Grief Deserves Validation Without Comparison

When I was in high school and college, a common paper assignment started with “Compare and contrast…,” and I am told this remains a popular teaching method even today. When I think about it, comparing as a learning and analysis method started long before high school. My favorite childhood television show, Sesame Street, had a jingle with a four-quadrant photo or graphic that would ask, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things doesn’t belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish this song?” Or an all-time favorite Sesame Street skit had Grover (love that guy) demonstrating the comparison between near and far.

Comparison is a fundamental, day-to-day method of analysis in our decision-making, such as price or nutritional value comparison when grocery shopping. Comparison is an essential part of learning in language, mathematics, and science. We use it in our own personal development or performance measurement. A “personal best” exists only by comparison. We use comparisons in metaphors and analogies in debates and arguments.

Comparison is often a core element of the ever-popular practice of gratitude. We highlight how far we have come by comparing a current situation to one of our past or how fortunate we are by acknowledging the benefits that others who are less fortunate lack. “Look on the bright side” is, at its basis, a comparison. We are taking a bad situation and finding some contrasting good in it. Any sort of ranking, like a top 10 or a favorite, is a comparison.

Take some time and notice just how inherent comparison is in our lives.

Within my own experience of having lost my brother, then mother, then husband, and then father, I can say that not all those deaths resulted in the same grief/pain level, even in the most acute moments. Taking stock of my own responses to my grief and loss experiences in this way is a comparison I refer to as internal comparative suffering.

Internal comparative suffering can be a useful method for determining personal development and coping. I know for a couple of decades after my brother David died, when I faced a significant emotional challenge (a breakup, a move, harassment in the workplace), one of the ways I would get myself through it was by telling myself there was no way it would be harder than surviving David’s death. It’s a coping method, perhaps not the most evolved one, because it does belittle the current challenge. Nevertheless, this internal comparative suffering got me through a lot.

In a previous email, we explored how pain is subjective, thus the advent of the 0-10 pain assessment scale, and how that subjectivity carries over to emotional pain. In my internal comparative suffering, the death of my husband and my brother might have represented the overall emotional pain of a 9 or 10, while my parents were more in the 7 or 8 range.

So, internal comparative suffering is a thing, and it can be helpful. What is never a good idea is external comparative suffering. That is, imposing comparison on someone else’s suffering. And I confess, I have made this mistake. When we impose comparison on someone else’s suffering, it completely disregards their own pain scale. It’s like saying, “When you got shot in the leg, you thought that was a pain level of 10!?! Nah, I got shot in the leg once. That’s an eight at the most. A gunshot wound to the hand would be a 10.” It just doesn’t work.

Indications of external comparative suffering include saying phrases such as “at least …”, “it could be worse,” “don’t cry,” and “you should be grateful for…”

One’s own emotional pain experience and triggers are entirely their own. If it is useful to apply internal comparative suffering to your own challenges, do it. Be careful about imposing notions of comparative suffering on someone else.