It could be worse

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Have any of you ever had to put up with people telling you to be grateful for stuff you have when you tell them you are jealous of someone else?

Here are a few examples. WHen I was a senior in high school, I was pretty popular, but was upset during nearly the entire year because my mom decided to be over protective. WHenever I complained to my one-on-one aide or therapist about my predicament, my therapist would give me all this crap about how there are people in CHina and Thailand who go to bed hungry and sh*t, while my aide would tell me to think about the good things.

I KNOW there are people who go to bed hungry. But I don't want to be like them. I want to be at the top of the food chain, Mr. Therapist. Yes, Mrs. Aide, I know there is good stuff happening to me. Yes, I'm on the morning news, and yes, I'm well-liked by lots of kids, but I haven't hung out at the mall with anyone, and I haven't invited anyone over to my house either. As for you, Mrs. Mom, THIS IS MY SENIOR YEAR!! !! LET ME HAVE FUN!! !! !

This isn't happening now, because I'm in college now, but the stuff above is the thoughts I think I should have told people in my senior year, but instead, I had to get into the habit of trying to act laid back.

Have any of you ever had to put up with crap like this?

I hope your therapist means well, in the sense to teach you to look a bit more to the relativity of events. Sometimes letting things go and not looking at them can be healthy.

But it can be really annoying. I also know some people who say things like that. Most of the times I ask what they are still doing in Western-Europe when they could feed those poor starving children in Africa! Why help in you own country if you think elsewhere it is worse? But that is the same kind of people that always try to teach children, that they should not say they are hungry, when these children have been playing outside a long day and could eat an entire barbecued horse! Just pointless whining.

But as I said, try to look at other meanings of your therapists words.

Everytime someone tells me something like that when I talk about a problem I always wonder if the starving people in Africa have someone telling them about how "It could be worse" too.

Leo21k, I imagine they do.

It's not about being a spoiled brat, I mean maybe the OP is. But I think the topic is really about dismissal of bad feelings and replacing them with nonsense.
I was adopted and for many years had serious problems with my adoptive family. Other people (extended family) would tell me to be grateful that I was adopted. "Oh, you must be so grateful they picked you!"
Well, adopted kids aren't picked. The parents are picked and if they don't like the baby offered to them, they may be passed up for a long time. So, they take the baby with the birth defects and bizarre temperment and hope it becomes more like them. When the baby doesn't grow up like them, they become angry and emotionally abusive and complain that the child wants to hurt them and is ungrateful.


My parents were also overprotective. Sometimes it was warranted but a lot of times it was because they were afraid of what the "mob" would think. "What would the neighbors think?" It was their mantra.

It could always be worse, sure. Does that make your own situation suddenly better? No.

Telling people to feel happier because other people are suffering is strange.

no i agree with the whole thing that it could be worse......
But im glad i have as now...yes because without it i simply wouldnt be..me

i dont know why people say, "it could be worse." i mean hows that gonna motivate anyone?

People always tell me that I could be worse off. I know this, but it still doesn't make me feel any better about the current situation. Also, when people tell me this, I feel guilty because I know that there are starving people out there with no food and yet I AM THE ONE COMPLAINING!
It's like when people tell me this, they expect me to go and feed everyone in the poorer countries or stop complaining all together. It's just not that simple...

i also wonder when people use that line if there could be people out here in our own country who would use a line like "hey it could be worse...u could have autism" and in a nutshell be refering to us when saying it. I don't mean by that that there's something so much wrong with autism but the stigma/society views towards it makes me wonder if someone would ever use a line like that.

Back when I was still intolerant of having AS, my mother said it could be worse. I could have been crippled such as being in a a wheelchair and my life would have been more difficult, I could be like my old friend Elizabeth who has Down's syndrome and I wouldn't be able to ever drive a car or live on my own, maybe get married and have a job. And of course I could have more AS and be even worse off and I be more selfish because I am hurting people's feelings and don't even care about it because my AS would have been so bad. That's how my mother views aspies unfortunately. She sees them as bad people because they don't know any better because of their condition. She seems to think they are as*holes because they don't understand and I don't have the bad traits that makes me one. She is also aware there are as*holes out there who don't have AS so I one time asked her what's the difference then between people with it and people without it who are as*holes. I know the difference but I was asking her to see if she knows and I don't think she does because she couldn't even answer it. I also know you can be both.

Imagine everyone in the world being told this by their therapists:

*prom queen complains*
Therapist: "Could be worse, you could be unpopular"

*unpopular person complains*
Therapist: "Could be worse, you could have autism"

*autistic person complains (possibly because of previously-mentioned therapist using them as an example of someone worse off)*
Therapist: "Could be worse, you could be in a wheelchair"

*person in a wheelchair complains*
Therapist: "Could be worse, you could be starving in Africa"

*person starving in Africa complains*
Therapist: "Could be worse...um, ok you got me, society just doesn't give a crap. Sorry and all, that's just life. Now where's my paycheck?"


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I get told this all the time, really pisses me off. And you know what else I hate? "That's life, it'll always be like that." And apparently replying, "That's not motivation, that makes me want to kill myself," is being "melodramatic" (actually I had been going for "cynical", but hey).

Every time someone tells me "it could be worse" I ask them "how does that help me?". So far none have given me a straight answer. It can always be worse, but stating that doesn't make anything better.

are we really worse off than the flat out unpopular person? because i've been friends with that person and i always assumed we were on even ground