Self-pity, as distinct from self-compassion, is a more passive and self-focused reaction, often amplifying feelings of helplessness and causing isolation from others.
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
– D. H. Lawrence
You might think of this as taboo territory. To write about such a value-laden term as self-pity, I mean.
And yet…
We do see clients who, impressively, do not feel sorry for themselves despite having been through hell.
They may have been horrendously traumatized and otherwise dealt unkindly by life. The vagaries and vicissitudes of life may have caused them to suffer, yes. But in some way they’ve managed to contextualize it.
They may have moments of self-pity, but overall that is not their way.
Other clients may lament and complain despite leading quite untrammelled and privileged lives. It’s as though such clients have become stuck in poor-me mode. A mode that does them no good at all.
Yes, I know this all sounds contentious, but I think we do have to contend with these ideas sometimes.
So what’s wrong with a bit of self-pity?
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Self-compassion versus self-pity
Nothing is wrong with a bit of self-pity sometimes, as long as the client doesn’t give into it entirely, creating a powerless and debilitating victim mindset.
It’s important to state right off the bat that appreciation of reality is healthy. Sometimes I’ll suggest to a client that, heck, no wonder they’re suffering after what they’ve been through. I’m not, in these cases, trying to increase self-pity, but rather self-compassion and understanding.
For some clients, such a thought can be empowering. Many clients genuinely feel they should be happy and fine no matter what life throws at them.
You’re still standing!
I’ve sometimes suggested to clients there must be something very special about them to have still been functioning and in some ways successful despite all they’ve been through.
Sometimes we need to communicate compassionately that what they’ve been through was no small thing!
But, to re-emphasize, what we’re aiming for here isn’t self-pity but self-compassion.
Self-compassion is about treating yourself with understanding and kindness when you face challenges, recognizing that struggles are a shared part of being human, and taking constructive steps to support yourself.
Self-pity is not the same thing at all, and its consequences can be dire.
The negative amplification effects of self-pity
Self-pity, as distinct from self-compassion, is a more passive and self-focused reaction, often amplifying feelings of helplessness and causing isolation from others. While self-compassion empowers growth, self-pity keeps us stuck in a cycle of negative emotions.
Self-pity saps our energy and kills motivation. It often traps us in cycles of procrastination, avoidance, and self-sabotage by keeping our focus on just how bad things are for us. It’s a sense of ‘life happening to me’ rather than ‘me happening to life’ (and never giving up).
This persistent negativity is strongly linked to a greater risk of anxiety and depression, anger, and resentment and envy.1
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Self-pity can damage relationships too
There’s one thing you gotta do
To make me still want you
Gotta stop sobbing now (Gotta stop sobbing now)
Yeah, yeah, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it
– from the song “Stop Your Sobbing” by The Pretenders
No one likes a whinger. Harsh but true.
Or, more measuredly, no one enjoys it when someone they do like is excessively complaining. There are such qualities as courage, fortitude, and determined resilience, as old-fashioned as that sounds.
Excessively self-pitying people may be hard to get along with or like.
Sure, maybe ‘misery loves company’ but the company misery seeks out may simply be other miserable people who are just as solipsistic in their outlook (or inlook!).
Please don’t misunderstand – none of this is to say we shouldn’t be compassionate, kind, decent, and caring to people who are suffering.
My point here is that the kindest and most compassionate approach we can take with some clients is to help them transcend the emotional self-harm of self-pity.
It’s one thing to stub your toe, it’s another to continue beating it with a hammer.
So what are some of the ways we can do this?
Tip one: Help your client cultivate gratitude
We know that gratitude is good for mental health,2 so it’s no great cognitive leap to surmise that excessive self-pity can be toxic for mental health – and yet it’s a topic rarely discussed.
One antidote to chronic self-pity is the disciplined cultivation of gratitude: appreciating what we do have rather than bemoaning what we don’t have.
Encourage clients to actively notice and appreciate what’s going well in their lives, even if it’s small. A daily practice of writing down three things they’re grateful for on that day or generally, however minuscule, can help counterbalance a ‘why me?’ mindset and shift focus in a positive direction.
So much of life isn’t about what happens to a person, but how they deal with and react to what happens to them – which leads to the next tip.
Tip two: Help the client see what they do have
“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
– Helen Keller (paraphrasing the Sufi poet Sa’di)
Some people are great at ‘yeahbutting’ any positive proposal, while others you’ll notice are strong ‘atleasters’.
“You won all that money!”
“Yeah, but I’ve got to go all the way into town to collect my winnings!”
“You missed the bus!”
“At least I get to exercise by walking into town!”
So, it’s certainly not just a case of what happens to us but how we process that. We used to talk of people having a certain ‘bent of mind’, almost like a prism bending the light to reflect reality in very specific ways.
Yet unlike a prism, human beings can learn to reflect or bend the ‘light’ of experience in new ways. Ways that don’t hurt them so much.
One useful way to respond to reality is to focus on others more – to see ourselves in the context of other people. The state of empathy can reduce self-pity, helping us as well as those we show empathy towards.
Gently remind clients that everyone faces challenges and encourage them to connect with others. Sharing struggles or helping someone else in need can dissolve feelings of isolation and provide perspective.
“Eat up! There are people starving in the world!”
Granted, it doesn’t always work to tell a disinclined child to eat their dinner by abstracting to the starving millions in the third world. But looking up and out and seeing the plight of other people, their struggles, doubts, and disabilities, can widen our context, which helps counter self-pity. Remember, all strong emotional states require a narrow focus to maintain themselves.
But rather than talk to clients about other people who “have it worse than you do, you know!” which is a bit crass, we can be more nuanced and subtle.
We might help them, alongside gratitude exercises, imagine how they could have it worse. Such comparisons may work on self-pity more effectively.
I asked one client, who was prone to non-solution-focused chronic lamentation, how things might be even worse. She said that if she was homeless things would be worse.
Hypnotically I had her experience what it might be like to be homeless, not as an idea but as a visceral experience. Tears came to her eyes. She later reported she hadn’t remembered ever feeling so grateful and that her empathy for genuinely homeless people had increased since the session. So maybe some good was done there.
Tip three: Empower your client to take action
Self-pity is paralyzing. It’s a type of negative rumination, which fuels the state of depression.3
Action is the enemy of hopeless, procrastinating rumination.
Help clients focus on what they can control, even in difficult situations. Setting small, achievable goals gives them a sense of agency and breaks the cycle of helplessness that fuels self-pity.
We use behavioural therapy to help change feelings, as experience is the greatest teacher.
It’s hard to have self-pity when you are exercising hard, focusing on the needs of others, enjoying a sense of greater meaning and purpose, and generally meeting more of your vital emotional needs.
One last important point, I think, is that we need never point out to clients their excessive self-pity. You don’t need to point out to an unconscious person their physical condition before giving them CPR.
And we certainly don’t want to encourage negative rumination by guilt tripping clients for the ‘indulgence’ of self-pity.
But once we spot that it might be happening, we can work therapeutically to help them away from that particular form of pernicious mulling.
I’ll end on another quote by Helen Keller, who you may know became deaf, blind, and mute as a child:
“Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world.”
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About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.
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Notes:
- Joachim Stöber, J. (2003). Self-pity: Exploring the links to personality, control beliefs, and anger. Journal of Personality, 71(2): 183-220.
- See Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2): 377-389.
- Winterman, D. (2013, 17 October). Rumination: The danger of dwelling. BBC News.
