Self-pity

An incurable diagnosis?

I consider myself to be a pretty open-minded guy. If I’m engaged in a conversation with someone going through a hard time, or a friend or family member comes to me to talk personally, I like to think that I am a reliably empathic ear for them. I should be. I’m trained for just this type of exchange.

But there is this one area, this one way of thinking, in which empathy almost completely eludes me. I feel for anyone who is suffering depression, anxiety, debilitating attention problems, persistent fear, or a loss of any kind. But if I’m engaged in conversation with somebody who is expressing self-pity, I have a very difficult time locking into that discussion and feeling for them.

I want to be clear about something before we go any further: I’m open to the possibility that I’m handling this wrong, that this is a me thing. After all, it is my job to feel for others, regardless of circumstance. There probably shouldn’t be exceptions to that rule.

That said, to me self-pity is a bit of an indulgence. It allows the “sufferer” to focus exclusively on themselves. In an odd way, self-pity feels a lot like narcissism: wholly egocentric, wildly resistant to treatment or change, more comfortable than perhaps it should be. Self-pity allows us to sit in a single space, emotionally and pragmatically, and provides us an excuse not to move forward or to grow. In my experience, it provides too wide a berth for inertia. Self-pity also tends to feed on itself. It’s not static. It is likely to fester and to grow. And I want you to know that I recognize how crazy that sounds, how very unfair and judgmental I sound right now.

So let me double-down.

I find self-pity also feels like a bit of a non-starter. If you feel, and truly believe, that you have been dealt a lousy hand in life, if that is your ongoing narrative and internal dialogue, where do you go from there? How do you motivate yourself to create anything different? You’ve already defined yourself as a victim to your circumstances, circumstances over which you have no control, right? Perhaps circumstances that go back years, or decades, that may involve people who are long gone from this earth.

Some time ago, I was working with a young woman who would consistently say, “I don’t have a good supportive family, and everyone else does. Life is not fair. Life is not fair to me.”

This was tricky for me as her therapist, because she wasn’t wrong. She had been dealt a difficult hand in her family. Very little support. An abundance of abuse and neglect. It didn’t feel fair. It wasn’t fair. But to my thinking, that couldn’t be our end point. If we left her sitting right there in that mind-space, I fear we were supporting a lifelong victim mentality.

And that certainly didn’t feel as if it would serve her well, now or in the future.

So, honoring her narrative to date, we collaboratively decided to craft a different and more empowering narrative going forward: “Life may not have been fair in the past, but now I have agency. Now I can decide who to connect with and how. I can choose what I do with my time. I can seek out people who are safe.”

“And maybe I can reach out beyond myself to make sure others don’t feel the hopelessness and solitude I’ve felt for so much of my life.”

This fresh narrative didn’t mitigate, remove or minimize any of her previous pain. Nothing we could say or do was going to accomplish that feat. But it did provide her with some direction and hope going forward. It did change the narrative so that she wouldn’t continue to feel that self-pity, and only that self-pity, for the rest of her life.

Early in my career, I worked with a few people who had spent decades of their lives, steeped in intensive therapy, reviewing the wrongs they had suffered in childhood. The pain they had endured broke my heart. But I also found myself frustrated with these clients at times:

Is this really the story you’re going to write forever? Is this your epitaph? Or is there a better, fresh chapter out there for you?

Full disclosure, part of my writing here is intended to call myself out. I can sense when I’m slipping into victimhood from time to time, when I’m feeling inclined to give up and give in to my somewhat tattered, occasionally traumatic history. Times when I am steeped in my own self-pity. It’s not a good look for me, I know. And I don’t think any of us are immune. But I also know that when I’m in my head, and solely in my head, when I’m entirely self-concerned and self-involved, that’s where I stay. Wondering why me? Why was I dealt this hand?

And there are a couple of things I know about that mindset having been there. Nothing happens. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. Nothing improves, but they may turn demonstrably worse. I don’t fix anything in my own life, my own mind, or my own head. Nobody can help, even if they’re trying. And I certainly don’t do anything to brighten anyone else’s life or day.

I just sit in the static of self-pity. And I can say firsthand that I find it to be not only depressing, but pointless.

Let’s face it, the world can be a difficult place. I think any one of us could highlight and focus on a few moments, or even years, in our lives replete with losses, accidents, financial or emotional hardships, and draw our narrative from those traumas. And we could hold our lens there perpetually, referring to it whenever we felt we needed a reason that we just could not do the next thing.

Look at the terrible things that have happened to me. How can I go on?

But I refuse to believe that our circumstances limit our potential. I don’t want to minimize anyone’s suffering, and I have born witness to my share of it. Hell, I’ve experienced my share of it. But even the most damaged among us can brighten someone else’s day, can bring beauty into the world, into their own lives, into the lives of the people around them.

I think it’s the broken among us that are perhaps best equipped to show us the way through, that are closest to our God.

So, at the risk of losing every reader out there, I actually think there’s a mandate for those who are leaning towards self-pity. Tend to yourself and take care of yourself and your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being for sure. Be kind and gentle with yourself. Talk it all through with a qualified therapist. Attend to all of this, especially if you’ve been neglected or abused or taken advantage of in your past.

But also, be very aware that you probably have a well of empathy you’re carrying around that has gone untapped. I think there is a mandate for you to reach deep down and find that caring self within you. Think outside yourself and consider the needs of other people. I really believe that your self-pity will lift organically, almost automatically. But there will also, you’ll find, rise a certain synergy in reaching out and helping others, perhaps especially others who have experienced something similar to you.

I am well aware that stepping out of self-pity and turning it on its head takes no small degree of courage. And effort. You have to move. You have to try. Self-pity, grim as it may seem, is also a comfort zone. And it takes courage and effort to step out of that darkness into the light.

I suppose I’m suggesting that your pain is a gift in a way. That probably seems obtuse and bizarre and wholly incorrect, perhaps even offensive, but I really believe it to be true. If you can channel your pain, if you can turn it on its head and make sure nobody in your orbit suffers what you’ve suffered, and then it won’t all seem for naught. It will have a purpose, and you will have a purpose.

And instead of trapping yourself in a story, a story marked only by trauma and pain, you have the capacity to rise above and write a remarkable, dare I say healing, perhaps even joyful, new story. Starting now.