Dear Herculodge: Can You Save Me from Myself?

Dear Herculodge,

I have an embarrassing problem that points to something incredibly weak that defines who I am. I’m talking about self-pity. I have an indulgent, perhaps narcissistic personality that I’m afraid compels me to respond to all my problems and difficulties with an adolescent, overblown sense of self-pity. When I see myself as being less popular, courageous, and successful as I’d like to be, I become discouraged, frustrated, and overcome by a sense of self-loathing and pity. When I see myself being so damn needy, rather than do things that would make me less needy, I pity myself in such a thoroughly indulgent way that I became even more needy than before. 

Herculodge, I am mired in a vicious cycle and I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? 

 

Dear Reader, 

I suspect one way to deal with your problems is to consider your problems in terms of proportion and degree rather than as black and white absolutes. You say you’re narcissistic, needy, full of self-pity and overcome by a sense of failure. All I can say is join the club. Everyone has those feelings and I gather you’re intelligent and reasonable enough to see that you’re not alone in your plight. The point is that we are all afflicted with a sense of neediness and self-loathing and failure—to a certain degree, but most of us don’t allow these afflictions to overtake us so that we have lost our appetite for life, for our striving to achieve worthy goals and so on. 

I get the sense that you feel that your self-pitying needy condition is so absolute as to distinguish you from the rest of us. Also, I get the sense that you see your self-pity as an absolute condition when I would argue that it is more fluid, relative, and transitory that you would like to think. 

What I see in your inquiry is that you are a man not so much overcome by self-pity, per se, but by absolutes, by a compulsion to see things as black and white. This passion for clarity compels you to oversimplify who you are and a result you are myopic and downright blind as to who you are and as to what possibilities you may or may not have. As a result, you exaggerate your condition and believing in your exaggerated self-definition makes you act upon your deluded beliefs resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy, which in turn reinforces your delusions. 

What steps can I provide that might point toward an exit sign from your dilemma? One, you must not spend too much alone as you appear to be your own worst enemy. Two, you need to recognize that feelings of failure, self-pity, and neediness are part of the human condition and not a unique template that has been exclusively stamped into your DNA. Third, you need to transfer your sadness from the island of yourself toward the suffering that afflicts the whole human race. This kind of sadness is called weltsmertz, the German term for the “sadness of the world.” To be focused on your own sadness will result in narcissistic paralysis. To be focused on the sadness of the world links you to the human race and hopefully impels you to commit your life to addressing the world’s sadness, which I believe is the only “solution” to the human condition. 

Comments

[Mike W]

The Weltsmertz? Didn't they live next to Lucy and Rocky?

[Mike W]

[Lucy and RICKY]

Now had that been an actual joke, the misspelling would have spoiled it.

[Ed S.]

I always thought it meant "world weariness"

[Carrie]

I always thought it meant sadness focused on the world, as opposed to sadness for oneself.

I must say the word in question is NOT euphonious and lends itself to Honeymooner jokes.

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