Episode 283 Transcript
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 283 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you want to bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel.
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello beautiful mamas and welcome back to the Peaceful Mind Podcast. I'm your host Danielle, and I'm so grateful you're here with me today. Sometimes I plan these podcast episodes. Or at least the idea comes to my head like months and months in advance. I do keep this kind of idea tracker going, that when I [00:01:00] have ideas, I put them in my notes on my phone or I have a spreadsheet on my computer, and this is one that I wrote down, oh a while ago.
And back a few months, and it was from my morning devotions. I've mentioned before about how I love the devotional Jesus calling, and this is from an entry a couple months ago that it hit me, oh, this is a topic I might wanna address on the podcast. And then this week when I coach one of my clients on the exact subject, I'm like, oh yes.
It's definitely one. So here I am. And here it is. We're gonna talk about how we break free from self-pity, and this is a reflection and talking about a subject that was from Jesus Calling the book by Sarah Young. And this is the entry that sparked today's episode.
It said be on guard against the pit of self when you are weary or unwell. [00:02:00] This trap is the greatest danger you face. Don't even go near the edge of the pit. Its edges crumble easily, and before you know it, you are on the way down. It is ever so much harder to get out of the pit than to keep a safe distance from it. That is why I tell you to be on guard. There are several ways to protect yourself from self pity.
When you are occupied with praising and thanking me, it is impossible to feel sorry for yourself. Also, the closer you live to me, the more distance there is between you and the pit, live in the light of my presence by fixing your eyes on me. Then you will be able to run with endurance the race that is set before you without stumbling or falling.
And that's the end of the entry. So when I first read this, I'll be honest, like part of me just like inside kinda was like, Ugh. A little bit. I feel like I was like called out and [00:03:00] that's because when you're in the middle of a genuinely hard season, which I remember being at that time, then we're being told not to focus on that.
And that can feel like too much of a turnaround, too much of a 180 to to not focus on whatever it is that you're feeling self-pity about. But as I sat with it a little longer, I realized that in this reflection, Jesus isn't invalidating our struggles or telling us to pretend that everything is fine when it's not.
He's calling us out of something that looks like concern for our problems, but is. Actually a prison of our own making. That is what self pity. And then you'll hear me talk it, talk to it about the other way that I look at self pity is I'll maybe name it victimhood, right? So whichever one resonate resonates more with you.
Either way, [00:04:00] it's super hard to be called out if you're in self pity or in victimhood. But that's what I want you to see on today's episode. It's actually a prison of our own making because self pity isn't just acknowledging that life is hard. Self pity is when we get stuck in that acknowledgement and then when we rehearse our difficulties over and over, right?
When we compare our struggles maybe to other people's seemingly easy lives when we feel like victims of our circumstances. Instead of the children of God that we are right the daughters who can overcome through Christ, right? That is actually harder. That's when we feel victim to our circumstances.
It's actually making it harder for ourselves. This is what self pity. It whispers these into our ear. [00:05:00] It says. Why does this always happen to me? Everyone else has it easier than I do. I just can't catch a break. God must not care about me because look at all these problems I have. I'll never get through this.
And here's the tricky thing about self pity. It feels justified. Our problems are real, our pain is valid. But when we camp out in this self pity. We're not actually dealing with our problems, we're actually just rehearsing them and we're making the story of that problem. That's your collective thoughts about something.
The circumstance is what we call the story that you have. You're just rehearsing, you're making that story groove in your brain deeper and deeper. Again, just like it talks about in the reflection about digging a, it, I want you to think it also is you're. Allowing your brain to think harder, that's true.
That whatever happens to you is unfair, or [00:06:00] that other people are causing it or that they should change or this isn't, poor me like mentality. So let me share something vulnerable with you here. There was a season in my life actually when I was hearing it, that if I'm honest there's probably been more than these seasons where I was trapped in this self pity.
I didn't even realize it. I didn't even realize it at the time, and when I finally did realize it, it was actually a coach who pulled me out to, actually showed me to take ownership for it and that other people weren't causing this, but my own struggle, the vulnerability part of it is literally going back to the time when I just was blaming everything and every one for my woes, and it looked like me blaming the kids for not listening. Blaming traffic for being so heavy. It was [00:07:00] blaming my boss for his bad mood. It was blaming the clock, right? For moving so fast is what? I would say it was the renovation we, the contractors with the renovation we were going to, it was blaming them for being too slow and too overpriced.
It was, blaming, the bank account for not being enough. And I did, I spent most of my mental energy rehearsing while why these other things should be better and change. And if they did, then I wouldn't be acting the way I did. I wouldn't be so critical. I wouldn't be the yelling mom.
