Recovering Misanthrope

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I hate people. I wish I didn't feel this way but I do. Has anybody recovered from misanthropic attitudes?

I rather disliked people when I was younger.

I like people better now.

I was quite the misanthrope too, in my late teens and early twenties. I don't dislike the average person any more. Most likely I am neutral, and in some cases I enjoy them in limited doses.

So has getting older made you more tolerant?

was that to me?

yes and no ... I can tolerate a wider range of personality traits and behaviors ... BUT ... there are certain behaviors that I don't have any tolerance for, and I don't feel guilty about that.

Such as the usual things, sociopaths, narcisissts, and so on.

I have suffered from hatred and fear of people, and I have not fully recovered. Rather, I am engaged in a continual process of recovery, which requires effort and focus. Thus, I can now choose to reject hatred and fear, but it is a choice I have to be willing to make. I no longer doubt, as I did when I was younger, that it is a choice I am able to make, and that is what has made the difference.

The experience of being bullied, excluded, harassed and attacked throughout my life led eventually to a highly misanthropic attitude that was in many ways reinforced by being share with the few close friends I did have (who were also marginalized for one reason or another and thus also expressed 'hatred for people'). Additionally, I was (and still am) influenced by a strong personal attachment to the Just World Fallacy; watching people treat each other cruelly and without justice has a more powerful negative effect on me than does being wronged (partly because I believe that I deserve whatever I get and to get something different, I must do something different). And I saw a lot of cruelty, unfairness, insincerity and even sadism in the way some people treated others.

Starting in elementary school, I sought recovery by deliberately choosing to practice perspective-taking, and by obsessive and intent observation of other people, especially in groups. Watching them, I eventually realized that there were many people who reached out to help others in need without stopping to consider if the help was "deserved" or not, I saw people stick up for those who were different, forgive those who had hurt them, etc. This epiphany did not arrive until I was in my late teens, out of high school and in junior college, where for the first time, I was in a social environment that I had chosen, not one which was imposed on me.

Reading fiction and autobiographies helped a lot with this process, because it gave the opportunity to practice perspective taking without experiencing social rejection (since people aren't always comfortable with being studied by an amateur anthropologist from another planet).

Also, unlike the stereotypical autistic person, I do have empathy and can sense the emotions of others. Unfortunately this meant that if they reacted toward me with loathing, disgust, anger or discomfort, I could feel this as if they were my own emotions, leading to bouts of self-hatred after exposure.

Over time, however, I came to understand that people's reactions to each other, and to events in their world, are based on their own needs, including a strong need for social approval and (in some) a desire to increase their social standing. That's the one influence that is naturally much weaker in my life than it seems to be in the lives of most people, so it is understandable that much of what they experienced when interacting with me would have felt like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard.

I find that, ironically, lower expectations help me like people more. If I accept that human nature is lazy, selfish, sh***y, and pettily cruel, then I'm not disappointed by lazy, selfish, pettily cruel, sh***y behavior.

And, yes, it is a daily choice not to hate people for being people and not to live in fear of what the next one might try to do to you.

Ugh, I'm unfortunately going the other way. I used to think if I could have contact with others I could meet some interesting, dynamic people with fresh perspectives and I could learn how to be human from others. But I have contact with people, and mostly, they're awful. I may as well be talking to a rock. Which is disappointing.
I still have some hope that I just haven't run into the right kinds of people yet, so interesting, inspiring people might be out there somewhere, but for the average person you get in your face by the dozen - no.

I have recovered from this to a degree. Most days, I am forgiving and accepting of other people, but very careful too. In my own experience, most of the people I've come across are apathetic and uncaring, and some are downright mean, hateful, and cruel. I've come to realize those in the seemingly apathetic category are just struggling to survive and have little to no extra time or energy to devote to being a friend to a person on the autistic spectrum.

As a child, I had a lot of abusive, dysfunctional, and narcissistic/sociopathic people around me, and it affected me profoundly.

I now see that there are a few decent nice people around, but they are not in the majority.

I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and I personally believe that the world is in a major downhill slide in many ways, including that the percentage of people who are selfish and abusive is becoming higher and higher. In fact my husband can attest to this. He has been serving the public for over 30 years, and says there is a very big increase in abusive, rude, unreasonably demanding people he serves over this past time period.

I get exploited a lot less than I used to. I have learned to be very careful who I trust.

I've actually found myself getting much less tolerant. As society changes more and more rapidly, and I do not, the distance between me and it only grows. When I was in my teens and 20s I found that finding common ground with people was far easier than it seems to be now.

And the more lonely I get the more bitter I get, get withdrawn deeper into myself and the spiral continues downward...

You have to find commonality worth others, its a hard road to go down, but its worth it in the long run.

Recently I discovered that I am in the autistic spectrum and have a discovered there is a community of people who have similar life experiences. But there is still a big wall between me and other people and taking the time to understand that wall takes time and effort.

We all need people autistic or not, to be happy.

I felt like one when I was suffering from a sever depression & was frustrated with life. Working with some people who were nice to me helped some. So did getting over the depression by working on myself & joining WP helped too.