What does it really mean to feel sorry for ourselves after something goes wrong in our life, after we screw up? Why might we want to beat ourselves up? To think of ourselves as a loser? I see people doing it after they go on a binge and gain weight, say something they wish they hadn’t or do something they’re ashamed of. As I have watched many patients do this over the years I have realised that feeling sorry for ourselves and beating ourselves up has certain benefits.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want
The alternative to beating ourselves up is to focus on what we can learn from the experience. To turn the dissappointment in ourselves, or the pain of allowing others to hurt us, into motivation to grow and do things diferrently next time round. As the saying goes, ‘experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.’ Greater wisdom comes from greater experience. So, in theory, we should try to move to embracing things not working out as soon as we can by letting go of the self-pity and the self-flagellation. So why might we choose not to turn setbacks into learning experiences?

In simple terms, the first benefit in feeling sorry for ourselves, for beating ourselves up, is a protective one. It slows us down, causes us to pause, as we doubt ourselves, so we don’t get ourselves deeper into trouble. The greater benefit however, is that it keeps us safe from the threat of success, of growth. To learn, to grow, takes us to new, higher levels. The higher we go the further we can fall. Much safer to stay down at the lower rungs of failure. Moving into victim mode, feeling sorry for ourselves, seeing ourselves as losers is a superb way of avoiding the opposite of this mode i.e. authoring the meaningful life we might just aspire to … with all of the anxiety inherent to this aspiration.

(By the way, for those of you who are interested, I have just run you through the concept of  ‘Existential Angst’ – the anxiety that goes with taking responsibility for authoring one’s own life.)