Everybody has their own definition of what a problem is and how big or small it can be. That isn’t how things should be. A problem is a problem regardless of the severity of it, any issue a person has shouldn’t be degraded.
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Back in September I was diagnosed with Crohn’s which is an autoimmune disease. It can’t be cured, but it can be treated to suppress the symptoms and stop them from progressing. When I was diagnosed I wasn’t really sure how to react. I was pretty upset and extremely taken off guard. I complained about it to a few people in my life and all of those people had the same reactions, “It could be worse.” One of them said, “It could be worse, you know, at least you don’t have cancer, so you got kind of lucky”. After hearing people react like that I decided to just keep this to myself. I felt dumb for feeling bad for myself when other people have it much worse than I do. But that is exactly what the problem is.
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Nobody should have to feel like their problem doesn’t deserve to be heard and listened to. By degrading people’s problems and saying, “it could be worse” is giving them a reason to bottle up their feelings. Keeping our feelings to ourselves can lead to a very awful outcome that is completely avoidable. Not a single person would bring up their troubles if it wasn’t bothering them in some kind of way. Who are we to decide what issue, disease, trouble, battle or problem deserves attention? EVERY problem should be dealt with regardless of the gravity of it. It is time to start being there for one another.