Self-Pity Trap

Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay ​

Luckily for all of you who read this blog, I am between assignments in school right now. I am feeling a little lost without having something to write! I am doing a competency-based RN-MSN (Masters of Science in Nursing) which is 16 courses with 3-5 assessments per course. The assessments range from 3 to 20 pages. For the last 7 months, I have been pumping out paper, after paper. I am kinda weird, I know. I have really enjoyed it. The unfortunate part is that doesn't leave a whole lot of motivation to update my blog even though writing about something other than quality improvement would be desirable. So, here we are!

In my last blog, I mentioned watching all sorts of videos about the culture around toxic positivity and hustle culture. The post dabbled into the role of social media in that. While I do like aspects of social media, there are plenty of aspects that leave me wondering if I should even be on it as much as I am. I do know when to take a break. I also know that there are times when my mood is not right to be scrolling through my FB feed. One of those times is when I am feeling sorry for myself. If I want a way to feed self-pity, surfing through the supposed "perfect life" of everyone else is pretty dangerous. My headspace isn't in the right place to challenge what I am seeing. In a "normal" state for me, I can remind myself that the heavily edited material that I am looking at and not get my undies in too big of a bunch when I see toxic positivity memes in my face.

Self-pity is a tough one for me. It's a fine line between having valid feelings about the hand we are dealt. There are plenty of times that grief, loss, and trauma that questioning "why the hell is this happening to me?" is warranted and justified. So, I looked up the definition of self-pity. In my mind, I know when I cross over into self-pity but I would have a really difficult time explaining to someone else where that line is. Dictionary. com: "excessive, self-absorbed unhappiness over one's own troubles." Yes, that makes sense to me. And.....how is excessive defined? When do I go to far?

The first inpatient treatment I went to, I was highly emotional when I transferred from detox into treatment. I was so relieved to be there. My detox was unpleasant, long, and very difficult. That alone left me in an emotional spot. Beyond that, though, I felt so broken. It felt like the bottom had fallen out. I didn't know what life was going to be now. I was scared of the work I was going to need to do to find sobriety. I felt like I was different too. I clearly remember my first group session, everyone went around the group and shared something about themselves. I just started crying out of sheer relief. I wasn't all that different. These are my people! I knew exactly what they were talking about. I knew they understood me! Yeah!

Fast forward 24 hours, that tune changed a little bit. I sat down with my counselor and we needed to put together a treatment plan and an outline of the assignments I was to complete during my time there. I started to share how horrible I felt that my family had assisted to redo my condo and I couldn't afford it anymore. I felt like like I was given all of these resources and opportunities in my life. I had managed to screw that all up because of my alcohol use. I "should" be an alcoholic. I "should" know better. I am divorced, looking at foreclosure, I am physical and mentally ill. I shared a few more things and the counselor said, "well, a priority topic for you is going to be self-pity." Whoa. That was rude. I legitimately felt bad for having all of this opportunity and falling apart! It took about two weeks before I shared anything in individual session with her because I didn't take that feedback very well. 

It wasn't that she was wrong. I was in a self-pity spiral. It's not uncommon at all for people with addiction to become self-absorbed and fall into the self-pity trap. What may look like a series of excuses for why life is so horrible and you can't expect anything of me is a whole lot of self-pity. I didn't say things like that to make excuses, I wanted people to feel sorry for me and then turn around and tell me what an amazing person I am. I was looking for validation. I was looking for someone to tell me that I wasn't such a horrible person. The problem, though, if people did, it was only a matter of hours or days before I did something else to make my life or someone else's life terrible. Then I started with the self-pity so that people would tell me, AGAIN, that I was not a bad person.

I have mentioned in previous blogs that the first year of my recovery was tough. I was angry, mad, annoyed, etc. etc. Some of that was driven by my self-pity. I was about to lose my nursing license due to my use. My family knew I needed to find recovery and were making changes to support me making changes (which is a nice way of saying - boundaries and expectations were set, some behaviors would no longer be tolerated). Things were changing. Addiction was still running the show for that first year even though I wasn't drinking anymore. I spent time complaining about how the Board of Nursing program took away my choice to drink. Great, now I am sober, but life still sucks. When I got into outpatient treatment, I had a counselor tell me "HSPS didn't take away your choice to drink. You still can. It's just that there are consequences to that decision. You don't like having the consequences because you rare did before." I sat on that for about a week or so before I decided she was right.

