Member-only story
The Grief Olympics: Why Everyone Gets a Gold Medal
Everyone’s worst day feels equally devastating. Understanding this helped me cultivate empathy and stop comparing others’ pain with mine.
Every single time I emerge from a pit of despair I have the same thought.
“That’s as bad as it could be, honestly. I’ll never feel anything as bad as that again.”
It’s naive, it’s delusional, but most importantly it’s incorrect. It’s a small thought of comfort that I’ve made it to the far side and life will never catch me off guard again. Which is objectively wrong, life will, at some point, kick me in the teeth another time.
The Grief Olympics
After my Mom died in 2017, I found myself participating in what I call The Grief Olympics. I tried to be open and available to my friends and their lives, but inevitably when they would talk about something that wasn’t going well for them, I would revert to comparison. My brain would always kick in to say,
“That’s not that bad, I just lost both my parents.”
This would drive me away from my friends. Not wanting to diminish their feelings, I stopped interacting with them. I was sure that my pain was worse, and they didn’t need to…
