Self-pityFollow

I've been watching an interview of Stephen Fry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry) by Mark Lawson on BBC4, part of a series to commemorate his 50th birthday. He elaborately answers every quetion asked of him (in his usual ridiculously well educated stream of consciousness fashion). The topics range from his hidden homosexuality to his depression and his hatred of criticism.

When talking about his mental illness he describes self-pity as the worst, most destructive, all consuming emotion possible for a person to have. I thought that was pretty insightful.

You could say rage and despair would be pretty high up there as well. I suppose it's harder to approach someone and (sympathetically, supportively) tell them to get over themselves, than it is to tell them to relax or cheer up.



Edited, May 21st 2008 8:38pm by Youshutup

unfortunately for more people than not, I tend to observe that the line between self pity and indulging in it (playing the victim role nonstop) is almost nonexistant. Maybe I'm becoming a cynical curmudgeon, but I can't stop running into those types. And it truly is the most destructive thing for a person, because they either truly can not see, or refuse to see, how to dust themselves off and try to fix what's bothering them.

My mother is this way. When I was young I pitied her. I do a little now, but I'm also tired of her hearing how everyone and everything is against her. She refuses to look at herself and actually do something. Instead she almost wallows in the selfpity party as if it validates her existance. I learned not to bother giving advice or trying to help her out. She doesnt listen, doesnt want to, and enjoys her pity party.
/shrug. I can't imagine living that way, basically throwing in the towel and believing you have no control over your own life.

There are people who know they have problems, realise it's not everyone else, it's themselves, but cannot find the way to change all the things that they want to change about themselves. It's stunningly frustrating, and it took me over a decade of looking out for new treatments, ideas, theories and therapists before I found a treatment mode that gave me the skills with which to change what I wanted changing.

Everything else had told me something was seriously wrong, and WHY I was the way I was, but from that point I just couldn't just "get over it", or change my irrational reactions. For me, DBT was the key. For others it well may be other things.


My mother is another of those "It's not me, it's everyone else" people Including all her friends (there are literally dozens she's stopped talking to over the years out of a sense of offense), all her co-workers and bosses, and all her family. For my own sanity's sake, I've had to stop trying to help her out, and stop expecting that she'll get better int eh future, because there's treatments out there. I've had to, in my own head, let her go, almost as if she's died, by realising that she'll probably NEVER seek the treatment she needs, she'll never cease having an unnecessarily destructive effect on the people around her, and she'll never be truly happy, right up until the day she dies.

I'm more of a self-loathing type. I don't deserve the pity, even from myself.