Are you using others' suffering to invalidate your own?

“It could be worse,” I say to myself as I struggle through a day of mild chronic pain. I live with chronic illness and some days, some weeks, some months, even some years are better than others. But I have friends, colleagues, and clients with chronic illness who are in and out of the hospital on a regular basis and I am not. I’m tempted to use that fact to invalidate the reality of my own pain, but I finish my own sentence: “It could be worse, and I’m grateful that it’s not. It is painful and sometimes scary. I have compassion for myself. I will take good care of myself today and listen to my body’s signals.”

I work with clients who navigate complex trauma, anxiety, depression, and chronic illness every day. I long ago lost count of the times people have said to me, “It could be worse,” as a way to minimize their very real and terrible struggles. “He pushed me to have sex but I eventually gave in, so at least it wasn’t rape,” “He shamed me and berated me but at least he didn’t beat me,” “She criticizes me constantly but she’s had such a traumatic childhood I feel like I shouldn’t question her behavior,” “They yelled racist slurs at me but at least I didn’t end up on the news,” and on and on into a well of unacknowledged despair.

Being pushed to have sex is not consent.

Being shamed and berated is not love.

Being relentlessly criticized is emotional abuse.

Being called a racist slur is threatening and potentially traumatic.

No “buts.” Not relative consent or relative shame, or relative abuse or relative racism. They just are. Your pain is your pain is your pain. Not to wallow in, but to honor as the sacred signal of human tenderness that it is. You are alive and tuned in and you can sense when someone has hurt you, violated your boundary, disrespected your holy beautiful wonderful beingness, implied that you should be other than just as you are.

Are there degrees of abuse and harm? Of course, there are. Stealing someone’s wallet is harmful and potentially traumatic, with lasting consequences in some cases; it’s still not as harmful as murder. That’s clear, and the law reflects it. But if your friend tells you their wallet was stolen and you respond with, “Well, at least they didn’t kill you,” you have immediately invalidated every emotion and process your friend has around their stressful experience. A potential worse suffering does not negate the reality of the one right in front of you.

It’s easy to see this reasoning in the example above, yet most of us are walking around with such a powerful and sneaky internalized oppressor that we can’t even see it’s the water we swim in. I call this oppressor, “Mr. Nice Guy.” (And yes, I think it’s a guy, not because of gender but because no matter what your own gender identification is, this type of critic is installed by the over-arching patriarchal culture that demands that we ALL ignore our innate sensitivity in order to carry on and be tough and productive.) It’s the part that says you’re such a nice and considerate person that you would never, ever presume to acknowledge your own pain while others suffer. Mr. Nice Guy is a masterful gaslighter. Mr. Nice Guy insists that you make yourself small and unobtrusive so that nobody has to worry about you or go out of their way to take care of you.

This shows up in two primary patterns which we will call “stoicism” and “neediness.” Stoicism is the art of avoiding the pain and not asking for the help you need. Neediness is the art of expressing real and valid needs in a sideways, indirect manner and not owning the importance and validity of those needs. Many of us learned one or both of these strategies growing up as a way to survive our families, our cultures, or our traumatic experiences.

Stoicism demands that we put on a tough face, numb or hide our pain, and appear invincible. This is often flagged as a “masculine” trait and boys are more often pushed to develop into stoics, but people of all genders embody this pattern when it suits their environment. It’s a way of saying, “You can’t hurt me because I don’t have needs and I am un-hurtable.” The remedy for this is not to show vulnerability externally (at least, not at first) but rather to cultivate internal sensitivity. When something hurts, even the smallest slight, honor that in your own mind. Say something kind to yourself. Be a witness to your experience. Little by little, you can also learn to share this out loud, but it starts inside.

