“Comparative Suffering” Is the Dumbest Social Media Trend We All Need to Stop Doing Right This Minute

Just because someone has it worse doesn’t diminish what you’re going through

Apparently, you can only express your dissatisfaction with life if you’re dead. And only if you died in the most horrific way possible. Otherwise, do you know that someone has it worse than you?

Don’t worry if you don’t, the internet will tell you.

This is called comparative suffering — I like to call it ranking suffering — and it’s been doing the rounds for decades. The old-school version was when your mom would tell you to eat your greens because children are starving in Africa. Which they were (still are). But that probably didn’t get you to eat your broccoli.

On the internet, ranking suffering has gotten LOUD. And it’s a massive problem because it diminishes people’s often very painful experiences. It stops people from talking about hurtful incidents for fear they’ll be told “Yeah you miscarried but you’re only 25. Spare a thought for this 40-year-old whose only chance it was to have a child.”

Yeah, because that’s going to cheer up the 25-year-old?

I don’t think so.

Ranking suffering both online and IRL is dumb. It’s boring, it’s a lazy argument and it does more damage than we think.

Someone else will always have it worse than you. That doesn’t diminish what you’re going through

It keeps us quiet though, doesn’t it? The thought that if you put something out there, you’ll be told to suck it up because someone has it worse than you.

I do it on Medium all the time. I’m guilty of staying away from certain topics or writing about certain experiences because I’m nervous the comment section will delight in telling me I’m too privileged to feel whatever it is I’m feeling.

But the idea that someone can’t experience pain or heartache because some other part of their life is not in ruin is incredulous. Every human on this earth, from the likes of Elon Musk to the dirt poor experience similar feelings because that is what it means to be human.

I’m not Musk’s biggest fan but if he lost a parent or something similar, I hope I wouldn’t be insensitive enough to say well, at least he has all that money.

On a micro level, I’m concerned about how many people keep quiet when it comes to their problems for fear of reproach. My therapist once told me that many of her clients see her (myself included) because they feel pain but they don’t know how to direct it because they’ve been told too many times to

buck up

or

at least *insert horrific life experience here* hasn’t happened to you.

But pain is pain. It doesn’t go away just because someone has it worse than you.

Ranking suffering makes you insufferable

It’s a lazy argument.

It’s easier to tell someone they don’t have it that bad than it is to actually listen to their story. Which is just fucking annoying.

So why do people do it? What drives them to tell people that they haven’t got it all that bad because someone has it worse? Or even that they’re not allowed to be happy because others aren’t like this glorious example of Twitter BS:

Apparently, it’s hardwired. We are designed to notice what is going on around us and compare ourselves to the experiences of others. It’s also a coping mechanism. It stops us from having to address our own emotions about a subject. Judgment is a mirror which doesn’t bode well for the aggressor, who may use the phrase “it’s alright for you…” to mask their own pain.

It however does not make them any less insufferable.

Comparative suffering makes you bitter. It comes from a place of anger and upset, not from empathy and compassion. Ranking everyone’s problems might be an easy way to approach the world but it doesn’t make it beneficial.

Far from it.

Ranking suffering keeps you in your place

And when I say you, I mean both the people doing the ranking and the people doing the suffering.

If you catch yourself saying “I mustn’t complain” even if you’re suffering big time, then that’s just bottling up. And believe me, as someone who has done this for years, all it does is land you with a very large therapist bill.

It can stop you from doing more with your life. If you believe that you’ve not got it so bad compared to others, you could end up living in a crappy marriage or working a shitty job or never making quite enough money. And because there will always be someone worse off than you, you’ll never find the rock of the bottom floor.

If you believe that this is the only time you can make improvements to your life, you never will.

And if you’re one those those dickheads who delight in telling people how much worse they could have it, as I say, that’s going to do nothing for your empathy or compassion. And Lord knows we don’t need any more unempathetic people in the world.

Comparative suffering is a losing game. But there is a way to win…

If you want to stop the comparative madness, listen to the best Brown out there (not me, alas)

Brene Brown talked a lot about comparative suffering during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time when ranking suffering was at an all-time high:

We start to rank our suffering and use it to deny or give ourselves permission to feel. “I can’t be disappointed about my college graduation right now. Who am I to be sad that I’m not going to be able to have this great ceremony, because there are people sick and dying?” — BB

But as the Brownster says:

This is not how emotion or affect works. Emotions do not go away, because we send them a message that, “[…] these feelings are inappropriate and do not score high enough on the suffering board. Please delete all feelings related to this. You are not in pain enough. Thank you.”

That’s not the way this works. The emotions that you’re feeling, that we feel, when we deny them double down, they burrow, they fester, they metastasize.

And not only do our feelings double down and grow, they invite shame over for the party. Because now, we’re like, “I am a bad person, because I’m sad or scared or lonely, or frustrated or disappointed or pissed off. And other people have it so much worse than me.” It’s really dangerous — BB

What does Brene say is the key?

You may have guessed it already — empathy

The entire myth of comparative suffering comes from the belief that empathy is finite. […]

The exhausted doctor in the ER room in New York doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from yourself or your co-worker who lost her job — BB

In other words, don’t be dickhead. Don’t be one to other people and don’t be one to yourself.

As Brene says:

Love, y’all, is the last thing we need to ration in this world — BB

Preach.

I’m done with the ranking of suffering. I’m done with dishing it out (we’re all guilty of it) and I’m done with receiving it.

If you feel like crap, you feel like crap. Even the most privileged of people in the world feel it sometimes. The fact that people think they don’t is just a bit weird, IMO.

But I see why it happens. Social media does a good job of eroding both our empathy and our compassion in exchange for bitter discourse, pointless arguments, and clickbaity all-or-nothing statements.

I’m not doing it anymore. I’d suggest you don’t either.

Feel that pain. Recognize it’s a perfectly normal human trait. Find people who won’t shit on you for it.

Your mental health — and therapy budget — will thank you for it.

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