I think a lot about the nature of the inability to confront the-- I don't know what you'd call it, the id, the Jungian shadow, whatever mid-century German horseshit you want to call it-- and how this manifests in a lot of behaviors that are ultimately externalizations of behaviors that we would otherwise aim inwards. This is a difficult thing for me to articulate but I wanna use this as an example, not because this ask is particularly unique but because it's, if anything, kind of uniquely not

The parts of ourselves we find repellent are parts of us we grow increasingly incapable of accepting AS parts of us, and without putting in the effort of wrestling with those parts, I think we enter a kind of sustained, low-grade long-term madness. We say, "No, that's not right, this can't be me, this can't be a part of me, that would make me Bad, that would make me Repulsive, that would make me Evil." And then the only thing left is frantic denial and suppression, but we can't permanently suppress parts of ourselves, and the Things You Hate About Yourself grow and grow until the things you hate about yourself become not even you but this horrible other entity that represents everything you fear to find.

And two things about this:

First, most of it is a frantic attempt at protecting the ego against some of the most mundane things in the world. The fear of being vulnerable and hurt. The desire to hurt in order to feel less vulnerable. The former is humiliating and difficult to wrestle with, and to admit this sincerely feels like exposing a raw nerve to the world. The latter induces guilt and smears the general narrative constructed by the ego that one is a Good Person, and a good person, according to that narrative, does not feel such vindictive impulses.

Second, these twin phenomena combine and, unexamined, lead to persistent behavior of: a) Externalizing the things within the self that disgust you, because to begin to grapple with that disgust within causes you to just hate yourself further, b) Finding a way to attack that externalized representation, which must needs be in a form that makes you feel protected from vulnerability while also fitting into the narrative of a justified attack, to protect the ego that says you are a good person. And it does feel good in the short term, while harming you in the long run because you're still ineffectually attempting to build yourself up while simultaneously wishing you could lop off the parts of yourself you hate like diseased limbs.

You see this in interpersonal relationships, obviously, in all sorts of veins. This whole topic came to mind because a friend of mine is in an abusive relationship with someone who refuses to accept that the relationship is abusive, because he was abused in his childhood and he (I'm sure sincerely!) does not mean to abuse anyone, and is so horrified by the idea that the lashing out he does in response to very real pain COULD be considered abuse that he needs to protect himself by saying he's being gaslit, that's not true, he's the victim and the abuse is actually being directed at him. You see this in larger scales too, with the biggest example imo being the general culture of suburbia that so effectively wipes out the "unfavorable" elements of communal living that it's induced a sort of permanent hypervigilance and failure of toleration that leads its inhabitants to be, well, [gestures at every viral video of people chomping at the bit to become John Wick because the family two houses down put out their recycling too early].

I think there can be a very real danger in looking at the unpleasant and reflexively going, this is entirely Other to me. I can't be this. The idea of something like this residing in me is intolerable and I refuse to believe something like this could exist in me, I cannot even begin to imagine it without feeling tainted. I can't stand it. I won't believe it. And so you lash out, and it helps a bit, but again you can't really run from yourself, you know?

And I think I'm someone who's, if I may toot my own horn, kinda done the work on this front, and it's difficult as a result for me to feel scandalized on a day to day basis, and I think I'm very good at sitting with my discomfort. I also think this makes me very good at recognizing vulnerability when I see it and acting with sympathy because I know what it feels like to show your belly to the world, while also recognizing when I'm being unkind for unkindness' sake because I'm also not ashamed of recognizing when the desire to knock people down a peg for my own self-esteem comes up. I don't think this makes me a saint or anything (God knows this is a constant, iterative process) but I do think it is deeply freeing, and I think it's led me to act in ways I feel proud of saying were aligned with my personal ethics, difficult, and oftentimes humbling.

Anyway this is just my general feel for it to other people. None of this was directed at anon, specifically, because anon is the type of person to see someone talking about shitting themselves, feel revulsion, feel the need to directly express it because they can't sit with the feelings themselves, but are also not committed nor brave enough to do so without hitting "anon" because at the end of the day, they, too, are aware that there is a difference in power between someone who is gross without care and someone who cares so much they can't be quiet about it. At the end of the day, I have turned my anus into the mouth of a volcano and I am still, somehow, more content than someone who navigated to a blog. To the askbox. Externalized their disgust. Concealed their identity because their personal shame outweighs-- always, always outweighs-- anything they can properly direct outwards. And then spent god knows how long refreshing to see if I responded like picking at a scab because any kind of response I give will assuage that self-disgust (a hurt response helping the part of them that feels vulnerable and small, a rude response helping the part of them that is frightened of being unjust in their behavior, either way: ego temporarily soothed through externalization)

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"It is extraordinarily difficult, for example, to teach a wolf to walk on a leash, even if you have raised it from puppyhood and it is quite tame. If you pull, it pulls back automatically, and if you are too insistent and pull too hard, the wolf, no matter how calm and sociable it usually is, panics and tries to escape."

- Don't Shoot The Dog by Karen Pryor about the effectiveness of negative reinforcement on wild animals.