Misery as a Virtue

I was thinking back on a conversation I had with one of my old coworkers. She offhandedly mentioned she had some serious medical issues when she was younger. I had (and still have) serious medical issues myself, so I empathized. I said something along the lines of "I truly know what it's like. Definitely sucks." Emphasis on truly. She starts getting high, mighty and condescending and starts rattling off medications, side effects, procedures, surgeries, complications, etc. etc. that she's had and sneering that I'll NEVER understand. I give her my basic story and this goes back and forth for some time. Looking back, I realized we traded miseries for 10 minutes trying to establish whose was worse (Or better?).

With the benefit of hindsight, so many in my life seem to make misery a virtue. If you walked 5 miles in the snow to school, they walked 10 miles, in a blizzard, uphill. If you're physically ill, you better work through, because I did it. If you're injured, you better believe the Black Knight from Monty Python will be hopping in to tell you "It's just a flesh wound."

It's not really sharing your troubles or even just being miserable. It's people using their miseries as a point of pride and way to one-up people and shut them down. "Your world sucks? I had it worse, so shut up!"

I imagine these people exist all over. I've just had a wealth of them in the past few days.

I don't find it useful to compare my pain to others. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.

Comparisons are the thief of happiness and joy in life. This is beyond commiserating. This is being proud of what you've endured and one-upping another on one's endurance level. Quite frankly, I find that to be very off-putting. It's one thing to empathize, trade stories and commiserate. That's called human relatedness. But to one-up on one's miserable circumstances? Why do people feel the need to do this? It's like putting down and belittling another's misery because you've endured more.

I call that "one-upmanship".

My mother had a very serious cardiac condition all of my life, until I was 42 when she died at age 79. She absolutely HAD to be the sickest of all people. When I would catch some virus and be ill, my mom would say, "You're not as sick as I am." She said that about anyone who had any symptoms of any illness, except maybe cancer. She was very frightened of cancer.

My guess is that people who have to be "the sickest" did not feel truly loved and validated during childhood. Being the sickest is a way of saying, "I need care, I need love, I need to be understood and validated."

So it's very sad. That said, it is damned annoying - and oddly, invalidates others.

It's very annoying, it's also very sad and does invalidate others.