We all face hardship at life. Deep down, we know how we don’t deserve such distress in life. This is normal.

However if you are the one who can’t move forward in life and are struck forever in extended grief by asking below questions again and again, then you are in the dangerous path of self-pitying yourself.

• Why me alone?
• What have I done to deserve this?
• Why it happens to me alone?
• Everything goes wrong for me!
• Everyone is against me!

Can you see the highlighted words above?

It is the over-exaggeration of your worries. In reality, this is not true.

It is not true that you are the only one who is facing tough time. Everyone has to face it.

It is not true that everything goes wrong for you. If you think properly you will find that, it is impossible for everything to go wrong for a person. There are always things which we can feel grateful for.

It is not true that everyone is against you. Frustration makes you to believe so. There will be true friends and well-wishers who truly feel bad that you have to go through it.

What Is Self-Pity?

Urban Dictionary defines it as

Pity for oneself; especially exaggerated or self-indulgent pity where you believe that you are the victim who has done no wrong and is deserving of condolence from everyone.

“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality”

Why you should Overcome Self-pity?

Self-Pity will develop Why me? syndrome

As I mentioned earlier, self-pity will develop why me? syndrome. It makes you to exaggerate your problems and extend your sorrow. You will start to believe that everything is happening for you alone and you don’t deserve this hardship.

It will make you to live in an illusion.

Try to understand that you are not the one who is facing tough time here.  Everyone face difficulties at one way or other.

Next time, if you start questioning yourself, – Why me?

Give a logical response that it is not true. Have a positive self-talk with you.

Recollect some of the other incidents which had a great impact on you but you are not the direct victim of it. See how the people who are directly impacted by the incident recovered.

Feeling sorry for yourself will increase resentment

If you keep feeling sorry for yourself, it will come to a point where you start to hate everything about life.

Prolonged self-pity will make us to resent life more. When you start hating the life, peace won’t prevail. You will likely to stop being happy and content.

Next time when you worry on self-pity, remind that this cycle of thoughts is going to make you hate life more.

You are spinning a net that will soon trap yourself. More than the tough time, this way of thinking is going to cost you more on life.

Exaggerated sorrow will propel Anger

Deep down the resentment towards life will build up the anger and frustration.

You will get angry over the person, who has bought you into that situation. You will be angry that you wasted life being with them. This will make you feel more dejected.

More anger will make you to think about revenge. All these are not worth it in life.

Life is meant to live. Not to develop negative emotions and suffer.

When you get angry for this life, please remember that you have a choice to let this go and move forward.

When you move forward, you still have plenty of chance to rediscover life. Instead, if you keep delving on anger and resentment, you are destroying your remaining chance to live your life.

Playing victim role is addictive

Victim mentality is very addictive. When you keep talking about your problems and how you have been wronged, you find a pleasure in it.

Seeing your problems, your close friends and well-wishers will sympathize with you and agree that you don’t deserve such a life, which will make you to play the victim role more.

Let me tell you the hard truth. Nothing can happen in our life without our consent. If certain things happen in our life, it only means we are letting it happen. So ideally we should handle the consequences and move on.

If we have to face a situation (like a death or illness) that is out of our control, still we can’t do anything about it.

We can’t control our fate, but we can choose to respond to our problems in a positive way. That will make lots of difference in our life.

While you wallow on your worries, you will stop living life

While you are busy worrying, please understand that life is eluding.

You won’t get this time ever.  Time lost is lost forever.

Don’t give importance to something which doesn’t deserve your attention more than it needs. And we always give too much importance to things which makes us feel sorry for ourselves. This is wrong.

This is going to stop us from living a better life.

Let go of all the things which is not under our control and start fresh.

Self-pity is dangerous. Please read your thoughts and understand when you are overdoing your worries.

When you realize that you are magnifying your worries, take time to come out of the trap. It is understandable that you need time to get over an issue, however, don’t spoil your rest of your life for that.