This seems particularly pertinent for this forum because of the severe guilt and self hatred that many experience in trying to come up with a solution for their dysphoria.
Quote"Holy Scripture employs a very wise and very profound expression: "to love one's neighbor as oneself". It requires no quixotic or spurious heroism. It does not say: "You should deny yourself and exist only for the other; you must be less concerned about yourself and more about the other." No!—"as you love yourself". Not more, not less. If we are not at peace with ourselves, we cannot really love anyone else. If we cannot accept ourselves, we will also reject the other. True love is righteous: to love myself as a member of Christ's body—that is where it leads. Oneself as others—to be freed from that false perspective with which all of us are born, that the world revolves around me alone."
Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, ed. Irene Grassl, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy and Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 276.
This resonates strongly with me. I don't think I ever really hated myself but I was unable to love myself. During that whole time my love for others was severely strained and often entirely dead.
Here is a confession that I have never voiced to anyone. When my dysphoria was at its worst I often wished my wife was dead and my children never born. I knew how horrible that thought was and didn't want it to be there, but it was there nevertheless. From the reading above, I can see that all of this was simply the inward being directed outward.
I have found the only way to deal with this that works for me and those dark thoughts are no longer there. They haven't been there now for over a year and a half. By accepting myself and doing what was needed to actually begin loving myself, I can now freely love others too.
Pope Benedict's words spurred another thought too that helps explain the total lack of empathy and love that we feel from many Christians. Its root lies in their theology which states that people are born reprobate and that anything and everything they do from birth to death is totally worthless to God. While this is condensed and simplified it does accurately reflect the theology of John Calvin in particular and the Protestant Reformation in general. There is a strong current of this also in the Catholic Church. How can someone ever truly love themselves if they are continually taught that they are worthless? They cannot.
Jesus said that the Kingdom of God begins within us. This Kingdom though remains elusive without love, beginning with oneself and then pouring out to others.
