sometimes i get tired of the pity party

this is going to be a fairly non-specific post, because i want to make it clear i'm not speaking about any one person or group of people.

but sometimes i get REALLY tired of the whole "pity party" that tends to happen when people are coping with having a history of abuse. sometimes, it feels like there's a culture of saying "oh, woe is me, these bad things happen and there is NOTHING i can do to change this, and now another bad thing has happened, and ANOTHER.... oh, woe is me. oh, i can't do anything to change this."

and then you look at the situation, and it really seems from the outside that there ARE things that person could do, but if you suggest those things, then you are being unsupportive and cruel and not validating how difficult things are.

i guess maybe part of this, on my end, is a reaction to my older sisters.

here's my usual example of the kind of thing i mean (no triggers, unless you get really freaked out by a lack of sympathy on my end, or by financial stuff):

my older sister has trouble with her finances. she tends to spend impulsively, and she doesn't budget. she is well into adulthood--she has spent more of her life over the age of 18 than under it. and she would keep having services shut off, and wound up having her house foreclosed, because of financial mismanagement on her end.

her response? to be upset that our mother hadn't taught her to budget when she was growing up. so it's not my *sister's* fault she had money trouble, because it was our *mother's* job to teach her to budget.

and i often see people (to my knowledge, not people who comment on this blog, in case you're wondering) who do the same thing with their abuse histories. they are like, "oh, i wasn't treated right when i was a baby, so now i am forever scarred, so feel sorry for me."

well, ok, yeah. we do get scarred. it totally sucks. but there are things we can do to change that. particularly once we reach adulthood, we have a LOT of options.

it's not like we can make things perfect, because we can't. yes, there are a lot of things that are hard. and there are days when i can't bear the thought of going on trying to cope and heal.

what i'm objecting to is the people who really do seem to be refusing to move beyond acknowledging the pain. the ones who spend a whole lot of time talking about how everything is so hard, and don't spend time taking responsibility for their own lives. with people online, i try not to say much, because i know that only a tiny part of who they are shows up, and it's entirely possible that they *are* doing a lot of things to improve their lives.

but sometimes, people online remind me so strongly of people in my non-computer life. the ones who, rather than sitting down and learning to budget for themselves, spend twenty or thirty years bemoaning the fact that they weren't taught to budget in childhood. the ones who refuse to take action on their own behalf, because they are still waiting for someone to come and save them.

and, yeah, i'm speaking from a place of privilege. i managed to figure out how to go to college, and because my parents weren't paying for it, that meant that when i left for college, they no longer had any concrete way of controlling me.

i was fortunate enough to not get into an intimate relationship until i'd done enough healing work to be aware of what a healthy relationship looked like.

i have been amazingly lucky in my friends. while we all have our issues, we do seem to be more likely to encourage people towards healthy rather than unhealthy behaviors.

i have also been fortunate in the therapists i've worked with (barring the idiots right after i was in the hospital, but that was two months out of my life, and i was able to see that they weren't doing me any good).

it's not that my life is perfect, or that i don't have hard days. and i don't know, maybe there are people who look at me and my life, and see that same pity party going on. i mean, i'm not working, because of the fact that between fibromyalgia and DID, it's just a struggle to get more than three or four "good days" in a row. and i'm sure there are people who look at me and think "well, if she would just ______ then she could be doing so much better."

so i do try to be sympathetic, and generally, i hold my tongue when people seem focused on having a pity party. sometimes, i even type words of support, trying to be compassionate and respond to their pain.

but then i get frustrated, and just kind of back off. because there are some people who seem to focus so much more on how other people mistreated them, and how they are wounded, than on figuring out how they can take control of their own lives, and change things for the better.

just had to get this off my chest. and apologies to anyone i might have offended by writing this.