Inna Shukshina

It so happened that I always loved feeling sorry for myself and suffering. From time to time I would feel so bitter, so hurt — that everything in life is not the way I want it, that someone had offended me, that I am such a good person, I try and try and nothing works out. And the most galling thing in this state is that there are not that many people willing to pity you and sympathise, and if there are, it does not really help all that much. A feeling of dissatisfaction and sadness stays inside all the same.

When I first became acquainted with Orthodoxy, the suffering stayed with me, but now it acquired a “lofty” meaning. Now I was not simply feeling sorry for myself and unable to build a relationship with someone — I was enduring; not simply unable to support myself — but bearing it patiently and humbling myself. The trap of this way of seeing things was that by suffering and taking offence at the whole world or at someone in particular, you are not actually doing anything good but getting a kind of masochistic satisfaction that can be very hard to part with. It is good that later I rethought this state and no longer associated it with anything lofty and right.

And what sort of feeling is self-pity really? Why is it sometimes so pleasant to feel sorry for yourself, and why do other people seem so cruel and unjust in those moments? In the end I came to the conclusion that it is more like an unconscious sense of superiority over others. If I am crying, if I have been hurt, then I am the good one and they are the bad ones. I am kind and the world is unjust. And these feelings are sometimes so habitual for us that it is hard to track them in ourselves and understand their real meaning. It is also hard to part with such a hidden benefit — feeling that you are good — because otherwise the conclusion follows: if it is not so, if “I am good, they are bad” does not work, then what is right? Surely not “I am bad, they are good”? That is more or less what we are taught in religion; one priest even said to me, “Tell yourself, ‘I am a pig and others are angels’.” Do I really have to forbid myself to feel that I am good even in moments of weakness, sadness and upset?

Am I good or bad?

You can only get out of this trap by determining once and for all that I am real, as I am, neither good nor bad, simply because the opposite position leads to no good. And we are given no right to judge what others are. If you take any person and unwind their life from a given action back to the moment of their birth, you understand that if you had found yourself in their life, in their place, having travelled exactly that path, you would most likely have acted in exactly the same way. And at what moment they had a genuinely available choice to act one way or another is very hard to know, which is precisely why God calls us not to judge people, not to consider anyone “bad” by definition. Only refusing to take an evaluating attitude towards ourselves and others, and refusing constantly to compare ourselves with others, can give us calm and freedom.

The instrument of comparison and evaluation is given to us not for that, but in order to determine what suits me better. What men, what work, what home, what clothes? What life path do I want to choose for myself? And a positive comparison of yourself with your former self also helps you see your progress and your achievements. In the end, all of us once could not walk or talk, so in any case we have come a fair way forward! And if you recall all the studying, all the mountains of washed dishes, all the working hours, all the attention given to children — none of this can under any circumstances be called bad in one sweep. The life path we have travelled is our foundation, something that will always stay with us, and it is important to value and respect it.

So where do the roots of the wish to cry, to get upset, to complain about life come from? Why do we sometimes rub salt into our own wounds and endlessly replay the same distressing memories, experiences and old hurts? Experience shows that suffering comes in different kinds. Some we invent for ourselves; others are life situations we find ourselves in and have to overcome. Let us talk about both cases.

Self-pity, or “How unhappy I am!”

What can be done if you understand that you are causing yourself too much suffering with your own worrying, with replaying situations in your head? Unpleasant moments do, of course, happen in life. Remember physical pain, when the case is not serious. You bump into something — it hurts for a couple of minutes — it passes. But what happens if we deliberately keep hitting ourselves or picking at the wound? The pain can be stretched out indefinitely. If we like thinking about how it would have been better to act, what should have been said, what if everything had turned out differently — that is suffering we create for ourselves. And the roots, of course, come from childhood.

A child has important needs to be loved, to matter, and later to be special. We quickly learn that if we bump ourselves, if we feel bad, we immediately get the attention and love of adults. And sometimes this way of getting attention and love from outside becomes a habitual style of life. You may know people like that, and they may even irritate you. People who constantly complain about something, poor unhappy things. But sometimes we ourselves want someone to feel sorry for us, to hug us, to give us a present, and it is so sad when this does not happen! When our tears only irritate others and they have no idea what to do!

