What do you guys think the "others have it worse" nonesense?

[ForgottenAgain]

Just heard that rethoric from my aunt yesterday. She asked me if I was still having psychotic episodes and seconds later gave me the talk of how she sometimes feels sad but then remembers that are people suffering more so her life isn't that bad so I should think the same way.

Must be nice to not have a mental illness and that rethoric actually helping even though I don't see how but okay.

I think normal people are incapable of empathatising since their life experience is so wildly different from someone who is suicidal or is severally unwell. They just can't, they have no idea what it is like.

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

I hate this dismissive argument.
Of course there will always be someone who has it worse. The possibilities of suffering are unlimited in this world, but that doesn't cancel my suffering

 

[ijustwishtodie]

It's a logical fallacy hence it isn't worth considering

 

[rozeske]

It's just gaslighting at it's finest. Of course someone else would have it worse. Suffering is subjective and we can't all be suffering on the same level. The problem is someone else's suffering doesn't solve our's nor does it make us feel better. It's like that clichéd "there are starving children in Africa" thing. Except I am the "starving child" in Africa.

 

[wCvML2]

This argument relies on too many presumptions. I think that the core presumption that causes this line of thinking is that the choice to commit suicide is only influenced by one factor, which is the amount of objective suffering of a person as if suicide was that simple. It disregards other factors in someone's choice, such as differences in personal beliefs, life philosophy, tolerance levels, etc. Obviously, there are people who have it way worse than me who choose to live until old age, but that doesn't matter when I personally see no value in continuing to live while they do see its value. The difference between us is personal beliefs.

 

[lovedread]

About people who claim "well, suicidal people don't have it that bad, they're just privledged crybabies -- some people are starving, etc; so why do they complain? So why dont u jest get on with working and donate some money to a random charity," etc

Tbh i be thinking they right. Im like youre right. People do have it worse. But at the end of the day im still a piece of shit who wants to kill myself, despite my easy ass life.

Then i start spiraling and thinking about how angry god or whoever runs this shitshow must be at me to have given such a (relatively) "good" life to me but I still want to throw it all away. Then i get scared abt killing myself because of what god will do in retaliation to me—will he hurt me? Will he reincarnate me..burn me..idk

 

[FadingDawn]

im very sorry to hear that.

It's just gaslighting at it's finest. Of course someone else would have it worse. Suffering is subjective and we can't all be suffering on the same level. The problem is someone else's suffering doesn't solve our's nor does it make us feel better. It's like that clichéd "there are starving children in Africa" thing. Except I am the "starving child" in Africa.

 

[Ash’Girl]

It's not a competition.
We can absolutely logically be aware that the extent of suffering people can go through - examples, human trafficking, caught in a war zone, sent to prison/death row for crimes they didn't commit - etc, etc, is horrific.

But we are not living their experience. We only know our own experience of life, and our own measure of what makes life painful/unbearable, worthwhile or not. You can't even equate it to traumatic events. Why does one person who, for example, loses their mobility, still go on to live a fulfilling life and make the best of a horrible situation, whereas another gives up on life entirely?

Mindset, genetics, brain wiring, whatever. Some hopeless situations instill a drive to survive and thrive in some people, and in others they go the opposite way. And nobody should be judged for that, it just makes someone who is suffering suffer even more.

Suffering is suffering. It doesn't matter to me if on paper one person looks objectively like their life is pretty perfect, grand scheme of things. If they are suffering, I'm going to empathise with their experience and not invalidate that.

Suffering is shit.

I think I used the word suffering way too many times.

 

[DizzyFolfy]

Other houses being on fire does not put out the raging fire in my own house.

 

[anagram]

It's all relative. Comparing suffering as if it's a dick measuring contest isn't a deterrent for people to not commit suicide. suffering manifests differently from person to person but we all suffer nonetheless. Invalidating someone's suffering like this is an actual meme. Imagine telling the poor starving kid that someone has it worse like that person who burned to death. imagine telling that person who was burned alive that someone has it worse than you, there's someone who got skinned alive and so on and so on... this could be made into a meme actually. because of how retarded this saying is it just shits on and invalidates whatever the person is going through and basically telling them that it's nothing when it's clearly not. We all have different tolerance to pain. Not everyone is cut out to be a macho, masochistic freak.

In conclusion, suffering is totally relative and nobody has the right to invalidate our struggles our and suffering.

 

[thealteredmind]

if they have it worse why didn't they commit suicide? that's right, they are not that bad.

