Feeling Bad For Oneself | Why?

The idea of feeling pity for someone else for the struggles they are going through and taking action to help them is seen as a big-hearted approach. To see the discomfort of a fellow human and do something to alleviate that discomfort is surely commendable. And it is. But to take the same term “pity” and apply it to ourselves is actually an incredibly troublesome journey. It is so bad that even the Bible warns against it.

But why? Here’s why. Self-pity is that journey we take where we tell ourselves, ‘oh, what a difficult life I have had’, ‘oh, how cruel the surroundings had been’, ‘oh, how bad things got’, and ‘oh, it’s the world’s responsibility to make it right’. Now, the last part is the problem.

So long as you look at your past objectively, it’s all fine. But the minute you look at it with victimhood and then blame everyone around you for it, you enter the self-pity zone. And it is an absolutely useless territory. You then live a life seeking others’ validation, approval, and assistance. That’s not what strong people do or need.

Self Pity | Petty Pity

If I can highlight the last part from the previous section – ‘validation, approval and assistance’ - this is the hallmark of weak individuals. All the success gurus would tell us that we need to be strong within so as not to seek validation from others. Look at any of the successful entrepreneurs; did they wait for the world’s validation? No, they just took off and provided their service or product to the world. They were strong within.

Now let’s look at the opposite kind – the weaklings. In the current world scenario, do you see such weaklings? Those whose feelings get hurt as soon as someone says something incorrect (perceived incorrectly, not really incorrect) about them? Those who expect you to affirm them? Those who seek your validation for their survival? Those who clearly seem to be living in delusion but need us to affirm their delusion? I think you’ve got the drift of who or what I am referring to. This is one of the outcomes of self-pity. This is the - ‘Oh, how the world treats me, the world needs to change’ – philosophy. Absolutely useless, serves no one, and only irritates the world around you. Worst of all, the person in the middle of it gets nowhere and gets, in fact, invalidated by the world. And then they start on an even stronger journey of self-pity.

That’s all cool. But why am I speaking about it? Because I, too, went on my own journey of self-pity. Much more respectable journey than the above example, but an equally bad one in terms of outcome.

Here’s My Story | Self-Pity | Depression | To Taking God’s Hand to Come Out of It

One of the greatest gifts, in my opinion, that I got from my first job was the introduction to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is an energy exercise that we could use to clean up our unwanted feelings. In many cases, these feelings emanate from our past, our childhood, and nobody warned me that I could clear the past, but I would be left with the knowledge of the past.

What does that mean? While you clean your unwanted emotions, many of them emanate from our childhood based on our unhappy experiences with our parents, our neighbours, or our friends. Some of these emotions are suppressed, while many are easily accessible once we do the energy exercises. While we can rid ourselves of the emotions, we become aware of what we went through as a child, and that’s where the problem is. So, while the emotions were neutralized, the knowledge of what we went through stays. Now, nobody warned me that I could get into a self-pity mode based on what I endured. We are not to do that. But somehow I did. And as more and more of the past emotions cleared, I became more and more aware of what I went through. And as you know, very soon, I was feeling pity for myself.

I did not have someone to slap my back and say, “Get out of it,” and so I stayed there for a long time; a little too long. I later went into depression and got an even stronger reason to feel self-pity. Just to clarify, there were a lot of reasons for my depression, and self-pity was just one of them. And there started the saga of never-ending pity for myself and how the world had been cruel. I am telling you from experience. That’s how you feel. You feel that you are a victim of the world.

The fact was, I wasn’t a victim. I was strong for as long as I knew. The only problem was that doing the energy exercises highlighted my weak past. And I stayed focused on my weak past, forgetting that I had a much larger, stronger past. This is where I went wrong. As you can imagine, I came around when I realized that my past was quite powerful and there was hardly anything that could shake it. And, more importantly, I realized even now I was quite powerful. Very powerful.

And hence I speak from experience. Self-pity is a useless feeling to carry. The Bible was right. There is no place for self-pity; else you risk becoming a victimhood-filled weakling. You stop being of any purpose and run a 24*7 seeking-validation channel. And that validation will never come, pushing you further into self-pity.

So, That’s What Is Wrong With Self-Pity

When you are in that zone, snap out of it. You are way too strong to feel pity for yourselves. Maybe you did have a cruel childhood, but how do you know that those experiences did not shape your stronger self today? How do you know (or not know) that much of your strength today comes from your unhappy past? Truth is, there is no easy way to find it. So, why then subscribe to weakness and embrace self-pity, when the opposite could be true?

I have only one thumb-rule: God, the Giver of all, is here to help. He got me out of depression, and he showed me where I went wrong. He works unabated and wants only to prosper me. Find God. He will help you out. Just like God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, my Savior, and the Holy Spirit worked miracles in my life.

Hope this article helps to check where you are going wrong with self-pity in your own life. Be careful and throw it away as soon as possible.

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