Pity becomes a game

WHEN PITY BECOMES A GAME

19th in a series

By Jackalyn Rainosek, PHD

This is the definition of pity that I included in my last article: Pity is when someone feels sorry for me when I have a problem, an illness or a challenging situation to deal with. Pity has some negative aspects to it. It can lead to another person wanting to “take care of” people. The reality is that the person who has the problem needs to take responsibility for their contributions to the situation and make a commitment to change themselves. In my previous article, I gave examples of how the “caretaker” can be detrimental to the person with the problem. In this article, I want to describe people who take advantage of people who feel sorry for them, and feed on receiving pity from another person.

Pity being a game to get what I want at the expense of you

There are a number of people that I have worked with that fit the stories I share in this article. I have combined some stories, so it would be very hard for a person to determine who this individual is even if you have known me for years. Some of these people are drug addicts or alcoholics, and some have other types of addictions. When people are in an addictive process, they are being affected by the addiction physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It is important to realize that there comes a time when offering sympathy and empathy does not work, since the individual is feeding on the attention they are getting and continuing to invest in their disease or addiction. 

My story is about a person I have named “X.” I met X a few years ago, and X asked me to help them start a recovery program. They were addicted to alcohol and specific kinds of drugs. For a month or so, they would go to A.A. meetings. They had a sponsor that worked with them on a weekly basis. Something would happen in X’s life, and they would find some reason to go back out and use again. Their friends would rally around them, take them to meetings and the sponsor would up the amount of time that they spent with X.

When X relapsed again, this time X went to a treatment facility. X then went to a half-way house after the treatment facility. X got back to working, they continued going to meetings, and this time X lasted about six months. Friends started having concerns and would show more caring and support, hoping that the person would stay sober. The friends felt sorry for X, and spent more time with X, who played the victim and told stories about how unfortunate their childhood and adolescence had been. X would use the past to justify their lack of ability to stay sober.

I had a number of tough discussions with X about the various excuses they developed to not maintain their sobriety. I talked with X about the support they were getting from the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, and how caring X’s recovery friends were. Then X get in a conflict with a family member and they relapsed again. After the treatment facility and the half-way house, the recovery friends made more effort to take the person to meetings, go to lunch or dinner with X after the meetings, and call daily or every other day to see how they were doing. The family members had long given up on X, so they did not come around.

Even though X was getting a significant amount of care and support, X got upset about something that happened with a friend, and this time they almost overdosed. X then landed in the hospital and had significant physical problems. They contracted a disease that was life threatening. Some of the friends contacted the family; however, they had been through years of this kind of behavior and refused to get involved. The sponsor and one other recovery friend strongly confronted X and stated clearly, “We believe that you have not been committed to being sober from alcohol and drugs, and when the day comes that you are committed to doing the work necessary, call us. However, we are finished for now. X did not call either of these people again, since they confronted X about X’s behavior.  X started finding new friends that would feel sorry for X. A few months later, X relapsed again. 

Apathy is when people show a lack of interest, concern, or enthusiasm for dealing with the challenges that a person may have. Often people think apathy is negative and it is not. Apathy can give me the clue that it is time to stop helping someone who gets more out of receiving attention than doing what is needed to be in recovery or to make changes. Friends through months of attempting to help the person got apathetic. They began to see that they needed to set firmer boundaries with X. They stopped feelings sorry for X.  They began to realize that some of the actions that they had taken were desperate efforts on their part to control X. They had confused pity with empathy and sympathy.  They had prevented X from having the consequences of X’s behavior by rescuing X when X had another relapse. 

Summary of the actions to consider

During this crisis with the coronavirus, people like X exist. They can run through a number of friends and keep doing the same negative behavior. They are not always drug addicts and/or alcoholics. They are people who have mismanaged themselves for years and will seldom go through the process of working with a professional or staying with a group of people that ask them to look at what they are doing that is destructive. They will tell one friend one story and tell another friend a different story about the same situation. They stir up discord with different people; therefore, it is harder to confront them on their behavior.

If you find yourself feeling engulfed by a new friend who is constantly having one crisis after another, please consider rereading this story. Being patient can prevent X from feeling the pain of what their behavior and actions do to themselves as well as their friends. Sometimes the most caring thing you can do is to calmly and clearly describe what you see, and then say that you cannot continue to watch X systematically destroy themselves. “Tough love” has been a term that has been used for years. I think of the number of stories where parents, friends and colleagues made the decision to confront the person and then walk away from the person and the situation. Sometimes an X learned from it and sometimes X will continue to do the same thing over and over again.

One of my clients applied tough love, and here is what happened with her and her son. She had been in recovery for years and her son kept relapsing. She sent him to a number of treatment facilities, and finally she made it clear she would not help him anymore. One day it was raining, and her son knocked on her back door. She did not let him into her house; however, she did talk with him. He said that “he wanted help and this time he was committed to doing what was necessary.” She told him that “he needed to come back in three days with his clothes washed and tell her exactly what he was willing to do.” She closed the door on him as he walked away in the rain, and she said it was the hardest thing she had ever done. She prayed that he would return. Three days later he came back. His clothes were washed, not ironed; however, they were clean. He told her what he was willing to do, if she would help him. She helped him to find a program, and he has maintained his sobriety for many years. 

If you are interested in learning more, please contact me: [email protected]. As you can see, this article is a series where each article builds on ways to confront the various problems we may face during this crisis. My mailing list receives an email the day after I have placed the article on LinkedIn and taped a video about the topic on Facebook.   Let me know if you are willing to add yourself to the mailing list. Also, you can request a copy of the previous articles and videos.

#pity

#manipulation

#mismanagement

#sympathy

#misinterpret

#lying

#discord

#relationship

#professionalcoaching