But here's what was really happening, right? I was stuck into what I call, like it's happening to me, thinking instead of it's happening for me, thinking. I was playing the victim in my own life story and that gave away all my power to change anything. Like I [00:08:00] had no, no traction, no ability. It just was get up try, fall over again.
Get up try to change everybody else and everything else. And what I wasn't looking at was myself. What I wasn't seeing is this self pity, that trap that I was in. I would in bed, mentally listing everything that was difficult. I would compare my life to other moms who seem to have it all together. I would have conversations with friends that was just me venting about the same problems over and over without really seeking solution solutions or what God was telling me about them.
And the worst part is I had adopted, and it's not me, it's them kind of attitude about almost everything. My kids were being difficult. Like I said, it was their fault. I was stressed, if my husband wasn't helping enough or communicating in the right way that I felt like he should, it was his fault.
And I was [00:09:00] overwhelmed. My circumstances were challenging, like it's, you could say it's like bad luck or poor timing, and this whole mindset of self-pity and victimhood got me absolutely nowhere. Nowhere. In fact, it made everything worse and harder because I had essentially been telling my brain that my mental and emotional wellbeing was created by, and it was at the effect of other people in circumstances.
And that's simply not true, and it's definitely not helpful or serving to believe. So is anyone feeling a little called out now? Is anyone relating? Thinking that could be me. And if so, I don't want you to take this episode as something if you're like to feel shame about or embarrassed again, our brain needs a lot of training.
It needs [00:10:00] reminding, there's parts of knowledge that we don't know. We're thinking that. It is true that other people are the reason for our woes, and so just instead, inject some love and compassion to yourself and say to yourself, okay, I'm glad this episode, even if it stings, even if I think yes in this particular situation, I think I'm in self pity about, just simply let that be okay.
Tell yourself, all right, I'm a human being. I just didn't know any differently or I needed reminding or I needed pointing out and take it as being grateful for hearing my message. Today what I want is, I want you to know that when we all believe that our peace, our joy, and contentment depend entirely on what other people do or don't do, we become powerless, and I want this [00:11:00] podcast to empower you all.
That is what the Cyclone Mom method is all about, empowering you, and with that empowerment comes a sense of control and confidence and calm. And you will be a more balanced and peaceful and joyful mom. When we step out of victimhood, when we step out of self pity and we become powerful. Because when we are giving that all away to others, we're essentially saying, I can only be happy if everyone else behaves the way I want them to.
And my beautiful listeners, let me tell you that is a recipe for misery. So as I mentioned about the client that I just coached this week, just last week, right? I had a coaching call with one of my clients. I'll call her Amanda. That perfectly illustrates the trap of self pity and victimhood thinking, and I wanna share this [00:12:00] story because.
It will show you how easy it is to fall into these patterns without even realizing it. So Amanda was telling me about her struggles with her husband's family. She felt like they didn't appreciate her, that she was always on the outside, that they didn't include her in decisions, that she never had a say in family matters, and that they always found ways to push things away from her.
She said she had never felt like part of their family. And as she was sharing this, I could hear the pain in her voice. And when I'm not, my, my coaching, I am skilled to called, what is called holding space to do what is called holding space. But still I'm human and my heart went out to her at these moments, but I could also hear something else.
I heard the victim mindset and I knew that was keeping her stuck. And as her coach, I know what is actually better for her and that [00:13:00] is why she wants to have a coach, right? For someone to not agree and keep her stuck there. So I said something that was tough for her to hear.
I said, Amanda, I want you to know I'm saying this with love because I always am, but what you're currently believing about yourself in relation to your husband's family, that they don't appreciate you, that you're on the outside, that they don't include you. This is all self pity and victimhood mindset. And there was some silence, right?
And I knew it was hard for her to hear, but as her coach, I knew the most loving thing I could do was to show her the way of thinking. Helping her own it because it's the only way that she can then change it. As long as she believed that her peace and belonging depended entirely on how her husband's family treated her, she was powerless.
She had made them responsible for her emotional wellbeing, which meant she could only feel good about herself [00:14:00] if they changed. And let me tell you, you'll be waiting a long time, everyone, for all those things. You want other people to change. And I don't want, I never want my clients to wait. I don't want you to put you joy, your peace, your contentment, your enthusiasm for life on hold, for somebody else to do something before you actually experience that joy.
Because when we shift from this is happening to me, to this is happening for me, that is when everything changes. Instead of being a victim to her in-laws behavior, she could then. Start asking different questions like, what is God wanting to teach me through this situation? How can I show up differently?
What boundaries do I need to set? How can I create my own sense of belonging instead of waiting for others to give it to me? This is where in my coaching practice, I want my clients to learn to be their own biggest [00:15:00] cheerleader, to have their own back, to be celebrating their wins to be. Grateful for what they're doing on a daily basis for their families.
