...Is something that I hear a lot about as a life coach for childless women. No one wants to feel pitied. How often do we see this in the movies and TV shows where someone who really actually needs help is offered help and they refuse. They're like, I don't need your pity. There's always some anger around it and they refuse that help.
And I also see it in the comment sections of Instagram posts when a childless woman. Who's actually beginning to enjoy her life starts posting about that There's always a comment that says I feel sorry for you. You're missing out and same within the media. There's You know, there's this message out there that women who don't have kids are to be pitied whether they chose it or not They're missing out on a fundamental part of life I'm guessing that if you're a childless woman And you're worried about this coming up extra often when you socialize more and more during the holidays and you see people maybe that you haven't seen in a while or people that maybe aren't really close to you.
There's a little bit of distance and that's sometimes when pity can come up the most. So in this episode, we're going to really delve into what pity actually is and why it feels crappy and how to actually get through it when it does come up. Because it's actually entirely possible. I don't feel pity at all anymore when it comes to my childless life and I'm sure that there's people out there who pity me but I don't even notice it.
And that's where I want you to get to as well. Hi, I'm Sherry Johnson, and you are about to discover how to embrace your life as a childless woman who wanted to have a family and never could. This is where we combine mindset shifting tools with practical tips so you can break free of outdated societal norms that condition us all to believe that women without kids just don't measure up to the moms.
It's where we take action on processing grief. And accelerating the healing journey so you can feel free when childless women awaken their self worth, they transform from hopeless and inadequate to worthy, accepting and purposeful. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of light bulb moments that will shift your perspective as a childless woman about yourself, about your innate power to change yourself, your future, and maybe even the world we live in.
If that's what you want, then keep on listening. Welcome back to the Awakening Worth podcast. This is episode number 87. The third in a series of solo episodes that I'm doing to help you get through the holidays with ease and grace. So today I really want to talk about something that has been coming up a lot lately.
And it is the subject of pity. It kind of sounds like this. Oh, I'm so sorry you'll be spending Christmas alone. Oh, that's too bad. You don't have kids to spend the holidays with. Poor you. Now, these might not actually be the words that someone says to you, but, you know, sometimes it's just a look or it's a comment, or it's something that has made you feel like this is how they're feeling.
So I really want to break this all down for you. I want to share with you today what pity really is, why it feels so disconnecting. and some ways that you can actually get through it. But before we start, I have to say that this is a really tough subject. I had to do some of my own self reflection on why I don't feel pitied anymore.
And when did that actually change for me? And I also had to do some research. I am not an expert on pity specifically, but I do have a process for getting to a place where it doesn't bother you if you are a childless woman. And I teach that inside of my group, Immersion, and I'm going to give you the first part of it today on the podcast.
And that starts with understanding what pity even is. So pity came up on our group coaching call a couple of weeks ago in my group immersion and since then I've also had some Instagram followers mention it as something that they're struggling with in my DMs. So let's talk about this part first. Pity can feel really isolating for anybody for the childless woman and it feels isolating because pity separates You from others.
It's it creates a separation between two people or maybe between two groups of people Pity says you are different from me and you're over there and you're suffering while I'm over here not suffering They feel bad for you instead of with you is kind of how I like To think of it Brene Brown once again has been one of my greatest teachers on this And here's how she describes pity in Atlas of the Heart.
From her research, what she says is that pity involves four elements. Number one, a belief that the suffering person is inferior. So if I feel pity, I believe that whoever in front of me is suffering is inferior to me. There's number two, there's also a passive self focus reaction that does not include providing help.
So they're not actually providing help or service or empathy. There's a reaction that this is a passive self focused reaction. It's not extended to the person in front of them. There's also a desire to maintain an emotional distance. So there's that distance, that separation. And then number four there's an avoidance of sharing in the other person's suffering.
Empathy. On the other hand. involves compassion. The heart opens instead of closes. I think of pity as a close hearted emotion, not an open hearted one that the person who feels pity. is closing off their heart to you and your suffering. They feel they're superior. They avoid sharing in your suffering and they don't actually provide any help and they keep an emotional distance.
So that's very close hearted. Empathy is open hearted. And even though the empathetic person is. Not, maybe not even in your situation, they might not be childless in, in our example here today, yet they can relate to the emotion that we might feel. Anybody can relate to grief. And so what they, what an empathetic person is doing is relating to the emotion.
that you feel. An empathetic person is willing to sit with us in our pain. A pitying person is not willing to do that. They separate themselves from us instead of sitting with us. It's leaning out versus leaning in. So when you share any bit of your childless story or any, anything really, but an emotion that's related to your, your being childless, you might receive empathy from someone or you might receive pity.
