Im a hypocrite for comfort seeking

[I_waste_everything]

If I truly hate myself, ðen I should deny myself all pleasure as punishment.

I've done it before and it felt so real. I even felt real.

But just now, I have bought candy and fully intend to eat it. If I would be true to my Haye, I wouldn't get myself morsels of pleasure.

I disgust myself wiþ my hypocrisy. Have observed ðis about myself and þoht asuch, for decades.

 

[Congratsbaby]

If I truly hate myself, ðen I should deny myself all pleasure as punishment.

I've done it before and it felt so real. I even felt real.

But just now, I have bought candy and fully intend to eat it. If I would be true to my Haye, I wouldn't get myself morsels of pleasure.

I disgust myself wiþ my hypocrisy. Have observed ðis about myself and þoht asuch, for decades.

Maybe the pleasures are part of your punishment. They take away you feeling ' real ' , if that makes sense.

 

[LumberJack]

I disagree. I grew up with a lot of punishment. Somehow I'm still self-destructive and not even fully mature to an adult level, despite being middle aged. If punishment were effective, I would be at least a VP of a major corporation by now (not that I would even respect myself to take such a job, but just saying that I should have accomplished some worldly measure of success). Punishment doesn't fix anything.

Spoiler: Empirical Data:

If you look at the difference between jail systems in the USA and Western Europe, the USA's recidivism (re-offending after release) rate is astronomically higher than that of the Netherlands, for example. What else is notably different, is that the Netherlands approach to criminal behavior is actual rehabilitation - as in getting them the skills they need, both emotionally and professionally, to re-integrate with society. The same happens in isolated exceptions within the US "justice" system, but it's 99.94% based on punishment. If you've done something bad you must be punished. And yet these people who have been punished harder than anyone else in the world aside from torture victims - commit additional crimes far more frequently.

Even in animal conditioning experiments, punishment of an animal increases aggression rather than improving behavior.

So, the question is what do you hope to get out of self-punishment? If the answer is better behavior, I argue that there are better ways. At the same time I still feel like this isn't the actual reason. Whatever it is, though, I don't see how adding suffering on top of suffering accomplishes anything other than creating more suffering. Unless it's good to fill the world with more suffering, there is no benefit to this strategy.

 

[SkyTree]

If I truly hate myself, ðen I should deny myself all pleasure as punishment.

I've done it before and it felt so real. I even felt real.

But just now, I have bought candy and fully intend to eat it. If I would be true to my Haye, I wouldn't get myself morsels of pleasure.

I disgust myself wiþ my hypocrisy. Have observed ðis about myself and þoht asuch, for decades.

As a human being, you deserve at least a basic level of pleasure because you are important. We have all done wrong things, myself included. I also have hated myself for a long time and try to withhold pleasures completely sometimes. But we all deserve a chance at redemption and the opportunity to live a happy life. I used to think I could isolate myself and hurting myself affected no one else. But now I realize that it deeply hurts my loved ones who want me to be happy. Just imagine how the world would look if everyone who has ever done anything wrong (that is, all of us) refused to enjoy anything and just hated themself 24/7. The whole world would be miserable and we would all be saddened by how hurt our loved ones are as well. So please give your self a chance at happiness. If you live completely in self-hatred and despair, you will never be able to do good for others in life because you will be trapped in your own mind hating life. Having mercy on yourself and others is the first step to feeling free enough to genuinely do good in the world. And then both others and you will feel joy. Isn't that better than this trap of self-destruction. I'll pray for you my friend. God bless.