Reconsidering Self-Pity

Are our default perceptions about self-pity fair, accurate and helpful?

I love writing and sharing my insights and perceptions. If you enjoy this writing, would you please consider doing one or more of the following? Subscribe, like the article, share an article with friends or consider being a paid subscriber. It’s just $5 a month but it helps. Thanks 8)

We often criticize each other for wallowing in self-pity. The connotation is clearly negative. But is this fair? The idea crossed my mind yesterday that pity is a form of love. If I saw a hurt, sick or hungry animal, I would be overtaken with pity.

That pity would cause me to care for this animal in any way I could. Pity asks us to give grace. Not to ask if that animal worked hard enough to find food and water or to avoid cars. Pity asks us to give, to shepherd, to protect and to lift up someone or something in need.

Obviously, with self-pity, we don't want to use it as a defense against working, considering our part, taking responsibility, making amends etc. But perhaps we are sitting in self-pity because we are deserving of this form of self-love. Perhaps a shit-storm of events has overtaken us. Maybe we don't know what to do. Maybe we are absolutely devastated to our core.

Maybe self-pity is destructive. I don't know better. I don't know if it might be helpful for a time and then becomes a crutch, a defense, a shield. Maybe it becomes part of our story and we need to move on from it and become empowered again.

However this shakes out, I want to look at everyone, including myself, anew. I don't know anyone's story, their suffering, their deficits and their blind spots. Maybe the tough love of telling someone to stop wallowing in self-pity is appropriate.

I don't have a slick answer, but a nagging voice inside is telling me that calling someone out for wallowing in self-pity feels like a robotic, checked-out kind of answer. A closed-heart kind of decree. A de facto rejection. A self-congratulatory typecasting of someone as lazy or playing the victim.

And we are all victims at times. I wonder how well we can move on from said victimhood when either we or others won't recognize this basic truth. Sometimes we are powerless. Or we were. We were hit by a car on the sidewalk. We were blindsided by the decision of another with power over us. Or multiple events affected us at once. And perhaps it’s a blend of things for which we were and were not responsible.

Admitting we have been victims means we are vulnerable to the vagaries of life. And for some, admitting that the homeless person on the street or the person looking back from the mirror is vulnerable means that they are not omnipotent. Not safe and not truly secure.

Death stalks us all. Poverty, illness, loss, and loneliness are a part of this life. I wonder if instead of criticizing the person for their self-pity, if we might join them. Give them an ear. Relate. Feel for them. For they are us. I hope we can be willing to love ourselves and accept our moments of victimhood, of frailty and of absolute bewilderment.

Perhaps too, we can look at moments when we caused harm to others, intentionally or otherwise. And can we be our brother's keeper without shaming them for self-pity? I wonder if our collective unwillingness to help those in need is rationalized by this rubber stamp of disapproval we place on self-pity. And further, if our unwillingness to see our own pitiable, wounded self perpetuates our rejection of those in need.

Please comment, subscribe, like, and share <3