Have you ever felt a strong need to rid yourself of hatred? How did you do it?

Hate is not good at all. You need to sit and get your head around that. Then just find your inner peace.

Talking with a therapist worked for me.

I can only think of one time I really felt hate for someone who, I felt, had betrayed me. I sat there immersed in my hatred and I visualized his severed head in a gutter rushing with water. I was so startled at this gruesome sight that my feelings had concocted, that the feeling went away. I finally learned how things might have been from his point of view. I wrote a letter and forgave him.
Now, if yours is a hatred that is less specific, it’ll require more analysis on your part. You need to find out what it is that rankles you so much specifically. If it’s something you can’t do anything about, you have to look beyond it. Why is it causing such anger and despair, because that is what hatred is. Is it really worth all that concentrated, unhealthy thought? Aren’t you worth more than that? Then go do something physical with all the strength you have: skip stones; chop wood; run; etc. With each throw, chop or step, let a little hate out. When you’re totally exhausted, it’ll be gone. Then don’t let it back in. If it sneaks in again, start over, maybe with a different exercise, but harder than you did last time. Find strength in your own self to let it go.
That’s the inexpensive way. Alternatively, you could see a therapist.

You could try a gun and a picture of whatever is ticking you off. just shoot the picture multiple times. Instant release valve. Guarenteed!

Find the parties responsible. Tell them how you feel. Tell them that you’re not going to hate them any longer, and mean it. And you don’t have to conclude an issue to forgive the responsible parties, either; just realize that they are fallible humans like yourself, and know not what they do.

But perhaps the situation needs to be resolved. Hatred of evil is a good thing, in a way – it propels us to fix the evil.

I went thru a “spiritual” process that has taken me thru a series of steps regarding learning about my ego & how to recognize the difference between ego responses & more logical & realistic responses to situations. Learning more about my ego & my “self” on all levels & layers actually helps me to release hatred of others or of things etc. it helps me to better understand others & find peace within myself rather than looking for it from some outside source that will disappoint my expectations.

Turn it into pity.

^^ Agree. Compassion might work.

I feel hatred, and were I to rid myself of it, there would be nothing left to define me.

But in your case, you feel that it burdens, traps and torments you; beyond that I have no suggestion, but knowing what you told us should be a great weapon in ridding yourself of it. You already know it ain’t no good, and knowing is half the war, or so they say.

Is there no way to distance yourself from the source of this hatred and focus on something else?

Distancing definitely works and in time it will fade and you will feel that a huge part of your time was wasted on it.

I think hate comes from hurt. For me to hate someone, the person has to have hurt me terribly. For a period I think I hated my ex. Not for long but I was in such pain because of his behaviour that it manifested as hate. I was also raped as a younger woman and I hated the man who did that. I think if you can start to work through the hurt, the feelings of hatred will be reduced.

Members of my family had hurt me greatly. I didn’t hate them but I was finding it very hard not to feel very consumed by the hurt. As @gailcalled suggested, therapy can help you to work through why the person/situation has such a profound effect on your and can help you to find ways to cope. If you don’t want to go to counselling, what about writing about whatever is happening. Just as a way of getting out your feelings. It might help. Writing can be so cathartic.

In your situation (if I’m right regarding who/what this is about), I don’t know how to stop hating what this person is doing to you/your life. It will be much easier to look at it more charitably once it’s over, but that is a long way away. Talking to a therapist can’t hurt, and limiting your contact with this person to email only will help, too. I wish you the best, girlie.

In my case, I found – through meditation, mindfulness, and serious contemplation – a few things about hatred/anger (I’ll mix them below because I find they are closely connected) and myself:
– I believed deep down that my anger was hurting the people who had hurt me. This is clearly not the case. My anger was hurting me.
– I believed that anger was the only acceptable response to a wrong. That is, somehow being angry was required of me because that is the moral response.
– I believed that the energy felt when experiencing anger was without side effects. In other words, I could easily get hooked on feeling a rush of adrenaline and not realize that it was causing me to suffer needlessly.
– When I experimented with letting go of anger – even for minor things in daily life – I found that I had more energy and felt better.
– I realized that my ideological beliefs about a better world were in conflict with my addiction to hate and resentment. Compassion works for me and simultaneously improves the world for other people. Win win.

