I wanted to highlight this and share a quote or two from Nietzsche - as I feel it captures the human dynamics you are pointing to in the first line, and further impresses on the importance of bucking the trend of pity (which you are doing from the inside out). Bravo to you Desiree! And I hope what I share here adds valuable context to the importance of how you are meeting the events of your life.

Roughly quoted - "Pity stands in antithesis to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy of life. It has a depressive effect. One loses force when one pities. Loss of force which naturally happens as a result of suffering, is increased and multiplied by pity. Suffering itself becomes contagious through pity... Pity on the whole thwarts the laws of evolution... Life is made more worthy of denial by pity... Pity is a multiplier of misery, and a conservator of everything miserable - pity persuades to nothingness. This 'innocent' rhetoric from the domain of religio-moral idiosyncrasy appears much less innocent when one grasps which tendency is here draping the mantle of sublime words about itself: the tendency hostile to life."

In my own words - pity is a behavior born of an over-inflated ego, and is directly antithetical to the ends it was intended to serve.