Because again, if you are doing it for yourself, then you need less from other people. And this shift doesn't minimize the real challenges in relationships, but it does put the power back where it belongs, which is with us and our responses to our circumstances. And here's what I've learned about self pity.
It's incredibly seductive because it feels like you're being honest about your struggles, but really it's a form of unbelief, disguised as authenticity. And this is what happens when we're stuck in self pity. We make ourselves the center of our own story. We focus on what's wrong maybe instead of what God is doing.
We rehearse problems instead of rehearsing [00:16:00] like our thoughts of faith about this human life, we compare our behind the scenes struggles to other people's highlight reels. We become passive victims instead of active participants in our own lives. We give away our power to change by making our wellbeing dependent on other people's choices.
And the most dangerous thing about self pity is that it's self perpetuating. The more we focus on how others are treating us unfairly, the more evidence your brain will go find to support that belief. The more we rehearse our victim story, the more powerless we feel. The more powerless we feel, the more we retreat into self-pity, it's a cycle, and that cycle becomes a prison where we're both the prisoner and the jailer.
But Jesus has, he offers us something instead. And here's [00:17:00] the beautiful thing about that devotion that I read earlier. It doesn't just tell us to stop feeling sorry for ourselves. It gives us something better to focus on. It says, when you are occupied with praising and thanking me, it is impossible to feel sorry for yourself.
I wanna just do a little side note here to say I just wanna reiterate the power of keeping a gratitude journal. This is exactly one thing. It's really hard to fall into self pity when you're someone who has that habit. So instead of rehearsing our problems, we wanna rehearse. Kind of God's character.
Like instead of focusing on what's going wrong, we focus on who God is and what he's capable of doing for us in this situation. When we do this, something miraculous happens. Our problems don't necessarily go away, but our perspective shifts completely. [00:18:00] So let me show you what this looks like practically.
This is what self-pity says. It says, I'm so overwhelmed with everything on my plate, but the other perspective is the God who holds the universe together is helping me with my to-do list. Self-pity says my kids are driving me crazy and I'm a terrible mother. God's perspective is God has entrusted these precious souls to me, and he will equip me for this calling day by day.
Self-pity says, I'll never get out of debt, lose this weight, fix this relationship, and God's perspective says with God, all things are possible. And he's walking with me through this process right now. Self pity would say, why does everyone else seem to have it easier than me? And God's perspective would say, God has a unique plan for [00:19:00] my life, and his timing is perfect.
All right, so let's go to the practicality of it, right? Just tell me how, Danielle, how do I move from self-pity to God's perspective if I realize that I'm in it now, and here are some strategies that have helped me that I want you to just, one of them, all of them doesn't matter. The first step is to recognize when we're sliding into self-pity.
Can you name it? Sometimes we've been there for so long, we don't even realize it. So ask yourself, am I rehearsing my problems or rehearsing faithfulness? Am I talking more about what's wrong or what about what I'm grateful for or what God is doing in this circumstance of my life? Then second, we, we wanna take our problems to heaven, right?
It's absolutely okay to bring your struggles to God. He wants to hear about them. Don't just dump them out. Ask him for his [00:20:00] perspective. Help him to give you his thoughts, right? Ask him what he wants you to learn from it. I'm learning to do that more often because I don't wanna have the lesson again, right?
If I don't learn it now, I don't want him to gimme something else, to have me learn that same lesson. Ask him how he wants you to use that situation for your good and for his glory. And then I'm gonna reiterate one of the steps to get outta self-pity. Practice gratitude intentionally, right? Not the toxic positivity or pretending that everything is fine.
It's about training your mind to notice God's goodness, even in difficult seasons. And start small. Maybe we just write down one thing every day. We're grateful for. As you practice this, you will start to see God's provisions and care more clearly. And the last thing I want you to do is instead of rehearsing your problems, spend time rehearsing who, [00:21:00] like what faithful, loving, powerful, present good wise, what that might look like in your situation.
Because when you feel yourself spiraling into self pity we really do need to go to intentionally redirecting our thoughts. And so one of the ways we wanna do that, I maybe wanna add here, like the fruits of the spirit, we could go there and what thoughts would we have that instead of self-pity, we could generate some fruits of the spirit.
And then. Maybe serve someone else. I know I said that was the last one, but it just comes to my mind that when we're in self-pity, the woe is me. I know you all have heard this before, but when we get out of ourselves and help somebody else, that will ultimately help our ourself because of the formula of what happens when we stop being consumed by our own problems [00:22:00] and go help somebody else with their problem.
So here's what I've discovered. What's on the other side of self-pity, like this freedom. I want you to know when we break free from self-pity, we don't become people who pretend life isn't hard. We become people who acknowledge the difficulty, but we still move forward because we were given this freedom by God to choose what to do next.
