When You Feel Your Pain Isn’t “Big” Enough and How to Navigate that Guilt

Ally Bremer
1 hour ago
4 min read

It’s more common than we might think: when you’re struggling, hurting, overwhelmed, or just exhausted, and then a voice in the back of your head says something like, “Other people have it worse” or “You shouldn’t feel this way.” Suddenly your pain feels illegitimate. The result from that typically isn’t gratitude or a change in perspective but more like guilt and emotional shutdown, which isn’t helpful for anybody. But something that someone said to me a long time ago has stuck with me: “Hard is not relative, hard is hard.” Comparing your struggles to someone else’s is like comparing weather in different places. A storm is still a strom, even if somewhere else the thunder is louder or the rain is coming down a lot heavier. Your feelings don’t lose value just because someone else is facing something different and sometimes even more tragic. Pain typically doesn’t operate on a ranking system, and it doesn’t just become less real because someone else is carrying a heavier load.

When those thoughts creep in, the first step is acknowledging what you’re experiencing without judging it. It seems simple, but a lot of the time, it isn’t. You can say something like, “My feelings are valid, and I can care about others while still honoring my own experience.” To show or feel empathy, you don’t (and shouldn’t) need to erase what you’re feeling or going through or pretend that it’s not there. It is possible to hold compassion for someone else’s suffering and still give yourself permission to feel what you feel; both things can exist.

It can also be helpful to keep in mind that minimizing your emotions really doesn’t help anyone, not you and not the people who “have it worse.” Pushing your feelings down doesn’t magically transform them, but it actually only buries them until they show up in other ways, like stress, irritability, or burnout. With that being said, taking care of yourself is not a selfish thing to do, it’s actually responsible. It’s something that makes you more grounded, more patient, and more capable of being present for others and helping them in a way that actually will help.

A tool that can help with this mindset shift is to focus on what your emotions are trying to tell you instead of whether you “deserve” them or not. If you’re feeling sad, why? If you’re feeling overwhelmed, what needs your attention most? If you are hurting, what part of yourself needs more care? Our feelings are typically signals rather than moral statements. It’s important to let them guide you instead of trying to control them.

Here are a few examples of what these strategies can look like in more of a real-life situation:

- Maybe you’re crying after a long, draining day at work, and then guilt comes creeping in. Thoughts come in like, “Why am I upset? People out there are

dealing with far worse than just a long day at work.”. Instead of shutting yourself down, try taking a deep breath and saying or thinking to yourself, “I’m allowed to feel exhausted. My emotions are telling me that I need to rest.” It can help to step away from your phone, make yourself something comforting or doing something comforting, and then giving your body the space it needs to decompress.

- Or perhaps you’re struggling with anxiety but feel embarrassed to mention it to a friend because it doesn’t seem “serious enough.” Try to push past that internal minimization and say to yourself, “I don’t need my situation to be the absolute worst to talk to my friend or ask for help.” And when you share it, I’m sure your friend will respond with kindness and warmth, not by them getting upset with you, which will help remind you how that connection doesn’t depend on how severely you’re suffering.

These little acts of allowing instead of dismissing help retrain your mind to treat your feelings with more respect rather than shame.

At the end of the day, healing comes down to giving yourself permission; whether that means giving yourself permission to have emotions that aren’t perfectly measured against some imagined scale of global suffering, permission to be human, permission to need support, or permission to recognize that your inner feelings and world matter even when others are facing storms of their own. When you let yourself feel without comparison or judgement, you allow the door to be open for healthier coping and more authentic empathy. The goal is not to ignore that other people are struggling, but it’s to stop using that awareness as a weapon against yourself. You are not selfish for needing care. You are not weak for having emotions. You are not ungrateful for feeling the weight of your own life. You are simply human, and every human deserves compassion, including you. Now, focus on letting that sink in and start tending to your own pain and emotions with the same kindness you so freely give to others.