Have you ever said, or had someone say to you, "It could be worse, you could be _____." Or maybe you've thought, "well at least I'm not ____" or, "It's better than being ____."  

These are all examples of comparative suffering.  This is when we look at someones pain or struggle and minimize it by comparing it to the difficult time someone else is having.  

When I was a new mom, I really struggled balancing my new role at home with my professional role at the radio station.  I once had someone say, 'It could be worse, you could have 5 kids at home to parent and not just one.'  Yeah,  I'm sure parenting 5 kids is really hard but that doesn't mean my struggle of parenting one wasn't hard for me.  I believe that person was just trying to provide perspective but what they did was minimize what I was going through.  

We do this to ourselves as well. We try to make sense of our own pain by comparing it to other people's pain.   

"I shouldn't complain about how much I'm working, at least I have a job."

The upside to this is it can provide perspective.  The downside is it minimizing your own feelings. Just because you have perspective doesn't mean your feelings magically go away.  If you don't pay attention to those feelings and allow them to be there, they will fester and show up at inopportune times.  

If you've ever judged how your feeling because it's not as bad as what someone else is experiencing, you need to listen to this episode. 

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About the host:

Hi, friend! My name is Pamela Hughes and I’m a former talk show host turned life coach. After 20 years in the news business, I walked away from what people thought I should do and I did what I wanted to do … coach people who are stuck like I was and help them find relief, awareness and control within themselves.

This was no easy task and I’m not here telling you it was. I had to take full responsibility for where my life was and then decide where I wanted it to go. It was time to stop complaining about my situation and do something about it. I had to stop looking for others to validate me and start having my own back. This required looking inside myself for the answers instead of looking outside myself.

I told you it wasn’t easy … but I wouldn’t change one thing about my journey because it led me right here to you reading about it, maybe identifying with aspects of it and hopefully being inspired to get UNSTUCK.