Suffering: The Series Part 2~ The Comparison Game

Let me paint an all too familiar picture, which I'm sure everyone has seen or experienced, and, let's be honest, is guilty of themselves.

You call a friend (or they call you-- it truly doesn't matter how this happens) and you both start sharing experiences since the last time you spoke. You've started working out, they've taken on more projects at work, you've started a book that started off kind of boring but you really feel as though it's growing on you more and more as you read on--you get the idea.

Then it happens.

One of you decides to start venting about something. Maybe it's a complaint about a boyfriend, or maybe it's situation at work where a coworker or a boss is being extra ornery about something. Insert normal variety of suffering here.

Then insert this response: "That's not half bad compared to what I've got going on!"

Immediately, the conversation becomes a "Who is suffering more" style game of chess, instead of a healthy conversation of validation and support.

Virtually everyone has done it, myself included, and that the very least virtually everyone has experienced it. But why does this happen? What good could a person possibly intend with that kind of response.

A few things are going one here.

First of all, it has become very apparent, as suffering and pain are being given more attention as the years go by, that ultimately, those who aren't trained to have a therapeutic conversation don't know how to do it, or if they do, they aren't confident enough to do it well.

At the end of the day, this is acceptable, but only because there simply isn't a huge workforce of people trained in mental health. A Google search about mental health stats will show that a very small percentage of people in the workforce today are in the mental health field, meaning a very small percentage of people in the population have been trained to speak about things such as grief, loss, pain, etc, amongst myriad other mental health concerns.

So, in that respect, a response like this is understandable. But then again, there are certainly people who aren't trained to speak about things without feeling the need to compare, and yet are able to respond and hold space in an affirming way.

Is this an anomaly? Hardly.

The reason I say that is because there is something about therapeutic listening and responding that cannot be taught in a textbook, but rather comes from the experience of talking to other people simply to hear them. In other words, everyone one of us has had at least one encounter with someone who let our accounts of suffering exist without trying to modify it, qualify it or "size it up" by offering what they believe is a worse ordeal that they happen to be experiencing.

A simple example of this being perhaps a situation in one's childhood, when sustaining a scrape or a bruise during play outside. When one runs inside to tell one's mother about it, one's mother responds with, "Oh, ouch that looks like it hurts! Let's get you a bandaid!" In this interaction, mother is validating that the injury has occurred, that it ought to come with some amount of pain, and that she has an interest in being a catalyst for healing if possible.

Much different, let's say, than if the mother responded with, "Oh quit crying, it's not that bad! I've had worse injuries than that and survived!"

What sort of message do you think that sends to the child? For one, the child will probably learn that for some things mom simply isn't the one to turn to for comfort or help, which is a tragedy in and of itself, because that will influence who the child seeks help from in the future, possibly to point of not asking for help when necessary as an adult.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the child will learn that there is some type of pain or suffering which "doesn't count" as suffering, because someone else has suffered "worse," thereby also teaching the child that someone else can always hold the power to qualify the pain they are feeling.

And, to be succinct, those are the people who end up in my office, saying things like, "I'm don't like calling what I went through as abuse, because there are definitely people who have had it worse, but..." when the fact is, compared to other people or not, this person had one bad hand dealt to them as a child, over and over again, and absolutely has every right to call what they went through as abuse, and feel as though they have suffered because of it.

And truly, there is not one situation in which someone else has not had it worse. If I suffer a snake bite, painful and poisonous, there will always have been someone who sustained a snake bite and did not survive it. Does that mean my snake bite should not be painful to me? Of course not.

So why do people feel the need to compare their pain to others?

For one, humans are creatures of comparison. I know I am successful, because compared to the national average, my numbers of client retention are above the norm. I know that I am feeling well, because even compared to myself on certain days, I don't feel nearly as unwell as I have in the past, based on my knowledge of symptoms, which is based on norms found in psychological studies of the average human experience.

It's kind of what we do. And in the comparison game of pain, this is definitely a primary factor.

And, to be fair, often times, this is not used maliciously. There's good quality to it, albeit often received differently, that follows more of a "I am actually just trying to relate to you and my delivery is not helping" intentionality. And I really do believe most people don't intend to disqualify the pain of another with their own comparisons, it is truly a matter of delivery and communication of intend.

But then, on occasion, there are those who, however unintentionally, do mean to disqualify the pain of another person. One reason for this is that their experience with pain in the past hasn't been validated, and therefore, they are still trying to have their pain heard by others by way of making it tower over others' pain. This is to say, " Your pain must be validated after mine is deemed to be as great as it feels."

