Children feeling sorry for a weeping little girl

The concept of pity is familiar to all people around the globe. It is something between an emotion and an attitude, and it is hard to clarify how we could define it. The religious background of our civilization encourages this approach by suggesting that we should love people. In all cultures and religions, this is a positive approach.
However, this does not mean we always have good motives or adopt the right behavior. It is time to redefine pity and remember why our ancestors were so excited about this action. Psychiatrists have done much work to specify how one can feel sorry for someone else and how the other person receives that energy. Today, we discuss both parts of this relationship and see their motives.

Pity-Compassion
Pity and compassion are closely connected in the consciousness of the average man. Both are usually taught in the moral environment prevailing in people’s societies. Ideologically they have been charged as evidential concepts of altruism. They are generally considered a superior manifestation of human nature.

Pity, Compassion-Kindness
In dictionaries, but also in our daily lives, both pity and compassion are identified with the feeling of pity and compassionate participation. Less invasive pity is usually expressed when we keep our distance from the suffering individuals. Compassion tends to be the side of a kind action. Sympathizing means understanding your pain, meaning we can empathize with the other person. Kindness, a high and complex meaning, combines empathy, self-awareness, and respect. It’s not responding to requests. It is associated absolutely with compassion but not at all with pity.

Pity-guilt
In search of the operative cause of pity, its source, we almost always end up guilty. Strong beliefs that are now taken for granted. Untreated negative experiences. Self-criticism that was not done or completed energetically. Guilt for wrong actions is evident here. Such mental states create guilt but simultaneously an accompanying feeling of anger and mental oppression. Most of us end up eventually “disliking” those who will ask or need to accept our pity.

The donor and the recipient
The receiver, for his part, evokes merciful pity sometimes emphatically and sometimes indirectly, even implicitly. In the two parties’ psychological interaction, feelings are not at all clear. On the contrary, the roles – although at first seem to be fixed. The boundaries between the donor and the recipient sometimes, are unclear. The donor may feel victimized, while some recipients turn out to be abusers.

Pitying ourselves
Self-pity presents the same deceptive features, the overly indulgent and dangerous “petting” of oneself. We understand our mistakes but choose to simulate ourselves with children who avoid punishment. We choose to treat ourselves as unhappy victims worthy of pity. We are ultimately left unsatisfied in an ineffective cycle of deception and anger. Sometimes outraged and sometimes plunged into a state of depression.

Contempt
Offering pity is a pressing product of guilt. The repressed anger caused by the mental compulsion of this offering does not allow the birth of generous feelings. On the contrary, it causes contempt for the recipient. Pity is not even emotion. It comes down to a discreditable decision, which lacks a special morality. The recipient usually consciously or unconsciously seeks to “enjoy” the extorted pity. Entangled in vague or hysterical motives, they move between contempt, sadism, and masochism. In the background, pity causes pleasure and a feeling of superiority in the offerer, humiliation, discomfort, or temporary relief in the recipient.

The disestablishment
The literature on the good form of “mentoring” seems to receive serious objections. Kindness, compassion, and pity are completely different things. The person who feels sorry for others is rarely genuinely sad because of others’ misery. On the other hand, the receivers of pity remain captive to their weakness.

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To Achieve Top Performance, Growth Mindset is Not Enough by Brent Keltner.
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