The Pain Olympics: No Gold Medals Here
“I shouldn’t be complaining. So many people have it worse off than me.”
Sound familiar?
Feeling guilty about “complaining” because you are comparing yourself to people worse off than you is extremely common - I see it all the time with my clients, my friends, and with myself.
Here’s the thing: There is always going to be someone worse off than you. Kids are starving in third world countries for gosh sake. And likewise, there is always going to be someone better off than you. This is because comparisons are subjective judgments you are making about another person’s experience- and also because there are 6 billion people in this world!
There is a difference between comparing yourself to others in order to remind yourself that things aren’t that bad and doing it in order to suppress painful feelings.
For example, when I had cancer sometimes I would attend support groups where patients were much sicker than I was. Sometimes this created additional anxiety or fear, but sometimes it also made me feel better - “it could be worse, I’m actually not that bad off.”
On the other hand, when I finally got pregnant after going through IVF for a year and a half, I felt very guilty about voicing any complaints about the pregnancy. There were still so many women who had not overcome infertility. Shouldn’t I just be grateful for the fact that I was able to get pregnant?
The truth is, my pregnancy was really difficult! My first trimester was marked by debilitating nausea and fatigue nearly 24/7, a threatened miscarriage, terrible anxiety, and social isolation (thanks COVID). In my third trimester I developed something called SPD and was actually unable to walk for several weeks due to severe joint pain in my pelvis. And you know what, it sucked!
And holy crap, have I mentioned my traumatic birth experience? I went into the hospital at 39 weeks for a scheduled induction. I labored for 48 hours, pushed for an hour and a half, developed severe pre-eclampsia and ended up having an emergency c-section. It was physically painful, frightening, and the recovery was very challenging.
Every single second of that pain was worth it because at the end of the day, I fulfilled my dream of becoming a mother. But does that mean that I shouldn’t be able to share my experience? Am I complaining? Or am I speaking my truth and inviting support? Perhaps even providing support to other women who are going through something similar.
I didn’t want to openly share my struggles with pregnancy and birth because I kept comparing myself to those worse off than me, and that made me feel really guilty and ashamed for “complaining.”
What about all of those other women who are still going through IVF? They’d give anything to be in my shoes. Even worse, what about all of the breast cancer survivors who are unable to have children? Sure, my journey was difficult but at least I had a baby in the end, so who the hell am I to complain about anything?
I became a contestant in the Pain Olympics. I silenced myself and suppressed my feelings, and as a result, my pain turned into suffering. There are no gold medals in the Pain Olympics, folks. In fact, there are only losers.
Does that mean that we should walk around complaining of our misfortunes all the time? Absolutely not. Does it mean that I should call up my friend who just had a miscarriage and detail my traumatic birth experience? Of course not!
We can express pain through honest and open sharing, while still being sensitive to others. Our experiences are our experiences, and while we can be grateful that things aren’t worse, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed to feel bad when we are struggling.
Otherwise, what we are left with is a world of fake smiles and staged perfection on social media that make us question whether our negative emotions are normal. Having negative emotions and pain sometimes is totally normal, it is part of being human.
This isn’t the Pain Olympics. So let’s (tactfully) express, rather than suppress, our common humanity.