Why does it feel like everyone hates me?

You’re going about your daily life, and out of nowhere the thought comes: Everyone hates me.

There may be different versions of this thought:

No one ever liked me. People used to like me but now they hate me. It feels like everyone is mad at me all the time.

“It is not uncommon to feel as if we’re being judged, evaluated, or disliked—it’s one of the most common fears that humans have,” says Dr. Patrick McGrath, PhD, the Chief Clinical Officer at NOCD. 

But if the everyone-hates-me feeling is persistent, it could lead to isolation, anxiety, and other impacts that mess with your mental health. Let’s explore what’s really going on when you feel like the world has turned on you—and what you can about it.

Does everyone actually hate you? What could be going on.

This sense that people around you—even those you’re closest with—don’t actually like you can emerge as a regular, intrusive chatter in your head. There’s no set underlying cause for why this happens, but here are some common reasons why these thoughts manifest:

• Personalization. This is a cognitive distortion where you take things too personally or believe that you are the cause of something when you’re not. Let’s say you had plans to meet up with a friend who canceled at the last minute. When personalization is at play, you may conclude she canceled because she doesn’t want to hang out with you—when in reality the reason was something unrelated to you, like a work deadline or simply your friend’s need to decompress at home. 
• Loneliness: When you’re especially isolated, you may be more likely to worry that everyone hates you. Social media can intensify this belief: As you’re home alone, you scroll through your phone and think that all your friends are having fun without you—and don’t want you around.
• Hyper-sensitivities: Those considered highly sensitive persons (HSPs), a.k.a people with sensory-processing sensitivity, are extremely affected by both physical and psychological stimuli. When you’re a HSP, you tend to focus on the slightest changes in others. You might come away from an interaction thinking, “I noticed her frown when I approached her” or “Her voice changed when I started speaking.” Being a HSP makes you more prone to overthinking, which can lead you to draw conclusions that you’re not wanted or liked.
• The wrong company: Sometimes that feeling that you’re not liked is simply an indication that the company you keep is not a good fit for you. Maybe it’s because you’ve outgrown certain friend groups, or because you don’t like to engage in gossip and that’s alienated you from some people. 
• Delusions: These are irrational beliefs about something untrue. One tell-tale sign of delusions is “reading into stuff that people are doing” and making assumptions, according to Dr. McGrath. For example, you might think your neighbors despise you because they only take out the trash late at night when you’re trying to wind down. “They know that it annoys me, so that’s why they do it.” You’re making up a scenario, when the truth could be that they work late and it’s convenient for them to do chores after their shift.
• Attachment style. If you have an insecure attachment style, you may have a fear of being abandoned by others. You may also shy away from intimacy, which can lead to feelings of loneliness or separateness which your brain interprets as “nobody likes me.”

Are these worries a sign of a mental health condition?

Not necessarily, but there are some mental health conditions associated with recurrent worries about being rejected or disliked. 

For instance, thinking everyone hates you is a “hallmark” sign of social anxiety, says Melanie Dideriksen LPC, CAADC, a therapist at NOCD. If you have social anxiety disorder, you may have an outsized fear of embarrassment or others judging you. Some people with social anxiety feel nervous about leaving the house and facing this embarrassment. They’ll even say things like, “When I go outside I feel like people hate me,” notes Dickerson. 

Additionally, low self-esteem is common in those experiencing depression, which can translate to a feeling that you’re “unloved” or “unwanted.”

Sometimes, however, the reason someone is consumed with a fear that everyone hates them isn’t so obvious. Rather than being a symptom of anxiety or depression, it’s a sign that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is at play.

As one Reddit user put it: “I keep doing rituals and obsessing over if people like me because I’m scared that people hate me. I am doing certain patterns and thinking things in my head in an effort to make people like me or protect my reputation. I know it sounds stupid but I get really worried that the few people in my life will leave me.”

These kinds of intrusive thoughts (aka obsessions) and rituals or mental acts (compulsions) are key characteristics of OCD, a chronic (but highly treatable) mental health condition. When people keep returning to the same relationship concerns over and over again—whether it’s platonic, romantic, or even workplace relationships—a particular subtype of OCD known as relationship OCD (ROCD) may be to blame.

Different from fleeting thoughts about being disliked, OCD fears are persistent and all-consuming, and people with the condition do compulsions to try to neutralize these thoughts or escape them altogether. For instance, they may seek constant reassurance that they are liked. Or they might replay interactions over and over in their head—a compulsion known as “mental reviewing”—looking for clues that can prove or disprove worries about being hated. 

What to do if you think everyone hates you

It’s quite distressing to constantly feel as if no one likes you, but it’s something you can overcome. Here are some tips:

• Question your assumptions: When every interaction is run through a critical lens, it transforms even neutral or positive interactions into something negative. “You might look at someone’s expression and imagine what they’re thinking or that they’re judging you,” says Dideriksen. Be honest with yourself: Is my belief based on facts, or based on a potentially false assumption?

• Focus on one person at a time: If you’re overwhelmed with the belief that “everyone” hates you, get specific. Look at your relationships with individual people rather than everyone as a whole—and if there’s something that actually needs to be addressed, go talk to that person. “Why don’t I just ask the person what’s going on instead of making assumptions and trying to figure it out on my own,” McGrath says. 
• Practice acceptance: It’s extremely difficult to be liked by everyone we meet. Some people just aren’t a match, and that’s okay. By learning to accept this, it becomes easier to deal with negative thoughts about how others perceive us.

• Sit with uncertainty: “Can you ever be 100% assured enough that people like you? The answer of course is no,” Dr. McGrath says. “So what do we have to do? We have to learn just to live with the fact that we’re never going to have this guaranteed a hundred percent answer.”

Dr. McGrath points out that learning to sit with uncertainty is especially important for those with OCD. In fact, that’s one of the goals of exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, which is a therapy specifically designed to treat all forms of OCD. 

ERP is done in partnership with an ERP-trained therapist, and it’s an active form of therapy—meaning you’ll do certain exercises or practices that are called exposures. 

During an initial appointment, you will work with your therapist to identify your primary fear. “The core might be that people hate you, but it could be something even deeper,” says Dideriksen. “We want to make sure we’re figuring out what’s at the root of this. That way, we can design our exposure exercises specifically to target those fears.” For example, do you have a fear that others hate you, or is it more about an underlying fear that you’re a bad person?

The response prevention part of ERP asks you to resist performing compulsions. An exposure you might be encouraged to do: Instead of sending out a mass text to your friend group asking if they all hate you, you’d write down in a journal, “I can’t be 100% sure that all my friends aren’t mad at me.”

Apart from treating OCD, ERP is also highly effective when it comes to social anxiety. If you’re isolating yourself due to social anxiety—and then incorrectly assuming that you’re being rejected because you spend a lot of time alone—you might start the ERP process by making a list of specific social situations you fear most. Then, with the help of a trained specialist, you’d learn how to expose yourself to these situations. Over time, when you realize that your worst fears don’t come true, your social anxieties dissipate. 

One way this might work is by taking small steps to reach out in social ways—text a friend or acquaintance, ask a neighbor to come over for coffee, go to that event you were invited to, or even make small talk with a stranger. 

Later, when you worry that they hate you, you’re taught to take a step back and avoid analyzing the situation for clues that you disliked. “In ERP therapy, it’s not our job to figure out if that’s the case or not. Our job is to help our clients sit with that uncertainty and discomfort,” says Dideriksen. 

In fact, whatever the cause of your particular strain of everyone-hates-me syndrome, staying out of people’s heads is sound advice.