And sometimes you decide to trust the wrong person. You think someone will empathize with you and they don't. Or maybe just the wrong person inserts themselves in your life. Sometimes you don't have control over it. There could be a person who's in your life or it could be somebody in the media, as I said earlier.
Or it could just be somebody random who displays pity. And that just happens. You will feel the difference. You might experience the difference in how they react because it's not just, I suppose it, empathy or pity, both of those are emotions that somebody feels, but the way that they behave as a result of that emotion will be different.
As I said before the empathetic person is going to lean in. The pitying person is going to lean out. And so if somebody is sharing empathy with you, you're going to feel connected. You're going to want to soak that in. It's actually going to provide healing. And pity is going to do the opposite. So, what if someone does pity you?
Well, here's the thing. You cannot control other people's emotions. Asking them not to pity you is like asking them not to be sad when their mother dies or not to feel joy when they win the lottery. People are going to feel what they feel and it's up to them to decide what emotion they want to feel and what they will express.
So the best that you can really do is to walk away. Or if you're courageous and willing to be vulnerable, you can say to them, look, I can sense that you don't understand what I'm feeling and that's okay. But it's not your responsibility to change how they feel. There's no sense in that. That's when it's time to stay in your own lane, is what my client said when we were talking about this on our group call.
It's not time to make that other person's emotions mean something about you. And that's a really important question to ask yourself. If someone is openly pitying you and you can sense that by their behavior and their expression of that emotion, then ask yourself, what am I making that mean about me? Now, I'm going to delve into something here that is important.
I want to talk about the difference between actual pity and perceived pity. You need to be able to distinguish between those two. So, here's a question for you. How do you know if someone feels pity if they don't say anything? And I would add to that, if they haven't made any display of behavior, how do you actually know?
Often we perceive pity when, in actuality, we have no idea what the other person is feeling. You know, do you always know when your partner is angry? Sometimes I have no idea when my husband is angry. If he doesn't say anything, I don't know until he starts displaying behaviors that tell me that he's angry or that he just simply tells me that he's angry.
Other times I think he's angry and he's totally fine. So I've perceived that he's somehow angry based on some behaviors or something that he said, or his tone of voice, but he's not angry at all. So it's common for us to have misperceptions about how people feel. So I would ask you, when you say that someone pities you, Are you sure?
So this is the next thing I want to talk about and we're going to go really deep right now. This is important, but you might not be ready or willing to hear it and it might not land all that well, but I'm going to encourage you to stick with me here because if you want some true healing, you're going to, this is going to be important for you.
This is going to be something that you want to hear. We sometimes perceive that others pity us when we actually pity ourselves. So, let's talk about what self pity sounds like. This sounds like, no one understands how I feel. No one gets it. Nothing ever goes the way I want it to. I never get what I want.
Everyone has kids but me. Have you noticed the commonality between all of these statements? They are all generalizations about your situation. And self pity is one of the things that we actually hate to hear it the most. We hate to be told that we are self pitying, that we're pitying ourselves. It's similar to saying you're acting like a victim and that is one of the last things we want to hear.
Nobody likes to be told you're in victim mode or you're You know, you're pitying yourself, but no one can actually make you feel pitied if you don't feel that there's an ounce of truth to it. I'm going to say that again. No one can make you feel pitied if you don't feel that there's any ounce of truth to it.
No one can make you feel anything if you don't feel there's an ounce of truth to what they're saying. So here's a good example. I think it's a good example. I don't know. When someone says to you, you're being so defensive and you respond, no, I'm not. Well, the fact that the, you know, that answer, no, I'm not.
That's charged. That's emotionally charged. And when that happens, they're hitting on the truth. You are being defensive. If you actually aren't, and they've said that you are, then there wouldn't be any emotional charge to your response. It would be more of a no, it's not defensiveness, it's this is what I'm feeling.
So, think about that. When there's an emotional charge to how you're responding to somebody pitying you, then you know that they're hitting on They're hitting on some self pity. You might be feeling like there's some truth to what they're feeling. Here's an example that my own coach used the other day and hopefully this will make sense.
