Cheers, it's been one helluva journey. Regarding bullies. Agreed. Cowards are controlled by fear, and it seems the bullies I've known, due to fears, insecurities and over-senstitivity to harsh experiences, cope by hiding all that behind the aggressive bully persona...thus while they appear offensive, they're actually defensive. Don't know if every bully is like this, but it's a good place to start when interacting with them.
Many folks do this. One reason being, based on self examination, they're oblivious to their lack of self-love.
Interesting discussion, and I’m disappointed I missed it. I will however refer back to the original question: is it ever ok to have self-pity? Well I think first you need to define what you mean by “ok”. This could mean any number of things in this context. You might mean “is it justified” - well that depends on the situation and the individual circumstances. Or you might mean “is it helpful” - that depends on the way the person reacts to the feeling. You might mean “is it moral” - that is a subjective opinion. Personally, I think it is ok in every sense of the word for anybody to feel anything. Individuals’ feelings are covert, and we have the right to feel however we want. If we feel something, then we feel it whether somebody else thinks that feeling is justified, or helpful, or moral. It isn’t up to anybody else to determine how we should be feeling. Self-pity can be helpful. It encourages us to recognise when something isn’t right, and because it is often an unpleasant feeling, it can motivate us to make a change to resolve the situation. What I think is often not ok is wallowing in self-pity. This is when somebody seems to derive pleasure from the experience, and this seems pathological to me.
I rez with the majority of what you shared. This one sticks out the most for me... Just came across this in my quotes travels today... "The key is to not resist or rebel against emotions or to try to get around them by devising all sorts of tricks; but to accept them directly as they are." - Takahisa Kora
:hippo: Yes, self-empathy is rather a different thing, but I think it's an important thing. The one and only engagement of life that you have access to as experiential knowledge is your own. All else is some form of conjecture - always. There are levels to conjecture, from off-the-cuff ignorant assumption to highly educated and studied opinion. Yet still, certain things in life must be experienced to be known, else it is only ever an asymptote that is able to approach X, but never touch or cross. This certainly can happen, but as regards this, I would say the following (please forgive if I ramble): We're constantly being sold things. All the time. Not just physical things we buy with money, but also intangibles like you mention above. We get sold the idea that making babies is what it's all about, and it certainly can be a thing around which a person wraps a happy life, but it's not an exclusive, must-have thing. Being a parent is really hard and is mostly made of "I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but no one died today so today is a win" and other such insecurities. I'm not trashing parents - that's not my point - it's just that it is filled with insecurity so this can flip around and become a thing that gets shoved in the faces of those of us who are childless because our childlessness can (can speaks to possibility, not inevitably) feel like a collision with the idea of "What have I done? Garry looks so happy and rested and ten years younger than me even though we're the same age and damn that bastard and his childless disposable income. MUST MAKE HIM FEEL INFERIOR IN ORDER TO VALIDATE MY CHOICE!!!" Again, not picking on parents and parenting in particular. It's just an example, since you mention it. Ever notice how people in their twenties have a way of being really prickly about their ideals, thoughts on the world, the things that define them? That prickliness is the onset of the Quarter-Life Crisis, when you realize that a BUNCH of the things you thought were immutable truths are really just opinions, many of which are holding you back from enjoying very enjoyable things in life. No one likes to think that something in which they've invested that much time and energy is, in truth, something that can be chucked in the bin. So we sell. We sell hard. We sell in order to make ourselves feel secure in the choices we have made. We invent whole schools of thought and yes, even religions (which is not the same thing as faith) in order to sell others on our choices. I'm an American; I know all about the hard-sell. You can't turn on the TV here or open a magazine without adds screaming at you and trying desperately to make you believe that you've chosen poorly, you've done poorly, but just buy this thing or this idea and all will be well and happiness will flow from your eyes and ears like pastel bunnies in spring. I sometimes wonder what it's like to live in the Australian culture. I'm intrigued by it because in so many ways it's so very similar to American culture. We have a similar history in the way we started. Both America and Australia have a history that begins with some variant of penal transportation. We both have unfortunate and problematic histories with the indigenous peoples of our respective countries. And unlike the rest of Anglophonia that just loves snubbing and looking down on the gritty self-reliance that Americans worship, Australians totally get that dynamic, they understand it and have it in their culture too. They appreciate the dirty, unshaven, leather-chapped cowboy as a symbol of tenacity and endurance in the face of adversity. (Can you tell I watch lots of Aussie TV??) In the late 60's and early 70's there was even a muscle car culture in Australia completely on par with American muscle car worship of the day, while the rest of the world was looking askance at the throbbing tumescent vulgarity of our big-block engines and instead seeking tepid Italian designs. Is it any wonder Americans love Australians so much? We do, btw. In the Anglophone family, you're the fun one who'll get drunk with us and order a pizza and not get all judgie. So, it intrigues me to wonder and know what the metaphorical view is like from Sidney looking this way, as I look toward your sunny shores. Remember that no one is more cruel than you yourself when you look in the mirror, whether that mirror is actual or just metaphorical.
wow wreybies. I feel out of my league communicating with someone with such a strong command of the EL. I will probably get back to you on this.
I think to understand self pity you have to look at how it provided an evolutionary advantage. The worst offenders for feeling self pity are basically kids, they do it all the time, they want a toy and when they can't have that toy it becomes all about them, the world and everyone else may as well not exist to that child. It isn't just negative feelings either it's all feelings. Children are very selfish in their experience of emotions. For years this is all we really do, we think about the world in terms of us and we really become very accustomed to how bad or good everything feels when it doesn't go our way or when we do get our way, we get familiar with good and bad feelings and we know them when we feel them. Once we have this deep understanding of all of these feelings we then begin to realise that other people also have feelings and we then start to call upon our references of the feelings we are now so familiar with, we start to empathise, imagine how we might feel in any given situation. Empathy is one of the most important things humans do socially, but we wouldn't be able to do it if we hadn't gone through the process of feeling self pity and other emotions while we were building up our emotion database. So, essentially, when we feel self pity we are regressing to a childish state, it feels comfortable to feel self pity because it was our default mode for so much of our formative and safe years as a child. What I am saying is that you can't beat yourself up for feeling self pity because it's so tempting to do, but you also can't let yourself get swallowed up by it, self pity tends to close people off from actually solving problems. How many two year olds have you ever seen solve a problem by sulking about it? I'm a bugger for self pity, but I also have an amazing wife who lets me know I'm being a child and I have to pull myself up and get on with things, I find the best way to do it is to reach for other comfortable phases in my life, I try to do things that remind me of times I was productive or when I did something I was proud of. I think a lot of people expect you to just snap out of it, but I feel like what is easier for your mind is to slide it into another mode where it feels just as comfortable but that allows you to be productive. That's my 2p.
Private self-pity is private thing. If it is public, then better to wait that it does not work as a respect rocket. But: It is always ok to seek help when in need. It is easier to help anyone who does not drown his/her environment to self-pity-pollution.
When life is full of agony and misery, it helps to see other people being happy. Helping others to feel happy or even ok or even alive can help your own feeling a bit. But... Things are not bad when you feel agony and misery. Things are bad when you stop feeling at all. And even then it helps to see other people being happy.
