Self-compassion vs self-pity
Compassion, being with someone’s suffering and then desiring to alleviate it. It’s different from pity. Compassion is when you identify with someone else’s pain, you acknowledge it as if it were your own, and from there you feel moved to take action. Pity is feeling sorry for someone. Pity is removed, and can sometimes carry a sense of contempt or obligation.
When you are moved by compassion for someone, you have made yourself present to their pain, and that is what compels you to take action.
Self-compassion is the willingness to be with your own pain.
I didn’t heal until I learned self-compassion.
We run from our pain. We numb it, invalidate it, project it.
Sometimes we are oblivious to it. We all learned early on to ignore emotional pain.
But we’re in a world of suffering, and without self-compassion it’s difficult to heal.
Self-pity doesn’t lead to change, or to healing. We feel like victims, like life just has it out for us. Everyone is against us, we were dealt a bad hand, we’ve had misfortune after misfortune and we can’t seem to catch a break. Poor us.
We stay stuck in self-pity because we have not been present with our own suffering.
We’re not ready to face more painful emotions of disappointment, grief, loss, or anger. We have contempt for our weaknesses, disgust for our own vulnerability, and so we remain in a cycle of self-judgment followed by denial or self-pity.
Self-compassion is acknowledging and allowing the pain you carry.
It’s being with it. Sitting with it. Allowing it. Naming it.
When I stopped running from my own pain, when I allowed my own emotional suffering to come forward into the light and be seen, without need for justification, I was moved by compassion for myself and desired to alleviate my pain. I then began to take the steps necessary to heal, to change the habits that were destroying me, to forgive myself and others, to move forward and create a beautiful life.
Many of us deny that we are in pain, we assume it’s a natural part of being human.
Feeling pain is natural, remaining in pain is not. The point of pain is to draw our attention to something that needs healing. If your arm was broken, self-pity might look like, “My life is so miserable, my arm just hurts all the time and there’s nothing I can do about it, I’m just going to take boatloads of aspirin and drink a liter of vodka so I won’t feel anything anymore.”
Whereas self-compassion would be, “I’m in excruciating pain, I’m going to the doctor to get it set and cast so that I can heal.”
Yet we refuse to do this with emotional pain. We won’t be with our pain long enough to let it move us to do something about it.
We value the trait of compassion. Those who practice it are admired and revered. Why then, do we resist having compassion toward ourselves?
Self-compassion is rarely a natural response. It’s something we must set an intention to develop. But with the right guidance and practice, the art of self-compassion can be the missing piece between a life of emotional suffering and a life of freedom.
The first step toward selfcompassion is to be honest with yourself. Take some time to examine your life. Do your emotions feel out of control, explosive, erratic, or perhaps you feel numb and disconnected? Do you feel like you are running from something? Do you feel like a victim of life? If so, slow down and let your heart speak to you. What hurts? What wants your attention? Not unlike how you would treat a small child who was upset.
Once you allow yourself to be with your pain, then you can begin to find ways to truly alleviate your suffering. You can’t mend what you don’t know is hurting.