"Other people have it worse"

Since Covid 19 has taken hold in the UK and quarantine has become the new normal, we’ve all probably said and heard something along the lines of “it’s a difficult situation, but we’re all in it together and other people have it worse”. 

Except, we’re not all in it together, or at least, our situations aren’t all exactly the same. A few weeks ago I wrote about how communal resilience can come from facing a common enemy and while that might be true, it’s also quite complex. We may all be in the same boat, but we don't have equally efficient sails and we won’t all be facing the same seas. It is not a level playing field, as Emily Maitlis eloquently explained on BBC Newsnight last week. 

Thinking that others have it worse is, in many ways, helpful. It offers perspective, an opportunity to look at one’s stressors as part of a bigger picture and can foster empathy and consideration of others. However, there are dangers to this line of thinking too. If we place too much emphasis on it we risk dismissing our own experiences and neglecting our own important emotional responses. 

Taken to the extreme, we can leave ourselves open to secondary emotions too, the feelings we have in response to initial emotional reactions. We might, for example, feel guilty about feeling sad for our own situation, if we perceive other people to be in worse position. It’s hard enough to feel sad, without a helping of guilt to deal with too. Especially since secondary emotions like guilt often infer judgement: self-critical analysis of what we should or should not do, what we should or should not feel. That’s a real blow to our self-esteem, because when we castigate ourselves for what we feel, we are criticising the individual, intuitive responses that make us who we are. 

A sense of guilt might also lead us to thinking that only people in the worst situations matter and that only some emotions are valid. We might make the mistake of thinking that experiences can be categorised into groups and ordered according to how difficult or stressful one should find them. And if one person is thinking this, then many other people are too. This is one way that we end up with damaging, society-wide views about what the acceptable responses to certain experiences are, and, conversely, which emotions are unwelcome. This is how some people in a community will be supported and listened to, while others will be stigmatised and shamed. The idea that there are right and wrong ways to feel assumes that everyone has the same emotions to the same intensity and that every person in society has had identical opportunities to build resilience and collect supportive resources. This is clearly not the case. 

So, let’s be accepting. Let’s learn to accept our own pain, in whatever form that takes, without judgement about it’s legitimacy. Let’s accept that everyone’s pain is absolutely different, incomparable, yet equally valid. As Robert Webb summarised perfectly in his book ‘How not to be a boy’: 

“Yes of course there's always someone worse off than you. But imagine you're in a doctor's surgery with a broken arm. The person next to you has two broken arms, the person next to him has two broken arms and a broken leg. This is all very well, but the point is that you have a broken arm and it hurts.”