245 – Self-Soothing & Self-Pity

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Have you ever had one of those days where nothing dramatic really happens, but everything still feels off? Like you’re tired, you’re unmotivated, maybe a little lonely, you cancel your workout, you grab a snack you didn’t even want, and you tell yourself. I deserve this, even though you know it’s not really helping, and the worst part is you don’t even realize what’s going on until you’re halfway through a bag of something salty or skipping the thing that you said that you wanted to do.

So today we are talking about one of the most overlooked, sneaky emotions that completely derails your health habits without you even realizing it. It doesn’t look dramatic. It doesn’t sound like whining. It hides behind the thoughts like, this isn’t fair and I don’t have a choice, and it’s likely running the show more often than you think.

If you feel [00:01:00] like you keep sabotaging yourself, if your healthy habits don’t feel so healthy anymore, this episode might show you exactly why. So don’t skip it. You are gonna wanna hear this.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with.

Hey there and welcome to the Total Health and Midlife podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and I have a question for you. Have you ever woken up feeling kind of, I don’t know, invisible, like nothing was technically wrong, but everything just kind of felt sort of off. Now, that was me a few Sundays ago.

My husband was outta town. I hadn’t made any plans for the weekend, and at 5 47 in the morning. Two whole minutes after my usual weekday wake up time, my cat [00:02:00] decided that it was plenty of time for me to sleep in, and he jumped up on the bed. He pawed at my puppy, and within seconds I had my wet little dog tongue licking my face.

When licking didn’t work, the cat escalated, walked up to my head and started biting and tugging on my hair like a full toddler tantrum with claws. And I laid there thinking, are you freaking kidding me? I had one morning to sleep in, and now I am wide awake. I’m alone and apparently running a pet bed and breakfast.

I got up, I poured my coffee and just felt sorry for myself. No one had called, no one had invited me out, and even though I hadn’t actually made any effort to do something social, I was still sulking, but it was subtle and it was there. The words I was thinking in my head were poor [00:03:00] me.

Self pity doesn’t feel dramatic. It doesn’t stomp into the room and announce itself like rage or grief. It’s sneaky and it whispers.

It nods along with your inner monologue, like, yeah, you’re right. This is totally unfair. You do deserve better. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. Honestly, it feels so incredibly true. It sounds so reasonable. You’re tired. No one’s checking on you.

You’ve been bending over backwards for everyone else. You didn’t ask for this. You’re just reacting to your life the way any reasonable person would, right? We don’t recognize it. We don’t call it self pity. We call it being realistic. We call it treating ourselves because it’s been a long week.

But here’s the thing. Self-pity focuses on the circumstances. Not what we’re feeling [00:04:00] about them, and so therefore it hides that Sunday. After feeding the cat and feeling grumbly for a few hours, I took my dog to the beach and I was playing with her.

And as we walked, I started to feel just different. Not better, just clearer. The sun was warm on my skin.

My dog was doing the thing where she just runs and plays, and I noticed the rhythm of the waves, and I looked around and realized I have so much. Not in a performative, I should be grateful kind of way, but it just landed in my body. Oh, what I was feeling earlier. That was self pity. As soon as I could name it, the whole mood completely went away and it shifted.

I wasn’t stuck anymore. I didn’t feel quite so wronged. I just felt present. And that moment, that clarity, [00:05:00] it changed everything about the rest of my day.

Now self-pity is way more common than we realize, and it’s more shameful then we would like to admit, it’s one of those emotions that we rarely talk about even with ourselves, because the minute we recognize it we feel embarrassed, like, Ugh, I’m being that person. Nobody wants to be the one who’s wallowing.

We want to be resilient, grateful, capable, the one who just rolls with it. Self pity doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means that you’re human, especially for women, especially for women in midlife. This shows up a lot. We’ve been socialized to put everyone else’s needs first, to manage the household, the calendar, the emotional weather of the entire family, and to do it with a smile, preferably while being told that we are so lucky to have what we have.[00:06:00]

So when things feel heavier, lonely, or flat out hard, we don’t always know how to respond. We default to, I have to do this, or I don’t have a choice. That’s not always true, but it feels true because for so long we’ve been taught that our job is to quietly deal with it. And when we tell ourselves we have to or we can’t or we’re not allowed, we start to believe that we’re powerless.

That’s where the self pity sneaks in because when you don’t feel like you have a say, it makes total sense to feel sorry for yourself. It’s how our brains try to comfort us. Look how hard this is. It’s not your fault. You’re doing your best. You deserve something good. And then suddenly we’re in the pantry with a handful of chocolate chips or saying, screw it to the walk we wanted to take or flopping onto the couch, even [00:07:00] though what we really needed was a conversation with a friend, a walk out in the sunshine, a stretch for our bodies, or just a cry. And so we say things like, I deserve this, or I just want to treat myself, and maybe you do. You know, I’m not the boss of your snacks, but if it’s happening a lot and it’s leading to results that you don’t love, like feeling sluggish or disconnected or out of control, it might be worth getting curious about.