We become people who could face challenges with courage because we know we're not facing them alone as well. And the freedom I'm offering you is not, it's not necessarily gonna make your life easier, but it's in a knowing that your life is held like. By this wonderful Christ who brings beauty from the ashes and in whatever pain you're in with the self-pity that there is purpose there.[00:23:00]
Now, I know some of you might be thinking, but Danielle, what about when life is genuinely. They think everyone would think this is terrible. This is unfair. What about when you're dealing with real loss, real trauma, real injustice, and I wanna be clear about this, like acknowledging our pain and injustice is not self pity.
Grieving is not self pity. Processing trauma is not self pity. God never minimizes our real struggles in that way. But the difference is this right grieving acknowledges pain while we still believing in God's goodness. But self pity, rehearses pain while losing sight of God's presence. And the power he gives us to co-create this life of ours.
He gave us the ability to think anything we want. [00:24:00] I get so passionate about that. That is literally a God-given gift to every single human being. He gave us this brain, and no one else out there can force us to think something. So in this time. When we're in self-pity, we're not looking that we have so many more options to think about the situation that would help us and serve us.
And I, again, I wanna move you from that powerless to powerful position. You can be honest about how hard life is while still choosing to focus on making it better for yourself, right? All right, everyone. I. You know that Jesus calling devotion, it reminded me of our ultimate goal isn't to have an easy life.
I'm always reminding my clients that the goal is not for everything to be easy, right? We can be humans that lean into and actually makes [00:25:00] the pain less, that it's just part of it. What I call the 50 50, this human life, 50% positive, 50% negative. You can look at it as 50% hard, 50% easy. And one of the most beautiful things about breaking free from self-pity is that it will open you up to joy, real joy, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.
Because when you're not constantly rehearsing how everything that's wrong, we have a mental and emotional space to notice what's right and what we're thankful for in God's goodness and appreciate our small blessings to laugh with our children, to enjoy a beautiful sunset, to feel grateful for our friends and encouragement and self pity steals our joy.
It steals our joy by convincing us that we can't be happy until all our problems are solved. But I want to interject. God's perspective reminds us that our joy [00:26:00] comes from him, and it comes from within our choice of thoughts and feelings, not from our circumstances. So today I want to invite you to examine your thought patterns with a gentle honesty.
Are there areas where you've been stuck in self pity? Are there problems you've been rehearsing more than you've been rehearsing Faith? If so, please hear this. Call out with love and I invite you to a different way of thinking, a way that I remind you, acknowledges the difficulty you're going through, but still.
From a place of empowerment that it's okay to feel that way for a time, but then it's up to you to go after your own emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing. So let me close with this [00:27:00] truth. Your life might be genuinely difficult right now. You might be facing real challenges, real pain, real uncertainty.
You are not forgotten or abandoned, and you are not a victim of your circumstances. You are a beloved daughter of God. You are seen, you are known, you are loved, and you have a power that comes within your brain to be able to go after anything that you desire. You do not have to wait for somebody else to change, to have it.
So instead of spending your energy rehearsing how everything that's wrong, spend that same amount of energy making decisions, seeing yourself as capable, making a focus, and deciding on the change you want for yourself, and start taking [00:28:00] actions for it. Okay everyone, I hope that this episode helps you break free a little bit or a lot.
All right, from self pity this terrible trap, and I hope I've invited you into a freedom that is available to you right now. And I just wanna. Put in at the end here. This is what I help my clients with day in and day out. I help you see what you can't see about how your mind is your roadblock. And that when you focus on that area, your thoughts, your belief system, and help somebody see what, have somebody help you, see what you can't see, and their knowledge transfer to you of the tools and strategies that break through them.
That's exactly what coaching do. So if you need help breaking through from self-pity and victimhood, I would love for you to reach out. Sign up for a free [00:29:00] Back to Balance call with me and let's talk about it. Alright everyone again, I'll be back next week, but until then, may peace be with you always.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a review. It not only supports the podcast, but ensures you don't miss out on future episodes packed with insights and tools. To create peace of mind in your busy mom life.
And if you're of the Catholic faith like me or any Christian mom seeking to feel better in any area of your life and to show up more calm, connected, and confident, I can help become an empowered mom who knows how to bring about the changes you desire, no matter the circumstances. Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women or a self-study course I've got you covered.
Explore [00:30:00] my private one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program, or delve into my signature course Divine Time. To find out which path is right for you, let's meet and see what's the best fit. Schedule a free call with me at daniellethienel.com or send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram @daniellethienelcoaching.
And also don't forget to get your copy of my book, the Cyclone Mom Method: How to Call on Your God-Given Power to Remain Calm, In Control and Confident as a Busy Mom. Dive into the digital and bonus audio version when you go to book.daniellethienel.com/new-book. You'll find all the details in the show notes too.
Until next time, peace be with you always.
