You can’t relativise sadness … but surely you can?

I mean logically yes, there is a scale of sadness and how bad things are. But if you’re in the better off or worse off camp, for many people it’s just not helpful to have that comparison. I very much believe in letting yourself feel your feelings. Be cross if you’re cross. Be sad if you’re sad. Personally I do sometimes think to myself, when having a shit day “I’m sure it could be worse” but I also know that for many people it just isn’t beneficial.

I agree. Losing my DH was the worst thing that ever happened to me – but I don’t think it’s as painful as losing a child would be.

That said, I wouldn’t ever openly play “grief top trumps”, so to speak, as that’s just a dick move. And there’s no denying that some people are more impacted by things than others, or are impacted differently.

But surely it's much easier to relativise when you have some distance or resolution from your own event?

So you were able to see how the mother of the daughter on the ship is worse off than you were because your have had plenty of time since that awful wait for results and (I assume) the situation has been resolved.

It probably would have been much harder to think the mother was worse off than you when you were in the middle of waiting for results, knowing that at their worst they could be a death sentence for you because of course your own event is going to be much, much more significant to you.

I agree there are thoughts better left unsaid. People don't need comparisons they just need acknowledgement.

I was ttc for 15 yrs, I always felt I was 'lucky' because never getting pregnant was less traumatic than being able to get pregnant and then having a loss. But I would never have voiced those thoughts to others.

When I was younger I used to get irritated with people who were upset by having small blemishes (zits or acne for instance) when I had 90% of my body covered in psoriasis. I wanted to say 'it's only a spot for goodness sake, think yourself lucky that you haven't got 'this'. As I've got older I'm much more aware, and less judgemental, of the feelings others have about (imo) minor issues.

Everyone is entitled to their own levels of pain or grief and comparisons tend to highlight your own insecurities and do nothing to empathise with others.

IMO there is a difference between dismissing how someone feels, and minimising their pain, and being able to have perspective.
it can be very damaging to invalidate how someone else feels, and no one ever knows how someone else feels, or how something affects them.
That said, there are times when someone else definitely has it worse.
It still doesn’t mean you have to dismiss someone else though.
Someone else will always have it worse, AND we are allowed to feel how we feel.

I really don't think you can quantify or compare grief. I read a quote years ago about not judging a person experiencing a type of grief you haven't and that stuck with me. My sister lost a much wanted baby at 6 weeks, my best friend had a stillborn baby and my aunt lost her adult son to suicide. It was my sisters first pregnancy and it took a few years for her to conceive, my dear friend already has one child, my aunt has other sons. What right do I have to say one is worse than the other?

Poster above was upset at animal abuse and I would be too but child abuse upsets me far more.I wouldn't ever understand the loss of a pet because I don't have any and could never equate an animal life to a human one and yet on mumsnet people often say how they prefer animals to humans etc. However, when my neighbours kids were upset at the loss of their beloved dog I popped around with a box of chocolates because I care that they were upset.

When I feel awful I do often try and focus on the fact I'm very fortunate in many ways and multitudes of others live in terrible pain and poverty and violence. It makes me feel a bit of gratitude for what I have which does really make me feel better.
'It could be worse' is often quite a useful tool to get over hard times. But depression is a cloud that can't easily lift with just words. People lose the ability to experience pleasure sometimes.

If I was upset about the death of my beloved cat, or my boyfriend of two years broke up with me, and people said “at least it’s not your mum who died” or “better than your husband of 20 years leaving you.” It would not go down well. It would feel so unnecessary in the moment, as well as hurtful and in no way helpful.
I think it’s fine to let people be sad and feel their own emotions and not compare their sadness to “worse” things that have happened. Even if the thing that has made us sad isn’t the worst thing in the world, we should still be allowed to feel it.

I know it’s different but this reminds me of a time at work when I’d had a week of sleeping badly and suffering from mild insomnia, and I made a passing comment to a colleague one morning that I felt exhausted and was ready for the weekend. And she said “well imagine how Holly must feel, she’s been having so many problems with the baby keeping her awake kicking all night”. (At this point in time, Holly was 8 months pregnant and having a few struggles).
And I just found that comment so annoying. Just because Holly was quite possibly more tired than me, didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to be tired too! I just felt it was such a silly and pointless thing to say.

I agree with you OP, but it's tricky. I had a single women at work who I manage, no kids, ask for a week off for grief because her cat died.

It's two years later and she's still devastated about the cat - too much to get another one yet.

I get that it's relative tho - I have kids and when my cat died a slow, painful death of cancer I was upset. But I took an afternoon off work to take her body to the vets and cried for a weekend then got over it.

My colleague is still grieving two years later, but then again she doesn't have a partner, doesn't have kids, doesn't have anything else in her life.

I still feel, however, that she can't equate her grief to other people who have family members etc ill - yet she does, which I don't think is right.

More people I know do the opposite. I grew up hearing "you pity yourself with no shoes til you meet the man with no feet" every time you were upset about something. The attitude was you should never complain about anything because there's always someone in worse circumstances. It's a ridiculous attitude really (and really unhelpful when you suffer from mh problems as I did). Comparing one persons pain/ suffering/ sadness either way is pointless and unhelpful. Like pp said, it's fine to think it but it's usually not something other people need to hear.

I love the way you have put this - totally agree that something being worse than your situation doesn’t alleviate the pain you are in.

