At one point in my life, hate was an emotion I held tightly. In response I have written The Emotional Cost of Holding Anger and How to Release It.
Before going further, it helps to be clear about what hate actually is. In psychological terms, hate is not simple dislike or disagreement. It is an intense emotional state marked by hostility, aversion, and fixation. Hate seeks certainty, not understanding. It narrows perception and resists nuance.
I hated the hand I was dealt. I hated that the place meant to feel safe looked like happiness on the outside but felt unreachable on the inside. At the time, hate felt justified. It felt protective. It felt like proof that something wrong had happened.
What I did not understand then was that hate is not only emotional. It is biological. It hurts both emotional and physical health.
Stress Response in the Body
What is the Emotional Cost of Holding Anger? Hate activated, the body responds as if under threat. The nervous system shifts into a sustained stress response. Stress hormones rise. Muscles tighten. Heart rate increases. Attention narrows. The body prepares to defend, even when there is nothing left to defend against.
Over time, this state becomes familiar.
Psychology describes this as perseverative cognition, a looping pattern of repetitive negative thought. The mind replays the same narratives, and the body reacts again and again as if the danger is present now. This prolonged activation has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular strain, weakened immune response, emotional volatility, and chronic fatigue.
In other words, hate does not stay in the mind. It embeds itself in the body.
My Own Emotional and Physical Well Being
For many years, I also carried hate for a specific person. This went on well into middle age. Eventually, I let it go. Not because the past changed. Not because the person apologized. Not because I suddenly liked them.
I still do not like that person.
What changed was my awareness.
The only person being harmed by my hate was me. The other person was not in my life. They were not aware of my thoughts. They were untouched. The tension, however, lived inside my body. The looping thoughts lived in my nervous system. The cost was entirely my own.
Letting go did not mean approval. It meant freedom.
As I became more aware, I began noticing how casually the word hate is used in everyday language. We hate traffic. We hate the news. We hate inconvenience. We hate foods. The word is spoken lightly, but the body does not experience it lightly.
Language Matters because the Body Listens
When hate becomes a casual descriptor, the nervous system learns to treat minor discomforts as threats. Emotional energy turns inward and begins to twist on itself. The result is chronic tension, agitation, and a constant state of opposition. Hate, repeated often enough, trains the body to remain unsettled.
Over time, the word loses its precision and gains power.
Our media and entertainment environments reinforce this pattern. Outrage captures attention. Anger drives engagement. Hatred becomes normalized, even encouraged, because it keeps people watching, clicking, and reacting. The result is not clarity, but exhaustion.
Politics has become a perfect host for this emotional state
Many people openly say they hate our current president, Donald Trump. For some, that hatred is so strong that nothing outside the emotional narrative can be seen. I do not hold a fixed opinion of him. What I observe instead is how hatred affects perception.
When hate takes hold, listening stops. Complexity collapses. Everything becomes proof of what the emotion already believes. This is not unique to one political figure or party. It is a human response when emotion overrides regulation.
Hate narrows the lens.
And because hate is embodied, it spills outward. It affects relationships. It alters tone. It shortens patience. It keeps the body in a state of readiness for conflict, even in moments that require discernment and care.
I have also watched our culture move quickly, sometimes faster than people can emotionally process. Ideas around identity, belonging, and reality shift at a pace that leaves many people ungrounded. When the nervous system feels unmoored, hate can feel stabilizing, even when it is destructive.
Hate offers simple answers. It gives a target. It avoids stillness.
But it comes at a cost.
- It costs clarity.
- It costs health.
- It costs peace.
- It costs connection.
Dislike allows distance. Hate demands attention.
How to Release Hate
Letting go of hate does not create emptiness. It creates space.
In that space, I found something quieter and far more sustaining. Thankfulness, not as forced positivity, but as a grounding practice. Kindness, not as performance, but as maintenance of inner clarity. These became ways to regulate the nervous system, to choose where energy flows, and to prevent old loops from re forming.
This is why thankfulness and kindness are central to my work. They are not moral gestures. They are forms of stewardship.
This page exists within my broader Soul Stewardship work, because tending to the soul also means tending to the emotional states that shape the body, the mind, and our relationships with the world. Stewardship asks us to notice when something once useful has become harmful, and to release it with intention.
This is not about politics. It is about sovereignty. It is about recognizing when an emotion has overstayed its purpose and choosing to step out of the loop.
Releasing hate does not mean forgetting what happened or pretending harm did not occur. It means refusing to let the body remain trapped in a state that slowly consumes the life it was meant to protect.
If this reflection stirred something familiar, you may find grounding in the practices I return to when emotional loops loosen their grip. Here are a few thoughts on coping mechanism that is fun.