Because it’s not about the food, it’s about the feelings underneath the food. When we feel powerless, our actions tend to reflect that. We avoid, we numb, we procrastinate, withdrawal, we give in, and then we look at our results, whether it’s how we feel in our body or how we’re showing up and we think, why can’t I get it together?

But those actions come from how we feel and our feelings come [00:08:00] from what we’re thinking. Not what’s happening to us, but what we’re making it mean. That’s the part that we can change. That’s where your power is. You are not lazy, you are not lacking discipline, and you are not broken. You’re just stuck in a thought loop that’s telling you that there’s no other option.

But what if there is?

Self-pity doesn’t just mess with our mood. It messes with our habits. It rewrites the story that we’re telling ourselves about why we do the things that we do, and then suddenly actions that once felt empowering, start to feel like punishment.

I have to work out becomes this resentful chore. Not a choice, not something that helps you to feel strong or clearheaded or more at ease in your body. Just a box to check. Something to resent. I can’t eat that. [00:09:00] That becomes deprivation. A power struggle. You want it, but you’re not allowed to have it. And no one likes being told what to do, especially not by their own inner voice.

So we rebel sometimes, quietly, sometimes with an entire bag of chips. And then there’s the worst one. It’s not working anyway. That thought is pure resignation. That’s the one that makes you give up to skip the walk, to cancel the grocery run. To order the thing that you know will make you feel worse later, because what’s the point?

That’s how self pity sabotages us. It takes our intentions, moving more, eating better, drinking water, getting sleep, and turns them into things that we have to do, not things that we get to do, not things that we want to do. And once that shift happens, the whole thing starts to [00:10:00] unravel. We don’t feel proud, we don’t feel motivated.

We feel stuck, disempowered, disconnected, like we’re dragging ourselves through a routine that no longer feels like it belongs to us. But here’s the thing. Self-pity feels like a dead end, but it isn’t. It’s actually a fork in the road, and if you can press pause just long enough to notice what’s happening, you can choose something else.

You can shift from, I have to, to, I’m choosing to from, I can’t to, I’m allowed and I’m deciding from it’s not working to something here needs attention. And that shift, that is where your power lives.

So here’s the good news. You don’t have to judge it. You just have to notice it. You don’t have to fix it in the moment or beat yourself up for feeling sorry for yourself. That [00:11:00] just adds another layer of shame on top. Like, great, now I’m having a pity party and I hate myself for it. No, we’re not doing that.

The shift out of self pity starts with one thing, and that’s awareness. Being aware that you are in self pity. It takes emotional maturity to admit that you’re stuck in a loop of poor me. It takes self-awareness to say, oh, I think I’m making myself the victim here. And it takes compassion to not immediately pile on the judgment for doing something that, let’s be honest, is just part of being human.

But once you name it, you’ve cracked it open. You’ve created a space to ask different questions. How did I get here? Not in a dramatic life story way, just what were the small choices or thoughts that led me to this moment, and more importantly, what’s one choice that I do have right now [00:12:00] that Sunday after my beach walk, snap me out of it.

I came home and I asked myself, what would feel nourishing today? Not productive, not quote unquote good, not what should I do? What would make me feel cared for by myself. I made myself a real breakfast. I went and sat outside in the sun with a book that I’d been meaning to read. I texted a friend and made plans for later in the week.

I moved through the rest of the day slowly with this quiet sense of agency like I have got me. That’s the shift from no one invited me to what can I do for me today? From, I don’t get to to, I choose to. It doesn’t always look dramatic. You won’t always get a parade or a gold star. But that one decision to ask what would nourish me, it changed my entire direction for the [00:13:00] day, and that’s not for nothing.

So if you’ve been feeling stuck, like your health habits don’t feel good anymore, or you keep sabotaging what you say that you want, this might be why. If you felt resentful of your workouts, restricted by your food rules, or caught in that exhausting tug of war between, I want to feel better and I just can’t.

Deal with today. I want you to know I see you and more than that. I want more for you. This isn’t about discipline or willpower. It’s not about fixing yourself or doing better tomorrow. It’s about seeing what’s actually going on underneath and realizing that you have a choice. If you want support, figuring out what to do next.

If this episode sparks something, but you’re not sure where to go from here, I’ve created something just for you. It’s the Total Health and Midlife Listeners guide. It’s a free resource [00:14:00] to help you explore this podcast more deeply based on what you’re going through right now. Now, whether you’re struggling with food motivation, body image, or you just want to feel like you yourself, again, it’s all in there.

Just tap the link on the show notes and grab it. Because self pity is part of being human, but you are absolutely allowed to choose something else.

Alright, that’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing day, and I will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Hey, so if you’ve been nodding along and thinking, okay, I know what to do, Elizabeth, I’m just not doing it. I have got something for you. It’s my free podcast listeners guide. It’s a curated roadmap to help you get started with the most helpful episodes based on exactly what you need right now. Go to elizabeth sherman.com/roadmap and take the guesswork out of where to begin with the Total Health and Midlife podcast.