 

[RoseGarden]

Hi yes, it's me. I'm "others." People rarely pull that shit when I tell them what I've been through. I'm not going to get into it, but imagine every kind of abuse a kid could suffer, then put them through it, and have them be trans. That's me.

 

[manta]

It doesn't matter. If you're drowning in 10 feet of water and someone else is drowning in 100 feet of water, you're both still drowning.

The sentiment of "others have it worse" is toxic in my opinion because it entirely invalidates the struggles you're currently going through.

 

[Sprite_Geist]

About people who claim "well, suicidal people don't have it that bad, they're just privledged crybabies -- some people are starving, etc; so why do they complain? So why dont u jest get on with working and donate some money to a random charity," etc

I agree with your post.

I think that this mindset is detrimental to have; especially if a person who has this mindset, is interacting with somebody else who is feeling suicidal. First of all: how can it be decided who has it worse - does a person have to complete a list of painful experiences before they are allowed to feel horrible about their life? Does a person have to earn an accredited qualification in Advanced Suffernomics from the school of life?

It might be true that a given person who is having suicidal thoughts is not starving - as you have quoted - but they could also be suffering from another issue that the starving person is not, i.e.: psychological trauma stemming from childhood abuse, so in other words: both of the people in this example are hurting in their own different ways, and there is nothing from others from caring about them both; plus: people who are starving and/or homeless can, and do commit suicide too, so it is illogical (and awful) to use them as a weapon to attack others who could be viewed as more privileged; having said this: if a person is going to weaponize the downtrodden against others then they probably did not care about their hardships in the first place.

This mindset is partially the reason why (I think) so many individuals who have suicidal thoughts refuse to express how they are feeling. Then whenever somebody - anybody - ends their own life those who personally knew the said suicidal person will ask: "We had no idea! Why didn't they ever open up?"

 

[PINKIESISU]

About people who claim "well, suicidal people don't have it that bad, they're just privledged crybabies -- some people are starving, etc; so why do they complain? So why dont u jest get on with working and donate some money to a random charit

Just heard that rethoric from my aunt yesterday. She asked me if I was still having psychotic episodes and seconds later gave me the talk of how she sometimes feels sad but then remembers that are people suffering more so her life isn't that bad so I should think the same way.

Must be nice to not have a mental illness and that rethoric actually helping even though I don't see how but okay.

I think normal people are incapable of empathatising since their life experience is so wildly different from someone who is suicidal or is severally unwell. They just can't, they have no idea what it is like.

Suffering is suffering it doesn't matter how much or how little suffering is still suffering those that don't realize this have no clue

 

[mtoro998]

They are just trying to compare thier life to yours and in some cases talk down to you. Theres not much point in talking to most people about this subject. If you feel this way then the suffering is real to you. Even if others dont see it that way.

 

[BlockHammer]

I think it's either these people who said this were sceptical (cause a lot of people were kindda narcicistic) or they were just trying to ignore out problem, most people never been train to face this kind of condition, so that's why most of them came as apathetic. It also need to be mentioned that maybe these people also suffer in they own way, but they don't want someone to take their spotlight, and thus they invalidate our suffering

 

[Dusk till dawn]

It doesn't matter, just because someone is suffering worse than me yet didn't try to commit suicide won't give me even the slightest reason to want to continue living

 

[sukiduki]

i feel like while some people may be suffering "worse" via a basic needs hierarchy standpoint- if they have the will to live or want to live, that's two separate things. i might have food in the fridge and a bed to sleep in but what i don't have is the desire to continue living. so it is what it is

 

[Slough Walker]

The strongest argument put forward by the "it could be worse" crowd is to hold up an example of someone who has endured genuinely extreme suffering and came out embracing life. These examples do exist. However, they leave something out. When you hear real-life stories about the person whose body was 90% burned and they survived and found purpose, or the person rendered paraplegic by an accident but they endure and embrace life, what they're leaving out is the loving support system that the victim received. If you have a loving support system of people who you know have your back, you can endure many adversities. If you don't have that loving support system, you can have every advantage and still fail. Reading through many threads, people who are suicidal for reasons other than terminal disease or massive physical pain never had that loving support system of people who have their backs through adversity. I don't have it either. I believe that such support systems are far rarer than the "it could be worse" crowd would have us believe.

There's an analogy from this to abortion. When the pro-life anti-abortion crowd shame women's reproductive choices, I say to the pro-lifers: Since you can't mind your own business, then step up and solve the problem. Show how Christ-like you are by funding cheap and easy adoption services or state-run nurseries. But you won't do that because you don't really care about babies. You just want to control women's reproductive choices and feel good about your false virtue.

