Just Because Others Suffer More In The World, It Doesn't Mean Our Pain Is Not Real - Takeaway From Life Coach

Talking about suffering and sadness in the first world. How we feel guilty for expressing strong negativity because we still have it good. Now if we have a problem sometimes we think about others who starve, who have no human rights, who are slaves and in comparison, we really shouldn’t complain, but that’s not fair either. Yes, there is no comparison and I wouldn’t change my suffering to theirs, but the pain is pain no matter what causes it.

Silent suffering as Adam, my boyfriend called it, is probably the worst. We feel guilty for feeling this way so we won’t share. We are social species for a reason, we can share and ask for help. Adam said maybe it is better to have cancer when you are rich than when you are poor, but cancer is still cancer.

I used to beat myself up about complaining while there is a roof over my head, money in my bank account, friends around me and so on, but then I realised that’s not fair that just because I was born in a more privileged society I have no rights to express my full range of emotions. I shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling the way I feel. Maybe I won’t hit the town and parade my sadness around for everyone to feel sorry for me, but I will not keep them locked away where they do more damage.

Pain is pain, and we all experience the same pain differently. We can’t minimise someone’s pain just because we think if it happened to us we would feel differently about it, or we did feel differently about it. Someone needs a few weeks to fully get over a breakup, someone takes years and some just never recover. Because we don’t react to pain the same way and we should not feel guilty for expressing suffering.

Next I will write about the other side, what happens when you have to listen to someone’s suffering over and over again until you reach your limit.