I really worry that people see “less resilience” when we need to feel our emotions to be a functioning person. I don’t think invalidating anyone’s experience helps in any circumstance

you just need to shut it and listen.

Exactly @comoatoupeira I've learned this lesson now but possibly was insensitive in the past. It was only when I went through losses that I noticed how insensitive others can be.

I think a few months down the line it's ok to say I know how you feel, just not there and then when someone is in the throes of grief.

@anicecuppateaa I am so so sorry.

When I had my first miscarriage I got “well you are still young - you have time”

Later on when I had another one it was “at least you have a child”

when my grandma died suddenly of a horrible cancer it was “well she had a good life”

when my friends sister died it was “at least it’s not your sister” when I was the last person to see her alive

….

yeah it could have been worse. But it was still fucking horrible and sometimes all you need is someone to acknowledge that what you feel is hard and sad and heartbreaking.

I feel empathy for other people in horrible situations but I don’t see them as better or worse, just different.

Yes, some situations are certainly worse than others. Of course they are.

But the point is that, just because Person A's situation is more sad than Person B's, that doesn't actually alleviate the sadness that Person B is feeling. Person B isn't feeling as sad as Person A. But knowing that Person A is feeling worse doesn't make Person B feel better.

Think of it like physical pain. If you're sitting in A&E with a broken arm, you're in pain. Someone might be sitting next to you with two broken arms. They're definitely in more pain than you. But knowing this doesn't miraculously make your physical pain reduce. Same applies to grief etc.

It's pretty much true that there is always someone out there worse off than you. But their existence doesn't make your own problem disappear.

What's going on in people's heads isn't easy to relativise, it's complicated, you've got to consider their mental health and what their "normal" was beforehand.

For me hearing about another person's suffering does nothing at all to inspire me. For example I hear about a woman who raised 10 kids in a cottage with no electricity and I just feel sorry for her. It doesn't make me feel like I could cope with having more children because she had it harder.

On a practical level I do think it's important to try to "dump outwards" with our very negative emotions. For example I'm having a bad time at work and need to talk, I probably shouldn't pick the friend who just lost all her family to burden with this.

I actually have found comfort, or at least perspective, from knowing people in worse situations. I have been in and out of hospital for the last 25 years and there was genuine comfort in the wards (before people had phones) from talking to each other. I was once the youngest in the ward by quite some margin and I knew the three older ladies felt sorry for me. However, I felt sorry for them and it helped me appreciate what I did have, which was a lot more visitors, family and friends and treatments not available when they were young.

I think we have lost this now everyone sees their hospital stays in isolation as something only happening to them. I think maternity wards are similar, there was bonding and reassurance in these wards for my parents' generation which we have lost.

Perhaps it isn't relativising sadness, but it is recognising context and perspective. Perspective can be compared to others but also understanding where people are at. I would be more sympathetic to a teens first heartbreak, even over a fairly short relationship, than a month long relationship for someone in their 30s. Similarly I can empathise a toddler being upset that their teddy got dirty.

It isn’t possible to compare. I didn’t give a shit when a close family member died but was devastated when my dog died. Who is to say that my feelings are any less valid than any one else’s?

I think it's something you can do for yourself, eventually - to realise that maybe things could be worse, or to put into perspective how a particular moment in your life fits with other moments in your life before or afterwards.

But it's not something to say to other people - it's something they have to recognise for themselves. They might be able to see others doing it for themselves and eventually use that as a model, but I don't think it's usually very helpful for anyone to say, however gently, that someone could not have it as bad as they think they have. You never really know what is going on in their life, and even in the case where you might think that they could have it a lot worse, it is unlikely that telling them that will help, and if you honestly care about them and want to help them feel better, then finding another way will probably be kinder.

If they are the ones to say that someone else has it worse, or to eventually recognise that something in their past was not as bad as they thought at the time, then fine, have that conversation. But always recognise that you can't make that realisation happen for someone else, only yourself, and that to try to do it for someone else will frequently come across as dismissive and uncaring. It's the same as trying to get other people to feel positive about something or to see the silver lining - they have to come to that realisation themselves, and while modelling that to them about things in your own life might be useful, you can't make someone else actually feel positive by telling them so, until they are honestly able to see it like that themselves and come to those conclusions themselves. I hate it when people with serious diseases, for example, are told to 'think positive' because being positive is good for recovery. To me, it just makes it seem like they are being blamed for not being able to be positive.

Of course sadness is relative. We surely all know this from our own lives.

We have minor sadnesses over small things, and greater sadness over great things.

Its bonkers to think you can't relativise this.

For years now I have lived with trauma. I now see all the things that bothered me before were quite ordinary and liveable with. I understand now there is a much more significant level of 'sadness' which effectively alters your perception of reality and changes you, into quite a different person.

I don't really understand the debate over this?

There’s definitely sometimes an inverse correlation between the seriousness of the issue and your emotional response.

I was much calmer when I learned that my dad had died than I typically am when dealing with routine IT problems at work, when I often swear, shout and hit things. That’s not to say that they will have anything like the same long term impact.

Sometimes you give yourself greater permission to get the rage when the stakes are really low.

Sorry, not sure what this means

I think there is a natural part of us that moves us towards comparing our situations. When someone loses a close family member it’s not unusual to have people saying ‘oh, I felt like this when my neighbour died,’

The reality is probably that is their only/ worst experience of grief and therefore they offer it up as a form of solidarity. Obviously it’s crap to hear but it’s said from a good if misplaced place usually.