discussion on Self-Pity

To me one of the most terrifying scenes in all of literature is in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman . Willy Loman is a traveling salesman who feels that he is largely a failure. His self-pity...

One evening I was taking a stretch break from study, walking out into the night. Soon I began speaking prayers of complaint . . . a little like the lament psalms in the Bible. I wasn’t angry, really, ...

John Fiske, a Harvard scholar, once visited Herbert Spencer, regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of his time in England. During their conversation, Spencer asked about Mrs. Fiske and the chil...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

Humanity is thirsty for God, but we drink from cups that can hold no water. We draw well water and find that we are thirstier after we drink our fill. It is the water of self-hatred and rejection. It ...

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...

Gratitude has a ripple effect, spreading warmth and positivity to those around us. It is nearly impossible to hold onto resentment or self-pity while maintaining a grateful heart. John Kavanaugh share...

13-year-old Mary is having a tough day and has stretched herself out on the couch to do a bit of what she thought to be well-deserved complaining and self-pitying. She moans to her Mom and brother, “N...

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

I once asked a psychologist who had been in practice for over forty years what is the most common regret his clients felt. Without hesitation, he said, “Selfishness.” Why was I not the spouse or paren...

One of life’s enduring mysteries is that you don’t have to do anything wrong for your life to go horribly wrong. When we are abused, rejected, hurt, betrayed, or manipulated, we search our hearts and ...

Perhaps the greatest irony in the life of continual comparison is that while it involves so much attention to the attributes and gifts of other people, it’s actually quite self-focused. From that hype...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

In his poem Cocktail Party , T. S. Eliot captures a fundamental truth about human nature and the source of much hurt in the world. People’s actions are rarely driven by outright malice—intended t...

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome young man who caught sight of his reflection in a pond, fell in love with his own image, toppled into the water and drowned. So “narcissism” is an excessiv...

Over the next few years I collected data to suggest that we have seen a broad shift from a culture of humility to the culture of what you might call the Big Me, from a culture that encouraged people t...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

But it is important to be aware that the act of judging others has its origins in our self-judgment. As I often tell patients, “Shamed people shame people.” Long before we are criticizing others, the ...

He may have been the hardest person I ever counseled. He was self-assured and controlling. He argued for the rightfulness of everything he had ever done. He acted like the victim when in fact he was t...

William James, in a famous letter to H. G. Wells in 1906, credited what he called American “moral flabbiness” to “the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpr...

Thomas Merton once said, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self, This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. A...

Do you remember those birds in Finding Nemo? They get me every time. As they fight for what’s on the ground, they are flying around screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Never has Disney nailed a picture of ...

Before God can divulge our God-given identities in our desert-of-the soul wilderness experiences, there is something we need to know: he requires that we be brutally honest with ourselves and with him...

You follow your desires wherever they take you, and you approve of yourself so long as you are not obviously hurting anyone else. You figure that if the people around you seem to like you, you must be...

Paradoxically…healing means moving from your pain to the pain…When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclin...

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake u...

Recently a group of researchers conducted a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs. The researchers reported a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music...

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. T...

Why is shame so painful? In this short excerpt, professor and philosopher Gregg Ten Elsof provides a helpful insight: The experience of shame always involves the sense of diminished social standin...