"As she spoke about her care-giving exhaustion, she said, "But I have to remember that others have it worse." She said these words with an optimistic tone, but they carried a quiet ache. I heard the familiar echo of what psychologists call "downward comparison," a coping mechanism described by Thomas Wills (1981) in which we comfort ourselves by comparing our suffering to those who appear worse off."
"As she drove away, I kept thinking about her words. We live in a world that teaches us to measure and even rank everything, including pain. What is the cost of that habit? In a culture where social media magnifies feelings of "not-enoughness," I often think of the quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: "Comparison is the thief of joy." I would add that comparison is also the thief of grief."
An Uber driver described her 18-year-old son with severe, non-verbal autism who communicates by pointing to pictures, functions at a three-year-old level, and cannot use the bathroom independently. She used downward comparison—saying she must remember that others have it worse—to cope with caregiving exhaustion. Downward comparison can offer perspective and gratitude in difficult moments but, over time, teaches people to minimize their own pain and silence grief. A culture that ranks suffering and social media amplify feelings of not-enoughness, turning comparison into the thief of grief. Healthy empathy permits personal pain to exist alongside others' without minimizing either.
Read at Psychology Today
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