If you're like me, you've probably asked yourself this question a bajillion times by now: Why does everybody hate me?
It's a good question, and it's usually not unwarranted. You're not being paranoid. Have you ever noticed that the people who ask this question the most are usually the most hated? That's because the answer to this question is the question itself.
Most people really don't care about you enough to hate you. That's the truth. And even if almost everybody did hate you, you will still always have a percentage of human beings in the world who do not hate you. That is how life works. There will always be people who hate you and people who don't.
So let's focus on the people who do hate you. Why do they?
Well, some people are simply hateful people. They might be jealous, angry, sad. That doesn't have anything to do with you.
But for the rest of the haters, I'll say this: I'm a big believer in self-fulfilling prophecies. When you believe that everybody hates you, you tend to do a lot of things that might quicken that process.
For example, you will alienate yourself from everybody you meet, because you believe they hate you. You will sabotage your relationships intentionally or unintentionally, because you don't trust them... because you believe they hate you.
Believing people hate you means not giving them a chance. By not giving people a chance to see you for who you are, you are communicating that you do not trust them. Which leads to people not trusting you, which leads you to hating them, which leads them to hating you. It's a vicious cycle. And we usually only realize we're doing it when it's too late.
PARDES! PLEASE TELL ME... HOW CAN I STOP THE CYCLE?
Well, person who thinks everybody hates them, the first thing to do is to calm, the fuck, down. As someone who has been dealing with social anxiety my entire life, I can tell you that the only way to stop thinking everybody hates you is to tackle your anxiety problems, head on:
Stop caring.
It's that simple. Just stop caring about what everybody thinks! Let it go. It really doesn't matter.
Say everybody did actually hate you. So what? How much is that really going to effect your life? There are plenty of hateful and hated people in this world who are doing just fine, if not better than most. You'll be fine.
Now, from a realistic perspective, everybody doesn't actually hate you. You wouldn't know this when you're in your state of absolute mental freakout, but once you calm down you'll start to notice: everybody doesn't actually hate you! Yay. And then you can finally move on with the next step to not being hated by everybody:
Accept yourself.
When you accept who you are and learn to love yourself and stop seeing reason for everybody to hate you, they will eventually follow. A wise person once said, "you teach people how to treat you." Stop asking me who said that, I'm too damn lazy to Google it.
When you believe that you have a reason to be loved, others will believe it too. And when you believe that you have a reason to be hated, others will believe it too. People are really not that tricky.
ONE LAST QUESTION, PARDES: What if I already made everybody hate me? Is it ever too late to turn back?
Remember how I said there will always be a fraction of the population who still doesn't hate you? That fraction is proof that it's never too late. No matter how hateful or hated you think you are, there will always be people who will not hate you. Focus on those people and their positive thoughts. Eventually, when you allow yourself to forget that once-upon-a-time everybody supposedly hated you, the haters will forget it too. Love yourself blindly, and they'll love you blindly too.
It's really that simple.