Who has it worse

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You and I have problems. If I told you I have bigger problems than you, would you agree with me?

Humans come first-class at the art of comparing two or more clearly different things. Like when you ask your friend which outfit suits better with your shoes, or when you decide whether a certain singer sings better than someone, or when you compare yourself to other people and wondering who is generally superior. Sure, they are helpful when you need an opinion regarding on two or more subjects. But it is different when the subjects being compared are the problems people face. Person A says he’s got a headache and could not be as productive as he was yesterday. Then here comes Person B saying that he’s got chest pains and ankle sprains. And he adds in, “mine is worse.” It’s interesting that people rate each other’s problems. What is the point of all that?

There are those who see other’s problems to be petty or insignificant, that they can be easily patched up, that these problems don’t matter but theirs do, not realizing that each of us cope and deal with problems differently. Isn’t that a bit self-centered? Well okay, maybe a lot? Nobody can nor should immediately judge or tell the intensity of a person’s issues unless they have walked in their shoes.

So some say that it’s how they empathize with the person, trying to comfort them by making it look like they have it worse so the other person’s problems will seem light and fixable. If that’s what a person does for it to be called “empathy”, then I must have lived my life upside down.

I have told many other people about my problems with depression and anxiety, then I get some of the same responses of: “oh, I go through the exact same thing, except mine is a little more complicated.” That’s not what other people really need to hear about. See, they share their problems to you because they thought you would listen. But instead of hearing them out, you compare which among you has the heavier burden and it makes the whole conversation more depressing than it should.

Recently, a friend of mine in the internet privately shared to me about a guy who rated his girlfriend’s self-harming. This person had seen the cuts on her arm and all he said was something along the lines of: “I thought it was something serious. I’ve seen worse.” What do you think that girl would have reacted? He wasn’t being helpful to her at all. Worst case would be her ending up making it deeper and bigger just because the guy thought it was nothing compared to what he’d seen. It was insensitive.

It goes the same for medical conditions. When a parent of a child who only has a few months left tells another patient of a broken spinal cord that they are lucky they at least get to continue on with their lives longer, that’s not comforting. If anything else, it would make that patient feel guilty for only having that kind of illness and not something worse.

However, it can also be that people just don’t know how to respond when they see or hear about somebody’s problems because they haven’t gone through something similar in their life. People try to understand by relating another problem that they think is similar to the other person’s pain. It might come off as them caring, but in the end, it’s just naivete and ignorance.

In the end, it’s people subjectively feeling worse because the problem happened to them. Our woes should never be compared with others who are also inflicted. They will never be the same as others, but it does not mean you can start rating which problem is worse. Sometimes comparing pains is an act of consciousness. And sometimes it numbs out the truth.