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What Does It Mean to Compare Others’ Suffering to Your Own?

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You’ve probably read about the concept of “comparative suffering” before or even participated in it in some form without realizing it. It’s always a topic worth exploring and digging into more. Comparative suffering is the act of comparing someone else’s pain to your own. Sometimes we do it unconsciously. It means we are judging our own suffering based on what someone else is going through.  Comparative suffering works both ways. It’s when a friend tells you about the awful thing that just happened to them and you manage to minimize it by either thinking or saying it’s not as bad as what happened to you. It’s also when you beat yourself up for thinking you have it rough right now when there are so many other people going through much worse. It’s judging and ranking pain—and it’s a losing game.  Keep Your Struggles in Perspective Even when certain aspects of life seem to be crumbling down around you, you can rest in the knowledge that you will, in fact, get throu