Neediness demands that we express our needs as apologies. Even as the words come out of our mouths, they are cloaked in, “…and I’m sorry for existing, taking up space, and having needs that ought to be met.” This is the indirect expression of un-met needs. When we have learned that it’s not okay to ask for what we need, when we have been shown time and time again that our needs won’t be met no matter how hard we try, we will appear to have a high level of need around many small and large things, yet somehow it never feels like enough. That’s because it isn’t. Those of us who learn this pattern have a deep, valid, and important need that’s being internally shunned; we don’t believe our need will ever be met, so we keep putting it back out to the world as a sheepish but persistent request. This pattern is often framed as “feminine” and it’s encouraged in girls from a young age when they’re taught to invalidate their own strength, but people of all genders embody this pattern when it suits their environment. The remedy to neediness is to believe in your internal sensitivity so much that you’re willing to stand for your feelings and needs whether others like them or not, because you know you matter. The remedy to neediness is to know you matter.

These patterns show up in people doing environmental justice work with surprising prominence, at least in the westernized, industrialized world where material needs are typically met but needs for connection to land and culture are not. When people in the industrialized world first fully grasp the level of destruction that’s happening in the environment, it often directly encounters our existing sense of “not enoughness,” our innate lack of belonging in the greater order of natural rhythms.  We realize our impact without realizing the nature of our place in the family of things (thanks, Mary Oliver, for that beautiful line). The response for many is a thinly cloaked self-harm. We’ll call this environmental self-destruction.

For instance, I once lived with environmentalists who re-used the same piece of floss every night for weeks, until it was worn through, to minimize waste (newsflash: any dentist will tell you that floss is a single-use item for hygiene reasons). Also, you are not saving the ocean by re-using your floss, but you are endangering your oral bacterial balance. I’ve lived with environmentalists who kept the house so cold throughout the winter that people became ill and the house developed mold. I’ve known vegans who slowly wasted away from nutrient deficiency but couldn’t bring themselves to diversify their diets because they were afraid of causing an ounce of harm to any other being, even as they were actively harming themselves (note: plenty of people live healthy lives as vegans, but those people pay close attention to nutrient balance, medical advice, and their own bodies’ signals.). These three examples point to an issue with taking up space, to having so little sense of your own value that you need to justify your right to be on this planet by reducing your carbon footprint even if it also reduces your own existence. This is, in essence, a trauma response. Climate change is traumatic, but it’s occurring on top of centuries of prior abuses and oppressions.

The remedy for environmental self-destruction is love. In particular, being able to receive love from the more-than-human beings that surround you. Sit still at the base of a tree and feel it hold you and welcome you into relationship. Savor a handful of thimbleberries from deep in the forest and know that you, too, are an animal enjoying nature’s bounty. Marvel at the speed of a hummingbird and plant flowers that feed it nectar. Plant flowers. Plant flowers. Plant flowers. Enter reciprocal relationship with the world. Never question your right to be here. Work towards environmental justice in a generative way, creating equity from a place of vibrant aliveness. Work to make your being here the blessing it was meant to be. Fight for life—all life—not from a place of desperation and self-abnegation, but from a place of glorious, unabashed love for the wonder of it all. Don’t let Mr. Nice Guy tell you otherwise.

Whether you tend to invalidate your own suffering in a personal, familial, or global context, know this: the world you want, the world you’re longing for, the world full of kindness and relationship and justice and inclusion and sensitivity will only come about if you can start to treat yourself that way. This is not the avoidant “self-care” of bubble baths and pedicures (though nothing wrong with either of those in the right context), but the deep, radical self-care of believing that your innermost feelings are worthy of being cherished. It is good to stop harm from the outside, but that is not a lasting solution if you don’t stop harm from the inside as well. If you find that you are using others’ suffering to invalidate your own, take a moment now to speak to the exquisitely sensitive parts of yourself as if they are a very small child in need of care. Say, “I’m hear for you. I hear you. You’re having big feelings. I see you. You matter. I won’t let anyone hurt you, not even myself. We’ll get through this together.” Little by little, you and that precious inner child and all of us who slow down enough to realize we matter will build a better world where we know our place in the family of things.