Tamara tells herself that when her two children died, she got a worse deal from life and God than she deserves, a negative self-comparison which makes her sad. At the same time she reminds herself that she is a virtuous woman who did not deserve the blow, and she gets gratification from thinking of her virtue by comparison to other people.

Calvin gets pleasure from reminding himself what a hot-shot basketball player he was, while pitying himself for the opportunities he did not know. And Sally gets pleasure from thinking about her good mind and her fine character when pitying herself that because of her face men don't like her despite these virtues.

We can now understand how a person gets hooked on the self- pitying mechanism, just the way a person gets hooked on heroin, and why it is so hard to kick this habit. Self-pity exerts a fatal fascination. It is like the situations in experimental psychology called "plus-minus stimuli," stimuli that are neither only positive nor only negative, but rather are both negative and positive. The fatal fascination arises because you cannot obtain the benefits without suffering the costs. Paul cannot think how he is a good poet without also coming to think how his poems do not get published. And he cannot stop thinking about his publishing failure without giving up the pleasure of self-praise of his poetry.

To test this analysis on yourself, inspect your thoughts the next time you are feeling sorry for yourself. Look for both (a) the self-praise for being virtuous and good -- the positive self- comparison between what you are, compared to the benchmark comparison of what you are getting from life; and (b) the negative self-comparison between what you get and what you deserve. You may also test this analysis by listening to what you say to another person when you express pity for him or her. And pure logic also implies this behavior: Unless the gratifying element of the positive self-comparison is present in self-pity, why would anyone not simply kick the habit?

Please notice that you will not expect -- or usually get -- pity unless you deserve better than you got. The rotten mother, the mediocre basketball player, the lazy poet will neither expect nor get pity for child death, non-scholarship, or publication rejection.

This analysis of the benefits of feeling sorry for yourself is described in Mike Royko's satire of the benefits of moaning when suffering from a New Year's day hangover.

The other part of a hangover is physical. It is usually marked by throbbing pain in the head, behind the eyes, back of the neck, and in the stomach. You might also have pain in the arms, legs, knees, elbows, chin, and elsewhere, depending upon how much leaping, careening, flailing and falling you did.

Moaning helps. It doesn't ease the pain, but it lets you know that someone cares, even if it is only you. Moaning also lets you know that you are still alive.

But don't let your wife hear you moan. You should at least have the satisfaction of not letting her have the satisfaction of knowing you are in agony.

If she should overhear you moaning, tell her you are just humming a love song the lady with the prominent cleavage sang in your ear while you danced.

Some people say that moaning gives greater benefits if you moan while sitting on the edge of your bathtub while letting your head hang down between your ankles. Others claim that it is best to go into the living room, slouch in a chair, and moan while holding a hand over your brow and the other over your stomach.(2)

Consider the example of Charley T., an obese depressive. Charley says to himself: "I'm so miserable, and the world has been so terrible to me, that I might as well cheer myself up with a few chocolates. Why shouldn't I? No one else gives me any love or help or pleasure, so at least I can give myself some pleasure!" And there goes the whole box of bon-bons.

If Charley stops feeling depressed, he no longer has a handy excuse to munch chocolates by the handful. And this is an inducement for him to remain depressed. We might label this sort of ailment "candy depression".

The goodies that the rest of us give ourselves when we are depressed--relief from work, self-sympathy in feeling sorry for ourselves, excuses not to do things for others--are not so obvious. Yet they can be just as powerful a barrier to curing our depressions as is Charley's yearning for food. If we are to cure our depressions, we must face up to the fact that we must give up something in exchange. If we won't pay the price, we won't stop being depressed. That may be hard for you to hear, but in many or most cases it is a fact.

Some writers such as Bonime(3) view depression only as a way of obtaining its benefits. To Bonime depression is a "practice...a way of living," that is, a way of manipulating other people. Certainly this may be an element in the depression of some persons, maybe even most depressives, a carryover from childhood sulking that often does produce results. But to view adult depression only as a device to achieve the sympathetic response of other persons simply is far from the facts of the lives of, for example, many depressed recluses who are not even in contact with other persons who might be induced to respond to the depression; the explanation then becomes downright silly.

The question we shall tackle later is how to decide whether you want the pleasures of a) moaning for yourself in combination with depression, versus b) being undepressed.

Breaking the Habit of Self-Pity

As to dealing with the self-pity habit: I said that poet Paul thinks of himself as a "good poet." Perhaps he should ask himself whether his poems are good or bad, and not whether the maker of the poems is a good or bad person. Ellis uses the term "rating" for this tendency to label the person rather than the act, and he argues that reducing the amount of rating is an important way to attack depression. I agree, though noting that such rating is very much bound up with the daily living of most of us, and therefore hard to forswear.

Summary

Strange as it may seem, a person sometimes gets enough benefits from her/his depression so that the person prefers remaining depressed--despite all its unpleasantness--to being undepressed. Possible benefits include a good excuse from work or other demands, the concern of others, or the justification for self-pity. Recognizing that this sort of mechanism may operate can help you face the matter squarely, and decide that the benefits of the depression are not worth the pain of the depression.

next: Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression Chapter 10