I just re-read your question and realize that the source of anger is not something in the past. It’s still happening right now. One way you could look at this is to consider it an opportunity. You don’t have to look back and resolve your anger through some more indirect means. You have the opportunity to address it now – in real time. It’s difficult without the details. If the source of anger is too great, maybe you could start real small. Discover for yourself how you can benefit from letting go of anger, and it might just seem obtainable to spread this to other areas of your life.

Hate eats away at your soul like a cancer, fortunately it plays no role in my life.

I used to work for the prison systems. I walked into that job thinking everyone was equal… and that everyone eserved the benifet of the doubt. After a while, I found myself automatically distrusting certain minorities because every day, all I saw was minorities trying to get one over on me. I realized this, and found a new job as soon as I could because I did not want to be that kind of guy.

Now please dont think I am a biggot. Every day, day in and day out, I saw the worst of the worst. When that is all you see for the majority of the day, what conclusions are you supposed to draw?

I have felt that kind of hatred before and for quite awhile it practically consumed me. In my case, the person is long gone out of my life, but I knew then and still know, today, that he is out there creating havoc and pain for other people. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it that won’t ruin me financially or make me end up in jail for murder.

So what I had to do was stop thinking about him in a manner that made me constantly wonder how I could get him or punish him (even though he deserves that). Now I try not to think of him at all or when I do, I try to come up with other images and I definitely have to come up with positive activities to occupy my mind when thoughts of him pop up.

And the other thing I have done is to try to live my life in a “Pay it Forward” kind of way. Even though I can’t change him, or stop him from behaving like he does, or ever repair the damage that he did, I can do things to make the world better for others, even if it’s just in small ways.

In your particular situation, since the “problem person” is not likely to go away any time soon, you need to come up with ways to limit your contact with him in ways that you can still function the way that you legally have to with him. That may be by only communicating by e-mail as some of the others have said, or to pick an intermediary (maybe a lawyer, a strong friend, or maybe the others have some good ideas for whom could stand in as an intermediary). Then make everything very businesslike with the person as much as you possibly can.

For you own sake, come up with every scenario you can think of and brainstorm with yourself, your friends, us, and even your lawyer, and come up with solutions and ways in which you will deal with or handle these situations when they arise. It’s so much easier to know exactly what you are going to do, if you have a plan in place (with a couple of contingency plans in place in case the first thing doesn’t work). It’s so much easier than simply having to come up with a plan on the fly. I think that’s the worst part for you, at this point, is that you keep getting blind-sided by this person’s actions. So come up with a ridiculously long list of situations that he might pull out of his hat, and then come up with lists of ways that you will deal with each of them. Write it out, don’t just think about them. Put your ideas down on paper and read them over occasionally so you’ll know what to do when he does X, Y or Z.

I also highly recommend talking to a therapist, simply for the support they can give you and for the mental tools they can give you to help you better cope. At this point, you probably can’t do it on your own. Will power alone is not enough, you need a strong advocate (the therapist) who is not invested emotionally in the situation.

In the meantime, let’s hope that he somehow becomes interested in sky-diving, or hiking alone during the winter time, or motorcycle riding or flying experimental aircraft. Nice safe activities for him : )

It feels no good. I tried following ways.

When I was on a seashore, I wrote on sand what I hated. Seeing the writing disappear as waves pass over it, I felt little light as if waves erased hatred from my mind simultaneously.

If hatred is too dire, you may try to write on a piece of paper or take a photograph and burn it.

If you believe in God, you can take your hatred off on God. Advantage is that it’s between you and God, and God forgives you. You need just apologize when you feel so afterwards.

I pray may hatred go away from you and make you feel lighter, better, and happier. May God always love you.