Thanks guy. I know I shouldn't need other people to tell me my feelings might be legitimate.. but it really does help.

Now, I have something else related to the topic at hand.

For some background info:

My best friend, who I briefly mentioned in my original post, has it really tough right now. She was sexually assaulted around a year ago and I believe suffers from undiagnosed PTSD. She frequently has insomnia and nightmares. She also does not have a good relationship with her family, partly due to th sexual assault and due to different idealogical beliefs. She is a pretty major cutter - with her family being one of the triggers that causes her to cut. She's still in college and is taking 6 very rigorous classes. She also works at least 25 hours a week, but always 5 days a week. Because she supports herself, she often has no money and has to work that much to pay bills. Her school is extremely rigourous and she has 5+ hours of homework every night on top of work. She's also frequently sick with various colds and migraines.

Needless to say, her life is hard and extremely hectic.

SO FINALLY TO THE POINT.

All of what I mentioned going on in her life, leaves me feeling constantly like my feelings are invalid. I know realistically everyone's struggles are different... but I can't stop comparing myself to her.

Any time she tells me she only got 3 hours of sleep, or she has 7 hours of homework in top of 4 classes in a day plus 6 hours of work , or she fell asleep in school, or she's sick again... I just feel so stupid for being "sad." Like how dare I claim to be depressed or struggling when she is going through so much. Even today.. I was super stressed about something st work. We were texting a little and she told me her friend called her at midnight with an emergency and long story short she drove to pick up the friend and bring her back to college and she only got an hour of sleep. After all that she still had class and a full day of work plus hours and hours of homework. And I just.. felt SO STUPID. Like my stress and worry I had was so dumb because she only slept an hour and was up all night and has school and work and homework. How DARE I feel stressed or anxious.. when she had it so tough.

This happens all the time because she always has something really crappy going on in her life. Always. And I have such a good life so I feel bad even mentioning I'm depressed. To be honest I feel like she must roll her eyes when I tak about being depressed. She has it so much worse. I mean she's always perfectly supportive and she's never really said anything negative about my "problems," I just feel like my problems are so dumb and silly. All of which is what makes me thing I'm just overexaggersting things and don't really need help.

Does anyone have any advice at all about how to stop comparing my problems to hers. Because it just makes me feel even worse.