Beware of Feeling Sorry for Yourself

Feeling sorry for yourself is a form of self-comforting. It may parade itself as self-love, but it is not love; it is masked anger. The seemingly gentle arms around you saying “There, there,” can turn instantly into smoldering anger at whatever or whomever brooked the pain.

Self-pity is destructive to character development. It is destructive because, first, it is an obsessive kind of thinking. It depletes precious energy better spent on positive thoughts. Second, it can lead to a relapse into some former addictive behavior. Therefore, it is best to get yourself out of that thought sequence as quickly as possible. Tell yourself right away, “Stop that!”, then turn your attention to something else. Third, self-pity brings about procrastination and impedes personal growth. That is, self-pity is self-defeating. There is no way you are going to imagine how to overcome a problem when you are sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.

Regardless of how it appears, self-pity is more a head than heart issue. It is more a mental exercise than an emotion. You choose to feel like a victim when the chances are you have not been victimized. While grief and sadness are normal emotions, self-pity goes further than these by replaying the supposed “victimization” in your mind, again and again. Then you can use these over-played wrongs committed against you to plan most anything. This kind of thinking is very dangerous.

According to experts, the cure for self-pity has three essential components:

1. Gratitude. If, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you can find a way to feel grateful for all the good which has been accorded you, you can no longer feel self-pity. The two cannot co-exist. You can generate gratitude by giving thanks every morning for those things which are available that bring you joy. Even if you do not feel grateful when you begin to reflect, you likely will after. Also: write down all of these reasons for gratitude; summarize it in a single word, like the name of your pet. Then put the list on the refrigerator door, or some prominent place. Then go and do something for another, for which they will feel grateful, whether they say so or not. You just might pick up some gratitude from them. I always feel grateful to someone who is grateful to me – and also humbled.

2. Self-esteem. Doing the above will actually enhance your self-esteem. You feel better about yourself when you are positive and helpful than when you are negative and listless. The more you practice gratitude, the less likely you are ever to fall into the black hole of self-pity. You will feel empowered rather than victimized.

3. Zero tolerance. Adopt a zero tolerance policy against feeling sorry for yourself. Work on becoming ever more mindful and aware of yourself. Sooner or later you will be able to shut down any attempts of your lesser self to engage in the “pity-pot” game.

You just have to make the decision not to permit yourself to follow the pity line of thinking. Nothing good comes from it. Rather, much bad comes from it, such as how others will want to distance themselves from you. And when you sense that you are beginning to go down that unhealthy path, you can turn immediately to a focus on gratitude and your many blessings. You can determine to spend your cognitive time on solutions rather than on problems, on what you can do rather than on what may have been done to you.