Topic for Sep. 21. ( Thur)

[Alex !]

Pity Play 

When I was younger, I remember occasionally hurting myself while playing outside.

If I rolled my ankle, I might fall to the ground clutching it, but not feel too bad overall.

Then, when someone from my family or a friend would run up to me and see if I was okay, I’d start getting choked up.

At the time, this confused me and made me even more upset. Why could I not control myself?

I experienced a lot of self-pity, because I felt like I was weak and could not handle my emotions.

And then I would break out in tears.

None of this made any sense to me then, but it would happen the same way every time.

Now that I’m older, I think I “get” it. I actually enjoyed the feeling of pity, and would subconsciously seek it out.

This doesn’t just happen in children. Did you ever notice how when some people get sick or injured, they will practically brag about it.

This whole “enjoyment of being pitied” business is a particularly nefarious form of attention-seeking behavior.

It is a sign of insecurity. We want to be pitied because we crave attention, and without pity, we worry that nobody will care about us.

Pity is a form of external validation that is based off feelings of inferiority. The desire for external validation and the internal lack of self-esteem is a serious one-two punch knocking down our happiness levels.

The act of eliciting pity from another unequivocally makes the elicitor something to be pitied, a victim, per se. It is human nature to aid the pitied. Hence, the pity play, or victim stance, stands to get the Sociopath what he or she wants easily and without being found out as a bad guy.

Playing the victim (also known as victim playing, victim card, or self-victimization) is the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuseto others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy, attention seeking or diffusion of responsibility. A person who repeatedly does this is known as a professional victim.

The goal of this manipulation tactic is to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby escaping any blame for wrongdoing or even getting support and cooperation from unsuspecting outsiders.

“The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness, It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”

The combination of consistently bad or inadequate behavior and frequent pity plays is the closest thing to a warning you’ll ever get that you are being manipulated by a sociopath.

We all have defense mechanisms that we use in certain circumstances but we’re also aware of those defense mechanisms. We use them to protect ourselves from painful memories or anything too stressful.

But, those criminals or sociopath are different. They might also use defense mechanisms to protect themselves but they might also have false beliefs about themselves and use grandiose as a defense mechanism.

For example, they might think of themselves as one of the smartest in the room and when someone else gets recognition, they might play the victim as a projection tactic to protect their feelings.