Another reason however, is because, due to all the above mentioned reasons for a person to not know how to hold space for another person, the idea of suffering being meaningful is barely a thought. Why would I believe that suffering can be meaningful if I was never taught that it was even worth mentioning? Probably, I wouldn't!

So if someone is telling me about a bad day at work, and I don't have a concept of pain that allows me to see that, even and especially as a creature of comparison, I can use that shared experience of pain to foster validation through solidarity, my response is going to be based on the assumption that the other person is trying to garner some sort of pity, extra attention, or even some sort of admiration for having suffered in the way that they have.

Because, after all, suffering, not being meaningful in any way, is simply another human thing of comparison, in this line of thinking.

So how do we change the game?

There will certainly be more on this in future articles, but for now, here are some therapist-verified ways to change the game of comparison, or at the very least, use it to hold better space and foster a conversation where suffering can hold as much value and meaning as it possibly can.

Changing the Game:

I will preface this with the disclaimer that changing the game, depending on what you're used to is the harder of the two options. Simply because this involves rewiring thinking and changing the foundational thought altogether.

An example of this would be, say, in the case of the phone conversation with a friend who is venting about work, changing the thought from, " I am expected to fix this, or be a therapist in this situation, I am only expected to listen and validate."

The reason this is the more difficult route is because, in addition to being creatures of comparison, the human race is also a bunch of Fix-it Felix type creatures who are geared toward self-maintenance. Again, this is a very good thing about humanity. It is where we get the pursuit of medicine, science, even therapy. We simply are creatures bent on improving and actualizing as best as we can.

And, in the case of humans who care about other humans, we are willing and eager to help each other "fix" what is wrong. So the difficulty is rewiring that need, or perhaps just informing it better.

What I mean by this is simply that, often times, in situations where we are met with the decision to help someone, we tend toward, "what is the problem and how can I fix it?" What is often misinformed is our perception of either the problem or it's solution, such that, what we believe is the problem may not be the reason we are being confided in, or our idea of the solution to the problem may also not be what the person doing the confiding needs within that moment.

How do we change the game?

We ask.

(Rocket science, I know. I went to school for 6 years to learn that trick, so please appreciate this free information.)

I say that not tease anyone more than myself, for even as a therapist, my brain filled with solutions sometimes overlooks the fact that the client in front me may not be here for any of them, at least not at the moment.

And the magic question is one that is easily overlooked by myself, as well as friends and mothers alike: What can I do to make this better for you? Or, What do you feel you need right now and how can I help you with that?

Believe me, this question does a lot of hard work and saves the conversation from just about all instances of "No, you're not hearing what I am saying," which very easily turns into a comparison of who has had more suffering and therefore understands the situation better.

*Myth: Asking someone what they need does not indicate incompetence, that you were not listening to the person, or that you shouldn't be trusted with their feelings in the future. Rather, it indicates that you are interested in helping them and are willing to admit that you don't know the answer, or at least that you would like to make sure that your intentions are what the person needs. This actually communicates caring, empathy and understanding on a level that is impactful to someone.

Using the Game:

Let's return to the analogy of the child with an injury. Obviously, the preferred response from the mother is that of validation and intention to help. Now, let's pretend mom herself is one of the many who struggles holding space for others, for whatever the reason might be. To change the game would certainly be in the realm of possibility, but let's assume mom has a lot on her plate, and for now the idea of completely changing her language is a daunting idea.

That's no problem! Mom doesn't have to change much at all, because she is already aware that she also has suffered and therefore can relate to the child. In this case, mom's solution is to simply exit on the ramp just before the one that leads to disqualifying her child's pain, which is the Solidarity exit.

What this might look like, in slow-mo processing, is something like this:

C: Mom, mom! I fell off my bike and now my knee hurts and it's bleeding!

M: *thinks* Oh gosh, this kiddo should try birthing three kids, then he'd know what real pain is! (Again, this isn't mom of the year, but she's trying, she's got a lot on her plate!)

M: *Continues thinking, because she realizes that wouldn't be helpful to say to her child, because after all, he is bleeding* On that note, I do know that any amount of pain is uncomfortable, and for a kiddo, pain is pretty big since he's still little* Oh geez, kiddo, that looks like it hurts! I remember falling off my bike when I was your age, did you get hurt anywhere else?

What happened here, is mom evaluated her conclusion that her child wasn't trying to take any "spotlight" away from her experiences of pain, nor was he trying to to say that it was the worst pain anyone could ever feel--he was simply trying to say it happened and it was affecting him. Which, as it happens, is precisely how it goes for every human, whether it is physical or emotional pain we're dealing with.

So, all that being said, what are your thoughts? How much do you struggle with this? What do you think about the comparison game and its presence within a conversation like this? Let me know in the comments! See you next week!