Likewise with the pro-life anti-suicide crowd. Since you can't mind your own business, then step up and solve the problem. Be the loving support system for a suicidal person. Have their back through their adversity regardless of how much it costs you personally. Show how pro-life you are by funding platinum-quality public health services. But you won't do that because you don't really care suicide prevention. You just want to condescend to suicidal people and reaffirm your own shaky commitment to life.

 

[crystal_meth97]

This is one of the most invalidating arguments one can ever use. It shows lack of empathy in my opinion. Why does it matter that some people have it worse than me? I'm still in pain, that doesn't mean anything, it can't make me feel better. If anything, it makes me feel worse because I acknowledge how agonizing life can be for others, yet I can't do anything to help directly. Oh, I should feel grateful that I don't have it that bad? Well, I don't. Bringing up the suffering of other people when I can't do anything to help other than donate and stuff won't make me feel better, it just invalidates my pain and makes me feel even more hopeless.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

I'm honestly concerned by the that I've seen this type of mentality from a few individuals on here.

"Others have it worse"! Okay, and so? Why should that invalidate my pain or the pain of others. At what point is my suffering valid enough for you? It's such a stupid mentality. I understand that sometimes we tend to think in this manner because we can only see things from our perspective and it can be hard to realize that everyone has a different threshold when it comes to how much they can handle something but you can just keep your judgement to yourself. Nobody needs to hear you invalidate others suffering. So many people end up falling into worsening mental states and even start becoming self-destructive because of this type of rhetoric. How certain events in our lives impact us can differ greatly from person to person and can depend on a whole host of factors. I've seen cases of people who've talked about being able to heal from trauma that would be considered some of the worst of the worst in most people's eyes while others who haven't "really suffered" are a complete mess.

Suffering is defined by how something has impacted you. It's defined by how it makes you feel and how long those feelings last for. It's shown in how it's changed us as people. It cannot be reduced down to what seems like a worse thing to go through and what seems not that bad. We need to quit it with this trauma Olympics bs and start looking at trauma and suffering in regards to how it impacts an individual rather than in regards to what happened and how bad it seems on a surface level.

 

[LittleJem]

Said by the key worker who lives with me on a regular basis. The same one that calls the ambulance when I say I want to die. When he hears me crying alone he comes upstairts to talk to me. I've told him I don't want to talk anymore about it. He's from Africa and tells me about people suffering in Africa.

I am totally alone all day every day. I am miserable all day every day. These people can fuck off. I don't want to see that stupid expression in their eyes that holds no understanding of the suffering of mental illness.

 

[voc_89]

the voices in my head, feelings of inadequacy, doubt, self-hate, etc. make my life such a living hell that the only moments in life that I feel fine are when I am asleep. But hey it could be worse. Yh I'm fixed now. Give that pro-lifer a noble peace prize. Smh

 

[falling_snow]

I don't get their logic. If somebody has it better than me, I shouldn't ctb; then if somebody has it better than me, I should?

I know it's a little exagerated, but we aren't crybabies for wanting to ctb. They should really get checked.

 

[Alltheywanted]

I don't mind what other people say. I guess some other people really have worse than me but like, why would anybody even say that anyway? It's like stating obvious just to be mean.
Personally I have my own reasons for CTB and nothing that anybody would say wont make them less valid. Even something like "others have it worse" xd

 

[silence ends]

Same as "Everything will be alright"

---

dd

 

[DeathOfKane]

It's invalidating and I don't care. Others have it worse has nothing to do with my suffering. People say that as if the ones who have it worse don't have other who have it worse. We have to stop this struggle olympic bullshit.

It only makes me feel worse because other people are suffering too lol

How is this even supposed to help suicidal people other than to make us feel guilty?? ( •᷄‎ࡇ•᷅ )

It was never meant to help.

 

[UmbraDweller]

They are simply lacking the right perspective to understand things. It's also easier to look at starved child and connect that to suffering unlike a suicidal person with their life views/personal life experience/mental state, it takes more effort to comprehend. People who say stuff like that never experienced these things, so of course they can't relate and all they got is some bunch of shittalks to discredit what they can't grasp. People love to be in right.

 

[sylvey]

About people who claim "well, suicidal people don't have it that bad, they're just privledged crybabies -- some people are starving, etc; so why do they complain? So why dont u jest get on with working and donate some money to a random charity," etc

Imo if I'm talking about my shitty life we're talking about my shitty life, not some thirsty African orphans shitty life and anyone who tries to bring up someone else's life issues can stfu