It doesn't have anything to do with being childless. It has to do with having blue hair. So I'm going to call it the blue hair test. So okay, if you're listening, I'm going to assume that you do not have blue hair just simply because most people don't. But I can't see you. So this might be not the right example if you actually do have blue hair.
So, my listener, if I said to you, why would anyone have blue hair? Blue hair looks so stupid. Does that statement annoy you? Does it make you feel something? And is there any kind of emotional charge to it? Probably not. If you don't have blue hair, you could probably care less whether I think blue hair is pretty or whether it looks stupid.
Which I don't, by the way I've nothing against, if you have blue hair, I think that's amazing. But if you have any kind of charge or reaction to what another person says or to what you think that they feel, then there might, there must be, not, might be, but there, there's gotta be a small part of you that sees that in yourself.
So if you have blue hair. And you're offended by what I said about blue hair just now. You must also wonder yourself whether it looks a little silly. If you actually didn't care, if you actually loved your blue hair and you don't care what anybody else thinks, it'll just bounce right off of you. You just, you wouldn't care.
It would just bounce right off of you. There'd be no emotional charge. You can just walk around and say, I don't care what other people think of my blue hair. because I love it. So here's another example. And remember that in, in Brené Brown's world that I talked about earlier, pity requires avoidance of suffering.
And so let's talk about women who chose not to have kids. If a woman who chose not to have children and is completely happy with her child free life, presumably she isn't suffering. So if someone in the media say, I keep thinking of Matt Walsh because he actually talked about how he feels sorry for child free.
women in response to Chelsea Handler's TikTok video about how much she loves her child free life and Do you think Chelsea Handler felt pitied? No, she didn't care that Matt Walsh felt pity for her, she doesn't pity herself. So, I can't tell you exactly how Chelsea Handler was feeling, but I believe, I think I saw a response from her and it was not a charged response.
She didn't care. She doesn't care what other people think of her, she's enjoying her child free life. But if you are someone who is triggered by pity, if you have an emotional response to that yourself, then I would ask you, are you feeling an ounce of self pity? Triggers or reactions, emotional reactions, they happen often because the other person who's triggering that emotional response is holding up a mirror to us.
They're showing us some part of us. That believes what that, what some part of us believes. So here's what I want you to do if you are in this situation where you're feeling some pity first, as I said earlier, when someone actually expresses pity, so they actually come right out and say, oh, I feel sorry for you or you see someone in the media, stay in your own lane, how others feel is their problem.
Yes, it hurts when you expect your friends or family to empathize with you or to show you compassion and then they don't, but if they are showing pity, they're trying to distance themselves from you and your suffering and you and your emotion. And they also see you as inferior. So instead. At least for right now, fill your life with people who do show you compassion and people who aren't afraid to share in your suffering.
That's number one. So stay in your own lane and I guess maybe there's two, that's a two for one. Stay in your own lane and fill your life with people who actually can empathize with you. People who show you compassion. Number two, ask yourself, what are you making that mean about you? When someone pities you and you feel reactive to that, you feel triggered.
What is it that matters to you? What is it saying about you that they pity you and that might tell you something about yourself and how you're really feeling deep inside. And number three, when you perceive that there's pity, that someone is pitying you, but no one's actually said anything or behaved in a way that says that's actually what they feel, really evaluate that.
Like really think about is this person You know, am I just projecting what I might be feeling in myself? Am I feeling some self pity? If no one, if you evaluate that scenario, the person standing in front of you, whatever it might be, if their body language, if their, if The things that they say, the things that they do, doesn't actually say that they're feeling pity.
And be really discerning here, really notice, what is it that has made me think that they feel pity? And then maybe ask yourself, are you feeling some self pity? Are they holding up that mirror? to you and showing you that maybe you do, I am really curious to hear how this episode lands for you. That's all I have for you for now.
As I said earlier, this is a really tough topic and it's one that comes up a lot. If it has for you, then my next question for you is, are you going to continue to just plow through and hope that you just kind of wake up on the other side of it all? Or will you take some action and figure out a way to let go of feeling pitied and maybe even letting go of the self pity?
Taking action is automatically going to do that, by the way. If you are the latter, you're someone who wants to take some action, head over to Instagram, go to my account at sherryjohnsoncoaching, and just DM me. Episode 87, I'll give you the step by step on how to take that action and let go of feeling pity.
That's it for today. Stay tuned. I'm gonna have another episode on the holidays next week. And that's it for now. Bye.
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