Whether you are comparing your problems to the problems of others around you or if you are comparing a friends situation to seemingly bigger issues, you are doing something incredibly damaging.
Comparing problems is something we all do. In fact, it is a concept that was drilled into our brains from the time we were small children. I’m sure you can remember being at the dinner table as a kid, stubbornly refusing to eat your vegetables because they were “yucky” until your parents gave you a stern look and said something like “Billy, stop complaining and eat your food, there are starving children in Africa who don’t get anything to eat for dinner.”
Throughout our lives, we are told to be quiet, to stop complaining and to “get over it” and deal with our issues because there are people out there who have bigger ones. We are told that we are being unappreciative of what we have if we display any emotions indicating that something is bothering us if it isn’t considered a big enough problem in the eyes of the rest of the world. If you’re upset because you received a bad grade in a college class, you are told to “get over it” because some people cannot afford the luxury of college. If you cannot afford college, someone may say, “at least you have your health, I know a woman who is dying of a terminal illness. Just be thankful you are not in her situation.” If you are the person dying of a terminal illness, people will tell you that you should be grateful for the time you spent here and for everything you ever had, since it could have been even worse. There are diseases that effect young children and cause them to not get the opportunity to live a long life like you did. For every problem there is always a bigger problem it can be compared to. While it is true that “smaller” or more manageable issues (like your friend being angry with you) may not seem comparable to more difficult-to-handle situations such as losing a loved one,we need to get out of the habit of comparing problems.
Whether you are comparing your problems to the problems of others around you or if you are comparing a friend’s situation to seemingly bigger issues, you are doing something incredibly damaging. Absolutely nothing positive can come out of problem comparing for many reasons. Although your intentions may be good, and although you think that you are putting things into perspective and giving yourself or someone else a reason to worry less, you may actually be making things more difficult.
What most people tend to not realize is that no matter what category on the society-dictated scale a problem may fall into, the way it may affect a specific person is unpredictable. All people are different. We do not all handle the emotional stresses of life in the same manor. What may seem to be a minuscule situation to you may be catastrophic to another person. The way something will effect someone depends on certain factors, some of which being the way they were brought up, their specific personality and self esteem level, their emotional maturity, mental stability, the amount of other difficult things that they have going on in their life, the list is practically endless.
What I am saying may be difficult to agree with or understand since many people have a hard time seeing how issues that are normally perceived to be smaller can possibly effect someone in an extremely damaging way, so I am going to explain using a fictional but realistic situation that people may be able to relate to. Many people have heard about or witnessed something similar first hand, but never considered that if someone was less judgmental about the size of the problem, things might have played out differently...
Ashley is a fifteen-year-old high school girl. She has friends, but is not part of the popular crowd. She has a relatively happy home life, receives average grades, has a boyfriend and at this point in her life she had not yet had to overcome any major obstacles. Ashley sees herself as pretty on good days and she occasionally has days where she is slightly insecure about her appearance. Most people would not argue against the fact that she is your average teenage girl.
One day, Ashley’s boyfriend broke up with her and started dating another girl at school. She went to her friends and told them how heartbroken she is and how she doesn’t think she will ever be able to get over the breakup. Her friends simply say that this boy “isn’t worth getting upset about,” and that she should think about other things like how they will all go to the school dance together next week. A few days later, she tells her mother that she is really hurt, and that this boy breaking up her is completely ruining her life. She says that she feels like she wants to die. Ashley’s mother thought that this is just a typical thing a young teenage girl would say. (If you’ve ever been, or if you have ever known a teenage girl, I’m sure you can remember that “drama queen” and “teenage girl” are basically synonyms.) So she responded by telling her daughter that everyone goes through breakups, and she will forget about this boy and be on to the next one in no time. Ashley’s friends and family figured that her problem was not something to worry about and they never even entertained the notion that it could lead to anything serious. They assumed that since people across the world get broken up with every day and they manage to recover that she would also handle it the same way. No one considered the possibility that while a breakup may be something they would easily be able to recovery from, it might not be so simple for Ashley.
A few months later, her friends and family were botch shocked and heartbroken to hear about how Ashley ended her own life. Although it may sound crazy to many of us, being broken up with was enough to send this girl over the edge. On the outside her problem may have seemed small, but to her it was unbearably painful. No one she went to for help thought that this “small” problem could lead to anything so damaging, but because of the breakup all of Ashley’s worries and troubles became magnified. She became afraid of her imperfections and convinced herself that she really would never find anyone who would love her. Her self-esteem (like the self esteem of many teenage girls) was already fragile, and she was convinced that she was not enough. Not pretty enough, not enough fun to be around, and not intelligent enough. The drop in self-esteem led to depression, which led to poor grades. All of this lowered her confidence in herself even more. She began to feel “stupid” and worthless. Everyone she went to made it seem like she was upset over something that “wasn’t worth it” so on top of everything else she felt like she was different or abnormal. Being that she was so young and had very little life experience, Ashley did not understand her feelings and how to deal with them in a healthy way. All of these things eventually led to her no longer having the will to live.
What was so quickly perceived to be a small problem was actually something that ended up causing the loss of a life.
This is why we cannot compare problems. Assuming that someone cannot or should not be that upset about something that seems manageable to you can only hurt them more. People need to be encouraged to talk about what is bothering them and they need to not be made to feel as though their feelings are illegitimate.
Instead of comparing, understand that the actual situation isn’t what matters. The important thing to pay attention to is how someone feels.
If a friend is dealing with something that is upsetting them, let them know that you view anything that is hurting them as a “real” problem that should be addressed, not ignore or minimized. Offer support without judgment and be there for whatever they need, whether that is to physically assist them with whatever the trouble may be or to just simply be a caring listener. Taking any problem a friend may have seriously (no matter how big or small it seems from your point of view) can completely change how it may affect them and how they will handle the situation.
You never know, sometimes a person just knowing that a friend sympathizes and truly cares can save a life.
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