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We read the Fifth Step at a meeting the other day, and there was one sentence that really stuck with me.
Here it is: All of us saw, for example, that we lacked honesty and tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity or delusions of personal grandeur.
I identify with that so much. This is talking about what we hopefully begin to notice about ourselves as we finish up a thorough Fourth Step and begin to understand our patterns for collecting and cultivating resentment.
I nodded my head at the first part of that sentence, about realizing I lacked honesty and tolerance. But I really found myself identifying with the second part, especially associating the word “attack” with self-pity.
In my experience, self-pity is not subtle. It’s not quiet and sneaky. For me, it runs into the room and punches me in the face. It also spreads like water coming in from a leaky roof. Self-pity is one of those emotions that is a real pollutant—as soon as I start feeling it, more floods in and is a toxin to anything else going on in my life.
I’ll give you a recent example. My wife was down for the count a few weeks ago with an illness, so I was running kids around all day, every day. My needs definitely were not being met in the way that I would have liked them to have been met. Was I unable to eat or breath or sleep? No, not at all. But I had to get up a little earlier, be a little more selfless, watch a little less football, drive a little bit more… all stuff that was for other people, not me, THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD.
At one point, on a day when I was driving and driving and driving like an unpaid Uber driver, one of my teenagers jumped in the car and immediately turned my radio off and said, “God, why do you have to listen to your stupid music so loud? It’s so embarrassing.”
So I had been attacked a little earlier by self-pity, and now this was a full frontal assault on me. How. Dare. You? The music had been Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’ Roses, by the way, which is not stupid music. It is music THAT RULES.
When she said that to me, that “it’s so embarrassing,” my immediate thought was, You know what? You’re not going to college. Screw you. Is that embarrassing?”
In sobriety, I have learned what the solution is. First, I shut up. Say nothing. In those moments, it’s pretty rare that you need to respond at all.
Secondly, I either get to a meeting or call a sober friend, or both. The thing I get from meetings and recovery buddies is perspective, and self-pity often involves no perspective. I think the world is being unfair to me, that people are out to get me, and that it always has been that way and always will. It’s all b******t. I’m probably fine, or I will be.
So in my experience, the key to fighting off a self-pity attack is to launch a serenity attack. Actually, I don’t think there is such a thing as a “serenity attack,” but you probably catch my drift.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
You’re driving in a car at a constant speed. On your left is a valley and on your right is a fire engine traveling at the same speed as you.
In front of you is a galloping pig, but you cannot overtake it. Behind you is a helicopter also traveling at the same speed as you.
Q: What must you do to get out of this dangerous situation?
A: Get off the kid's carousel and, next time, don't drink so much.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2006, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)
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