therapists and other mental health professionals. Visit Ontario.ca for more information and resources.