Recently I’d shared my concerns about feeling stuck, clueless and directionless for a while now, with a friend.
But that’s not how exactly I put it. I asked him ‘Have you ever had an existential crisis?’.
The underlying intention was to be asked back if I was going through it which he did and one question led to another and I began to share how I was feeling, or more precisely- my blown up perspective of my state right then.
After noting some of it, he said- I think you should start with quitting self-pity.
What?!
Naturally, it made me defensive for a second there. I mean I was sharing a life crisis here and how could I be accused of indulging in self-pity?
It happens to the best of us, doesn’t it?
More often than we know we resort to self-pity in the face of a crisis without even knowing it. So how do we tell?
Through this blog post, you will see-
What is self-pity?
Does it make you a terrible person to feel sorry for yourself?
But why do we even feel it?
So, what exactly is self-pity?
Wikipedia gives a slightly crude definition to this-
Self-pity is an emotion "directed towards others with the goal of attracting attention, empathy, or help" and one in which the subject feels sorry for (feels pity for) themselves.
Which is blunt but true. Let’s see what Merriam Webster says-
a feeling of pity for yourself because you believe you have suffered more than is fair or reasonable.
What I gather from these definitions and my research for writing about self-pity is, it is a feeling that what happened to you is unjust, you deserve better for all that you put in/ went through and basically believing the world/universe owes you something.
The intention far behind it could be to not get through it alone and seek attention, empathy or help as stated above or at the very least get an external validation that how you feel about the whole thing is right.
Let that sink in.
It might sound like I’m accusing you of something selfish, just like I assumed my friend did but you will see it clearly when you put yourself in a situation where ‘everything is going wrong’ for you.
Because you are then perceiving yourself as a victim.
Does it make you a terrible person to feel sorry for yourself?
It really doesn’t. It makes you human. But to be one with a strong mind and growth-oriented you need to let go of it. You need to catch yourself strolling into the self-pity alley every time and take a u-turn.
It’s not possible to never feel sorry for yourself. We all do at some point. But recognizing it and back-tracking your way into taking charge is how we stop the damage we could do to ourselves.
But why do we feel it?
Amy Morin said in her article ‘9 Ways Mentally Strong People Prevent Self-Pity From Sabotaging Their Success’ on Forbes:
‘When you focus on everything that is going wrong in your life, your thoughts become exaggeratedly negative. And those negative thoughts will negatively affect your behavior if you dwell on them. The combination of negative thinking and inactivity fuels further feelings of self-pity.’
Self-pity is considered a coping mechanism for when your thoughts become a collection of zoomed points of all the negative things in your life minus the positive ones entirely.
Your mind starts to get bombarded with all these and there are like a million sirens going off in your head, overwhelming you, riding up your anxiety and making you despondent as a result.
So the immediate way to cope with this feeling is to come to an understanding that it has nothing to do with what you did/ should do and more to do with what happened to you.
‘I’ve been wronged. I don’t deserve this. Why me?’
The thought of dusting off, grabbing the hammer and starting the rebuilding process would barely cross your mind because it will add to the overwhelm- But..but what about what happened to me?
While self-pity is a way to cope with distress, resorting to it every time can build a habit- a rather self-destructing one.
Eventually, all you will be capable of doing when a problem shows up or you find yourself stuck is to complain about it when what you should be doing is start taking action.
Which is why I like to think of it as the shiny golden lock you feel enticed to put on your problems that will eventually lock your life too and keep you from moving forward.
I will be sharing what I do to control this self-destructive coping tactic in the next blog.
Stay tuned!
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