Not much feels greater than a deep, rib-cracking, tear-dropping, laugh from deep down in your core. Here in Indiana and maybe the rest of the United States, we call this kind of laugh a belly laugh. Do you think you actually have fun every day?
If you really think about the amount of effort you put into making any mundane task a belly laugh of a time, then you might realize you don’t really try much.
Why? MAYBE we all secretly like pity…like pitying ourselves and receiving pity from others. Most of us like that squishy comforting feeling we had as children when our mom would embrace us against her warm radiating bosom and say, “Oh, my poor baby. You had a bad day? Aw, let me make you something to eat and run you a bath.” Your mom may, or may not have said that and maybe it wasn’t your mom, but some other authority figure in your life, but at some point in time in our childhood we received pity and it felt reassuring, loving, and pretty dang addicting. I think now in adulthood us “adults” are still yearning those pity parties that were thrown for us as little us.
I mean I get it. I love it, too and I realized I am addicted to it. Yeah…pathetic, but awareness is great and self-awareness is even better! So, how I gathered this awareness came with no prior motives or inspirations. I merely noticed how often I was dwelling on the bad things that have happened to me and expecting people to feel bad for me. :( It’s so much easier to hide behind a facade of a “hard/difficult life” and have others pity you, than living a (probably still difficult life) and making it appear easy to you to avoid taking on the possibility of others expecting more of you than you already are balancing. Example…”Oh, man, you know (just saying “you know” alone is a cry for validation (#insecure)) I am just so tired and my head hurts and I don’t want to deal with work and my brother is ignoring me because of last week and I just need a break etc, etc.”
What are we expecting from the listener of this “conversation” aka complaint/pity-party-seed-implantation scenario?
Response example: “Aw, I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help you? I can take on some of your work if you need and don’t worry about your brother it’s not your fault. You are right. I understand how you feel and I think you deserve a break.” This is like a reward for the brain for being weak and the brain doesn’t forget rewards.
Sugar, intimacy, attention, love, laughter, exercise, caffeine, fats, and any kind of stimulant can become an addiction because the brain is feeling rewarded and wants to maintain that feeling, but each reward is like a dose that weakens and needs increased.
Overtime the dosage will skyrocket! It’s kind of like the sheep that cried wolf story. Example…if we continue talking about how bad/difficult our lives are, our supporters/listeners/caretakers (if they truly care about you and wish to see you happy) will continue to support/listen/and care, but will expect you to eventually manage on your own, and being intelligent beings, we will know this in advance (consciously and/or sub-consciously), and this prior knowledge will teach us how to over dramatize our difficulties to make the pity parties last as long as possible.
Eventually, however, the cycle will end and the listeners will gradually decrease and drawback their offers to help because they either realize that you’re not motivated to help yourself, and/or that you have become dependent/addicted to this pity-party lifestyle. Maybe we’re all partially addicted to pity and before it gets bad and we lose control to the little pity-loving child within us, we can try to be our own warm-bosomed mama’s and hug ourselves, tell ourselves that we are okay and that we can have a glass of warm milk and chocolate chip cookie, but afterwards dust ourselves off and get back out in the game before we’ve lost ourselves in a cyclical warp of self-pity losing cumulative pieces of our independence, optimism, planning, and self-worth. Yikes. Share any of your secrets of how you are dealing/have dealt with pity and how you make FUN for yourself! If I were a doctor I would prescribe all of my patients to have a good deep belly laugh at least once per day (before meals, of course) to avoid sending out invitations for pity parties that no one actually wants to go to more than once in a blue moon.
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