I swerved onto the path of feeling sorry for myself this morning.

Good grief that’s such a terrible feeling.

I mean— self-pity— which I’d argue is less of a feeling and more of a state of mind, but either way, it feels awful.

It feels so tragic yet it’s so easy to stay wallowing in it. For some of us it’s like a well-worn trail routed out from all the times it’s been walked down. Once you are on it it’s comfortably familiar, and even if you hate it, cutting a new trail through the thick looks like oh-so-much effort. And, you keep telling yourself it’s not your fault so you shouldn’t have to fix it.

Some of you might be thinking, “I don’t feel sorry for myself.” Well, this is me spitting out my imaginary coffee. I don’t have any actual coffee because I’m a toddler mom in bed, in the dark, past bedtime. I hardly have any normal time so this is what we get— late-night inspiration, imaginary coffee, and inevitable typos of which I hope you will forgive me for.

Anyway, yes. you. do. Many of you are inhibited daily by self-pity without knowing it.

Most of us have a hard time recognizing self-pity because we are convinced it’s injustice (and it may be but that doesn’t make a pity-party any more useful). When you position yourself as a victim (yes, there are real serious victim situations and I’m not talking about that) you need a villain. The villain could be the president, your dog, your child, your boss, your best friend, etc.

Self-pity is useless because it’s the ultimate lack of responsibility for yourself. It renders you powerless— focusing on blaming instead of leading yourself somewhere better. It keeps you disempowered. It’s actually the easy way out. It means you don’t have to do anything but rage or mope around. It’s also rather uncreative and cowardly. And common.

So this morning I swerved commonly, uncreatively, and cowardly into the path of feeling sorry for myself. And often what comes with that is some catastrophizing— when you’re brain is writing a bleak story about the future and maybe even remembering every possibly related bad thing about the past. (Hm, maybe it is a bit of a creative process after all).

Anyways, there I was this morning feeling terribly uncomfortable. It was one of those moments when you think dramatic things like: “if life is going to be like this all the time then why do we even bother.”

I thought something like that, and, that’s where my wallowing in pity brain messed up. Because my wise brain caught the lie.

My wise brain caught the lie: “Always? Do you really always feel like this?” Well, no. I guess not. And thus I began to step off the well-maintained, safe trail of thought to do the work of blazing a new trail (way of thinking). I was journaling at the time (which is an excellent tool for managing your mind and therefore your life) and continued to work on sorting out my own narrative.

Somewhere in there, I breathed. I was calling myself out but still feeling yucky. I sensed I needed to change my scenery. I was resisting the higher calling of going for a run so I settled on gluing together some birdhouses-- a task I needed to get done for a deadline anyways and it served as a bit of a creative outlet to simmer down.

What once would have left me in a pouty fog all day or even for days was wrapped up in an hour (because I’ve practiced this work, a lot).

I’m sharing this because this is what ‘the work’ looks like in real-time. This is the process of growth and maturity— of getting better.

All feelings can be useful and have a purpose, except feeling sorry for yourself.

I’m not trying to sell you a magic formula. This may look different on different days, but here is a rough map of how I snap myself out of old thinking (and therefore unhelpful behavior patterns).

Vent and feel all the feelings. Don’t resist them. Don’t act on them, acknowledge them. Journaling is good for this. Sure, you can try to ignore them and shove them down and move on but they will still be there, planted, waiting to spring out next time your poked or prodded.
Get more self-awareness. I say “more” because some of you believe you are already self-aware enough. But there is always more! It’s likely the more aware you are the sneakier your areas of self-deception are. Tune in and identify your narrative/thoughts/beliefs. Journaling helps. Often we need an objective voice from a coach, therapist, or wise friend that tells us the hard truth.
Identify the lies. Our brains lie all the time. If this is a new idea for you start with noticing the little lies like, “always” and “never” before examining bigger ones.
Breath. I mean really do it.
Move. We are mental and physical beings and they are both interconnected-- physical body affects your mental state and your mental state affects your physical body. Go to the bathroom, workout, change seats, step outside, shake it off (literally, this can help but you may prefer privacy and a sense of humor), create art, do whatever you can.
Do the work to focus on thinking intentional thoughts you decide to think rather than your natural ones with sneaky lies. This is the forging of a new trail. It takes practice. It’s work that may seem tedious but it’s holy. Instead of the spiraling thoughts that end with “what’s the point of trying,” try on thinking, “this is a hard moment. I can do hard. I don’t like it but it’s not forever and it’s to be expected as a human.”
Keep breathing and expect resistance. Your brain is not going to like this. It’s going to tell you this is dumb and doesn’t work. Of course! Change is uncomfortable and feels unsafe and one of your brain’s main functions is safety (whether it’s logical or not).

I hope this helps you better your leadership of yourself today. If you have any questions or want help starting a journey going deeper it’s never a bad time to try out a coaching session!

Best,

Becca