How to stop being a bad person

[u/Mission_Knowledge929]

This might be too much for Reddit, im not really sure. I’m starting therapy in about a month, but until then, I’m just stuck with myself. So I just sort of wanted some place to get a few thoughts off my chest

A couple nights ago, I had a bad experience with alcohol. This isn’t really about alcohol, but it forced me to look at myself in a way I’ve been avoiding. I went out drinking with friends, and by the time we got back, I was blackout drunk - blurry vision, stumbling, completely out of it. I started spouting off vile shit, something which I’ve regrettably done before but this time was much worse: obscenities, inappropriate comments, harassing people walking past, just being an insufferable dickhead. My friends didn’t say anything, but I know I was disgusting.

The next morning, through the hangover, my first thought was I have to stop drinking. And I will. Alcohol seems to cause all bad in my life, exonerates my worst issues and turns me into someone grossly unlikeable. Then I looked up whether you can change the way you act drunk with the consensus being not really. It seems drunkenness doesn’t give you new traits, it just strips away the filters. Everything you do when drunk is really you.

That’s when the self-realisation started snowballing. People don’t really like me. I have a circle of friends but plenty find me unpleasant, especially those I barely know and honestly, they’re not wrong. I’ve also got this weird mix of narcissism and self-hatred. I know I’m not ugly, but my brain insists I’m better-looking than I actually am, so I walk around with this inflated ego. That bleeds into other garbage - like objectifying women, acting arrogant, and never really paying attention to other people. I can’t hold a decent conversation, I come across as cold and unlikeable. and when I’m drunk I’ve done things that make me sick to even remember. Things that genuinely make me want to end it all.

I do have ASD, and I’m not throwing that out as some lazy excuse. It explains why I stumble socially and why I have such intense periods of depression and self loathing, but it doesn’t justify the way I treat people. The truth is, I don’t know how to be good. I don’t even know where to start. I just know that right now, I hate myself, and I’m starting to realize everyone else probably hates me too - or at the very least, they have every reason to. I want to become a better person, not even necessarily for others but just so I don’t feel so disgusted with myself daily

[u/yuyrfhdgfwrtwerr]

So you know what you want to STOP doing, and that's a good start. It can be easier to change if you gradually add in new things that you want to start doing, instead of just trying to stop with no plan. Going from being inappropriate to doing nothing is pretty hard because it makes you focus on what you don't want to do. If you're already doing something positive, you are spending that time doing stuff that prevents you from being able to do something wrong.

For example, if you start with trying to give 1 compliment per conversation then you will be spending the conversation listening for something to compliment, and it will help you focus on being positive toward the person you're talking to. If you normally say rude and sarcastic things and you spend the whole conversation thinking "don't say anything rude, don't say anything bad" then you're not really paying attention to the conversation, and you'll probably slip up more easily because you're still thinking of inappropriate things to say while trying to control them. It's a lot easier to come up with a goal of one good action than to try and guilt yourself into not doing things you want to stop.