I keep hearing this:
Things could be worse.
You could be blind, you could lose your legs, you could always be worse.
However rationally accurate this argument can be, it isn’t healthy or fair. Maybe, if I were Jesus, I’d feel differently because I could tell everyone that they were healed. But I’m not and neither are you. So everyone needs to stop entertaining these thoughts. I always ask people who tell me that they feel like their problems are scant and trivial compared to mine,
“Which is heavier; a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?”
Neither.
Your burdens are yours. My burdens are mine. They are equal because they weigh on both of us the same.
When we play a game of comparison, we invalidate our pain and other’s pain as well. Am I to tell someone who has only been verbally abused that his or her experiences shouldn’t be as painful because it wasn’t physical abuse? Am I to tell someone who has been raped once that, “it could have been worse”, they could have been trafficked and raped many times? I would never say that.
I have learned through pursuing help that what I need is someone to come alongside me and validate my experiences and my current struggles. I need a healthcare professional to say, “This is real, this is scary, and we are going to face this together to figure it out“.
I so desperately struggle to be believed.
When you say that things could be worse it makes the present so much harder. You are telling yourself to suck it up. Mental illness is not something that you suck up. Getting stitches is something that you suck up in the moment because it helps you get better. You suck up the things that help you get better, stronger, healthier; another jumping jack, another therapy session, another day sober, another moment between this breath and the next.
Things could be worse. But that doesn’t change what they are and it doesn’t change the fact that they are happening now.
This is real. This is scary. There are people who want to help. This is happening. This will be over.
Photo Credit: https://stephericsson.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/another-shit-could-be-worse-sign-sm.jpg
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