This Brutiful Life

“I didn’t share _____ with you, because I didn’t want to burden you with my problems. You have it so much worse than me.”

I have had friends say this to me many, many times over the last few years. In fact, I have had two friends say this to me on two separate occasions in the last 3 weeks. I have known this to be a barrier in my life for quite some time, and it brings up big feelings of sadness every time someone says it to me.

Part of being human is feeling connected to others, and when loved ones don’t tell me things because of a comparison to my life, it makes me feel less human. It makes me feel less connected. Even (and especially) on the days when I feel my physical and emotional worst, I always want to hear from my friends and family. I always want to know what is happening in their lives. I always want to hear about the ups and downs in their lives. I always want to be a friend to them and provide them as much love and support as I possibly can given my constraints. Removing themselves from my life simply due to the fact that they are comparing their pain to mine can be more painful for me at times than the pain from the actual health issues.

I believe that comparative suffering is one of the reasons why many of my friends have stopped reaching out since I started writing this blog. I mistakenly thought that if I were more vulnerable and authentic, then that would remove the biggest barrier to connecting with others, and my relationships with others would benefit and become deeper and more meaningful. What I have found is the opposite: The more vulnerable and authentic I am, the less people choose to stay connected to me. It has been the topic of quite a few discussions with both my husband and our therapist. What started as a way to help others feel less alone by showing the “messy middle” of my life instead of the highlight reel quickly became a source of further emotional isolation. I was super confused about this at first, but I have come to understand some of the reasons for it (as discussed in some of my previous posts). Another one of those reasons is comparative suffering.

Yes, I do suffer regularly on this health journey. However, I know others who “seemingly” have it way worse than me. And, while that is my perspective, they have literally said to me that they think I have it way worse than them. It is like we are all trying so hard not to burden each other that we are missing out on real human connection. We all end up becoming emotionally isolated and hyper-independent instead of emotionally connected and interdependent.

A friend of mine wrote a social media post about 4 years ago about a particularly difficult time in his life. In the middle of the post, he apologized for writing about that particular topic since he was aware that others had it way worse than him. I posted this comment on that post, and I would make the same comment today:

We all suffer at different times in our lives and in different ways. While I feel like it can be good to acknowledge that others have it worse than us in order to maintain some perspective in life, we shouldn’t compare. For example, we shouldn’t say that we are not allowed to feel disappointed on a particular day just because a friend or family member had a seemingly worse event in their life on that day. There is room for everyone to feel the “sucky-ness” of their own situations.

So, my challenge to you is this: Tell your emotionally safe friends and family members about the ups and downs in your life even if you feel like they have it worse than you. The chances are high that they think you have it worse than them. So, let’s skip all the bullshit and remember that suffering is not comparable. Let’s make it a goal to be more emotionally interdependent by sharing our joy and our pain with the people who matter to us the most. Let’s do our best to build and maintain emotional connections with each other even (and especially) when life is messy.

(image credit: unknown)


Brutal. Suffering. Comparison. Emotional isolation and hyper-independence.

Beautiful. Vulnerability. Authenticity. Emotional connectedness and interdependence.


Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.