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I used to get angry when I heard people respond to stories of struggle with “You think that’s hard? Now try it with ___!” It’s such a rude and invalidating response…even when said as a joke.
But now when I hear this response, I mostly feel sad for that person because they so clearly want someone to validate THEIR situation. They’re screaming for some kind of acknowledgment of what they’ve gone through.
They want so badly for someone to see them and hear them. Maybe they have wanted that for a long time, years even, only to never have that happen. Anyone who has been there knows it’s a lonely place to be.
You feel like you have to prove how hard you’ve worked. How much you’ve done. How much you’ve endured. How you persevered. You feel like you have to “hustle for your worthiness,” as Brené Brown says.
It would be nice if we were all healthy and developed enough to learn to validate ourselves when we need it, but the truth is that’s hard to do. Even when you recognize it’s not everyone else’s job to make you feel better, it’s incredibly difficult to learn how to actually validate yourself.
And truthfully, most people don’t even realize that’s what they’re looking for and why they’re doing what they’re doing.
And so it comes out in comments like, “You think one child is hard? Try six.” Or “You think one week of sick kids is hard? Try every day.” Or “Try doing all that PLUS ___.”
Funnily enough, I’ve been guilty of responding this way, myself. And looking back on those moments, my responses were undoubtedly because I wanted someone to recognize what I was dealing with, and comparison seemed like an easy way to do that.
My knee-jerk reaction to these comments is still irritation. But now, compassion follows. Because I know it’s coming from unresolved feelings about their own situation.
When it comes down to how to respond when people say “You think that’s hard?”, I just let them have the win in the conversation. I just respond with something like, “Yeah, that does sound hard.” Or, “Wow, I can’t imagine,” and move on. This person may not be in a space where they can receive anything else beyond that or be available to lend an empathetic ear to you. That’s okay.
Just remember that if someone tells you something like this, it’s about them, not you.
And as a reminder: just because someone has it worse than you, doesn’t mean your struggles aren’t valid. We ALL have our own struggles and none are exactly alike. The more we realize that, the better off we all will be.
This post was originally published on the author’s Facebook page.
