What does self pity have to do with abuse?

Well many of you may not see the direct connection unless you've been subject to a partner who has found themselves in it from time to time.

Self pity is usually resorted to when an individual feels victimized by someone or some situation. They choose to fall into this state as a way of trying to comfort themselves, hide away from the world, heal, and/or ask someone else to rescue them from their misery.

Often the individual will also feel and appear depressed, unmotivated, de-energized, and afraid of taking on their normal responsibilities, to be avoiding others, vulnerable and weakened by the traumatic incident. Often this state can become entrenched as a way of life.

The net result is that the individual essentially adopts the role of a victim.

So how does it feel to live with someone like this?

Well if you've ever experienced it it makes one feel drawn into rescuing such a "pitiful" individual. Such attempts however get parried by the self pitying individual in such a way that they refuse to be helped.

In other words they hunker down into their victimhood and even unconsciously (and consciously) try to go on justifying their victimhood. They often also go so far as getting angry with their partner if they are not empathic with them as the victims that they are.

This is essentially a form of manipulation. That is the "victim" attempts to manipulate their partner into sympathizing with them and this thereby allows them to remain entrenched in their victim state.

To be around this kind of energy is draining, frustrating and annoying to say the least. When one allows themselves to be drawn into it it's usually out of some feeling of guilt.

This hooks the partner into letting the "victim" partner off the hook i.e. from taking responsibility for their own situation and hence for doing something about it. Of course the partner then has to go on living with this. So is this sounding abusive to you yet?

So you see self pity is essentially a maneuver to avoid taking responsibility for one's own situation. This in essence is abusive to the person who engages in it, is it not?

The belief being that by doing so one can feel calmer, happier, safer and more able to have a joyful life.

Well I'll leave it to you to decide if that is true.

I think that from this discussion you can see that self pity has no healthy role to play in any relationship.

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