Comparison

Growing up, I always wanted to be just like my older sister. She was thinner than me, more athletic than me, and hung out with the popular kids. But no matter how hard I tried I never felt like I measured up. When I compared my life to my sisters, I felt like I always came up short. And you know what they say about comparison: it is the thief of joy. There were many days when it looked like the grass was greener on her side, but was it really?

The One-Up game

As I grew older, I started playing the One-Up game. As a teen, if you told me you slept for 12 hours straight one weekend, I would tell you that I slept for 13. If you said you moved around a lot and went to 2 different high schools, I would tell you that I went to 3. I felt like I always had to do one-better than whoever I was talking to. I always made the conversation about myself and struggled to validate the feelings and experiences of others.

One day in college, after winning another round of One-Up, my friend turned to me and said, “Why do you always have to be better at or more successful at something than me? You always try to one-up me and it’s really annoying." Her words stung. But she was right. It was not something that I did intentionally, but probably more as a defense mechanism because I never felt like I was good enough. Ever since that day, I have been acutely aware of the One-Up game, and finally being aware of my "success," I decided it was a game I did not actually like playing.

Have you experienced this in your asthma journey?

If you have been in the chronic illness community long enough, you are probably familiar with this game. You have probably been a player at one point or another, whether you were the "winner" or the "loser."

If I say that I was hospitalized for my asthma twice last year, someone has to comment that they were hospitalized 3 times, or more, if they are the overachieving type. Or if I say that I have a chronic illness or 2, someone may have to report that they have “9 rare diseases”. For whatever reason, society dictates that we have to be better (or worse) than whoever we are talking to. But why are we like this?

I think it comes down to validation. I feel validated in my own successes if they are superior to yours. Or I feel better about my struggles if I think they are more difficult than yours.

My mom has been sick with Covid for the last few weeks. She is struggling with fatigue and brain fog, in a way that I do on a regular basis. I have told her repeatedly that I think it sucks that she is feeling so bad, to which she retorts, “Oh, it’s nothing compared to what you deal with on a daily basis!,” referring to my many health struggles.

Is it not okay for her to feel bad or throw a bit of a pity party just because she thinks I feel as bad, or worse than she does on a regular basis? No! We each have our own experiences and struggles that should not be defined in the context of how others may experience something similar. Being sick is no fun, whether you are dealing with it for a week or for a lifetime. My struggle with chronic illness should not invalidate how she is feeling being sick with Covid.

Comparing ourselves to others with asthma, health, and other challenges

We all have things that we struggle with. My struggles are very different than yours, but my experiences do not invalidate yours and vice versa. While I struggle with health, someone else may struggle more with finances, infertility, or the loss of a spouse. It does not do you or me any good to play the One-Up game.

Instead, we need to be more conscientious of validating the experiences of others, and empathizing with them. We must encourage each other through our struggles instead of tearing each other down.

The next time you find yourself in a position to one-up someone else, maybe pause for a second and think about how you can support that person and validate what they are going through instead of trying to make yourself feel better. Acknowledge how the experience is making the other person feel. You might find that in validating someone else, you also validate yourself.