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Living with chronic illness is often difficult. There are medical appointments, work, family, keeping the dust bunnies (buffalo?) under control and it goes on and on. Not being able to stop and rest and heal makes it even harder. There’s a lot of pressure to keep going in with a stiff upper lip, not complaining, and not giving in to feeling sorry for yourself. This impacts your physical health, but also your soul and your mental health — living with constant symptoms of chronic illness and pain can objectively be awful. But maybe taking the time to acknowledge that things are hard could work in your favour. In this post, I share how I use small and timely moments of self-pity as a coping tool and share tips on how it can help you, too.

The cultural push to keep bad feelings to ourselves

I was born and raised in Denmark and like any good Viking descendent, I’m a pretty stoic person, primed through the influences of genetics and culture to keep my troubles to myself. Which makes sense to me — there’s nothing wrong with a little old-fashioned repression, although it’s entirely possible I have pushed a little too far on this and instead made it a lifestyle.

I am of course mostly kidding, but like all good jokes this one is based in truth. Most Western cultures (especially the northern parts) put a lot of value on pushing through without complaint. How many times have you heard someone be impressed by a person who has a serious illness or chronic pain and still keeps smiling? And on the other side of the coin, you have probably encountered people who think that any information about your daily life with illness is “too much.”

I have been on the receiving end of this cultural stigma for decades and so much of my drive to cope has come out of an awareness that I mustn’t feel sorry for myself. That I shouldn’t wallow in self-pity pool. And truth be told, all that repression I’ve been doing is partly rooted in being afraid that if I start expressing my feelings about how difficult it is to live with pain and fatigue and all the rest… Well, maybe I wouldn’t be able to stop.

At a certain point, this behaviour stopped making sense. Instead, my mind started having opinions about how ridiculous it was to not acknowledge that the very real case of awfulness that sometimes permeated my life. And more than that, that perhaps repressing all those feelings was bad for both my mental and my physical health — all that tension made the pain worse. So I came up with a way to release it that felt both safe and productive.

I call it Having a Swish.

How to “Have a Swish”

A Swish is a short visit to the self-pity pool, during which you allow yourself to feel and express all the emotions caused by your current situation and do so without self judgement or worry about the fact that you feel sorry for yourself. Because that’s the point: to feel as sorry for yourself as you feel you need. The key is to keep it to a Swish, stopping before it becomes a wallow. Because if you stay too long, this particular pool can become very much like quicksand that will never let go of you, And that can make hard times even more difficult.

Although I’m sure that you will find ways to tailor your Swish to what works best for you and your life, the general steps are as follows:

Take Some Time. Set aside some time for your Swish. You can do this with a good friend who you trust to be supportive through the experience or alone if you feel more freedom to let go of your feelings when no one’s around. Get yourself a box of tissues and… Give in to the feelings. Let self-pity come out to play, feel immensely sorry for yourself, and count all the reasons your life sucks.

Have a Cry. Now is the time to let the tears fall. Bawl your eyes out if you need, even wail if that feels right (although if you have small children in your house or nosy neighbours, you may want to dampen that a bit by howling into a pillow). Progress to a temper tantrum, stamp your foot (as long as it doesn’t hurt to do that), even scream “it’s not fair!” Let it all out without restraint. And then…

Get Out of the Pool. At some point, you’ll notice yourself slowing down. You might even laugh at a particularly screechy moment, or perhaps it starts to get boring to focus so much on what’s wrong. That’s when you’re ready to get out of the self-pity pool. Wipe your eyes, have a drink of water, and put the box of tissues back where it belongs. If you did your Swish with a friend, end with a hug.

In my experience, expressing my feelings to the fullest gets then out of the way. Before having a Swish, I might feel lost and helpless, but once I’ve had a good rant/vent/cry, I can begin to think more constructively about how to solve my problem. Having a Swish Is a way to give my feelings space so I can process them, which brings me to a place where I can cope more effectively.

More than that, including the Swish in my tool of coping strategies has helped me realize that being in tune with how I feel is usually the first step to realizing that there’s a problem — and of course, you have to know that a problem exists before you can figure out how to solve it.

Sometimes, when an issue is so big that it feels like nothing helps, a Swish can also help you find the motivation to keep going. I went live to talk about that and how a Swish might help.

When’s the last time you gave yourself permission to feel sorry for yourself?