As I started down the path of mental health therapy, I had a lot of work to do to re-frame how I was seeing things. Addiction is a selfish disease. I could easily suck the air out of the room with the problems in my life and myself when I was using. Yes, I had SOME problems. But, I also had a lot of situations I MADE into problems so I could continue to fuel the "whoa is me" narrative. I didn't listen to anything anyone had to say except for compliments about myself. If people wanted to offer me some advice about making changes, they would hear very quickly that nothing was going to work. Nope. Never. You don't know how horrible everything about my life is every minute of every day. 

In retrospect, I understand why I was doing what I was doing. It was another good year of therapy to balance feeling unhappy about situations and not turning it into a full on pity-party. That line was not very clear to me. I had viewed the world from a victim standpoint for years. And by years, I mean 20+ years. I didn't know there was another perspective to be had. My therapist worked with me to see that I engaged in that behavior to find validation. I required so much external validation to survive. I had nothing good to say internally so I found reasons to validate what I was feeling inside. I probably understood on a deep level that what I was portraying was exaggerated, but I could not help myself to continue to do that because I got something I was seeking. I really don't like that part of myself. I look back on that behavior and see how maladaptive it was. I was manipulative. I actually enjoyed making people feel guilty. I was needy and dramatic. I was exhibiting strong personality traits of borderline personality disorder. I was out of control.

The process of changing internal messaging is challenging. For me, re-framing perspectives has been the most successful skill to avoid falling into the self-pity pit. I talked about "comparing" in my last blog post. Re-framing is different than comparing. It can morph into comparing quickly which is not helpful for me. The hardest re-frame was actually changing my approach to addiction. I could continue to complain, moan, bitch, and wallow in the wreckage addiction caused in my life. And I did, deeply, for about a year. Something clicked after that first year and I started to see myself as a survivor of addiction. Many of my brothers and sisters in the world of addiction don't make it. I did. I have some choices to make moving forward about how I want addiction to be told in my story. Yes, it was sucky and resulted in devastation. And I lived to tell my story. Not everyone does.

The other big re-frame was looking at validation needs. Let's be honest -- we all need some external validation to prop us up from time to time. However, the primary source of validation and understanding needs to come internally. That is a constant work-in-progress. Life happens and some of what happens cuts me off at the knees. When I think back to early recovery, I had to explore what I wanted to hear from people. First, I wanted people to tell me that I was an amazing nurse. I needed and wanted that validation when I actually wasn't the best nurse due to my physical and mental impairments due to alcoholism. Now that I am sober, I appreciate the feedback that I am a good nurse. I will never turn that down. At the same time, I don't need to hear it in order to get to work. It's OK for me to say, "Yeah, I am a good nurse. I am good teacher. Not everyone is going to jive with me, but I do my best to do right by those I serve." Now, catch me on a bad day when I got my ass handed to me by something or someone? I might see out a little reassurance that that moment time doesn't negate the entirety of my career.

I also carry an enormous amount of anxiety. My anxiety has all sorts of messaging that can lead me to seek out assurance or validation. I know today when to step back and see who/what is talking in that moment. Is it really the anxiety talking? If so, let me take a moment to get out of my anxiety state and look at this situation from another perspective. I have so many examples of this in my life. A straightforward one is when I am confronted about something uncomfortable or challenges something I do feel confident about. A friend took a big leap of courage to tell me how I had disappointed them in how I handled something. Because I am a black and white thinker, I thought, oh no, they are right, they are going to dump me as a friend. This is the end of our friendship. I am so horrible. I can't believe I did this. They are totally right. What do I do? Well, first, a sincere apology was warranted and accept responsibility for my actions/decision. Then, a sincere commitment to be better. Guess what, they accepted that and forgave me. 

If I were in a self-pity place, I would have seen that interaction as an attack on my character. I would have not taken responsibility. I would call four other people and tell my "version" of the situation and make sure those individuals validate me. I would have ended the friendship. I would assume a stance that they hurt me by calling me out. Everyone always does this to me. This is exactly why I don't like letting people get close to me, they just disappoint me by being mean to me. That is not what happened at all. I made a bad call. I am a human being. They cared and loved me enough to have the hard conversation with me, let me know that I had disappointed them, and allowed me the opportunity to make it better. Still friends today.

I may continue on this topic in a future blog. As I sit here and think about this topic, it is just interesting to figure out where to find this line. I know some clear cut examples, but I have plenty of situation that sit in the gray!

Peace!
J