We all want attention and love, and sometimes we get used to receiving them only in this way — by provoking pity. It is important to express your feelings, to allow yourself to cry and to be sad. But here is what you can do when these feelings get out of control and take up too much space in your life:

• Set aside a specific time to feel sorry for yourself, set a timer and pity yourself with all your might, but strictly by the timer! Time is up — off you go to do something else.
• Try, at the moment of crying out of self-pity, to track exactly what words you are saying to yourself and to replace them with other, more pleasant ones. I discovered that I cannot start crying until I have scolded myself with unpleasant words such as “nothing works out for me again”, “who needs me”, “nobody loves me”. As soon as you start saying to yourself “well done me, I have already done so much” or “I have such a wonderful family” — somehow you no longer feel like crying.
• And of course, observe whether self-pity is perhaps your only way of showing care and love for yourself, of getting attention from those around you. Perhaps it is worth starting to introduce new, more positive ways of caring for yourself into your life! For example, try telling those close to you directly what you want, without reproaches and hurt feelings!

“Everything is against me!”, or how to move forward with joy

If we think we are unlucky in life, we will suffer a great deal, worry and feel sorry for ourselves. What do we think about life in general, how do we perceive it? Is life a trial? How often we expect bad things from life, worry, fret. What is life for you — a heavy burden we must carry with torment, or a joyful adventure full of love? Are you lucky in life, or is life unfair to you and you are unlucky?

It happens that people have a crisis of faith after something unpleasant happens to them; it starts to seem to them that God is unfair to them. I went through this myself! We lived rightly, did everything we should, went through the whole list. And He did not reward us but punished us — that is not what we expected! What for?

Have you noticed that when you listen to or read about other people for whom everything is working out splendidly, especially if these people give advice or recommendations, it seems to you that they just got lucky or that they are living wrongly. Whereas we, in some way, got unlucky, even though we live rightly. And it is impossible to influence or change it. But when we assess the world this way, we take responsibility for what happens in our life off ourselves. So how do you influence something in your life? What should you do when difficulties and problems appear in life? How can you relate to everyday life lessons in a way that means less suffering? Is it important to live “rightly”, or is it more important to live in love and joy?

Responsibility for your own life, the ability to see how and what I myself do in my life, is exactly what can help us learn the lesson and move on without getting stuck in worries. Without believing that only circumstances and other people are to blame for everything. But without blaming ourselves either. Only after my clients learn to take responsibility for their own life do they begin to see the mechanisms that operate in their life, the points at which something can be changed for a better result — and it is exactly this that helps them get out of a dead end. Feelings of shame, guilt and envy are the opposite of responsibility for your own life. They will only start the vicious circle of self-pity and will not help you learn anything new. It is useless to blame anyone, including yourself, when acting and taking concrete steps towards a goal is far more effective.

And here are some new attitudes, for example, that can help you look differently at unpleasant moments in life:

• Everything that happens in my life is necessary for my growth and development
• If God is love, then I can go through every situation in life with love in my heart and with care for myself. Any suffering is temporary, whereas love can be with us always
• How well I am able to support myself determines both my success at work and the amount of love I can give people. That is why it is important constantly to give time and attention to observing myself and caring for myself, so as not to push the situation to the edge.

And as for my self-pity, in the end I began learning not to evaluate myself, or at least not to get stuck on it. Not to perceive every trouble as something global. Something did not work out today — it will work out tomorrow. Moods can vary too — the main thing is to be able to return to normal, when you feel good and calm. And, most interestingly, it works! Sometimes it is very pleasant to cry, to be sad, to buy myself some dark chocolate or bananas, to complain to my husband about life, to look for comfort — but the main thing is that these periods do not drag on for long; I know that in my life everything depends on me and on God, and God certainly wants only good!

This article of mine was published on the portal Matrony.ru http://www.matrony.ru/lyubim-li-myi-stradat/

If you do not know how to cope with the problem of dejection and self-pity on your own, write to inly@list.ru!