I am looking for a term to describe the line of thinking that goes something like “I hate my work, I am sick all the time, I am depressed, I can’t find happiness. But I should be happy. Those problems don’t matter. All my problems are so insignificant, there are little. They’re just some stupid first world problems. I have it good, I have food on the table and a loving family. There are millions of people who have real problems, people living in severe poverty, starving to death, being bombed.”
I think about this often, it came up when I was talking with someone with mental health issues and I remember him telling me that this way of thinking has a name/is a common symptom that occurs in people with a specific personality disorder, although I cannot remember what disorder he claimed it was. Also this was more than ten years ago so it might have either changed or my memory of this event changed.
I might call it gaslighting yourself, but I think the psych term is minimisation
Comparative Suffering is close possibly.
https://withtherapy.com/mental-health-resources/what-is-comparative-suffering/
I think these thoughts are a bi-product of empathy. When you are attuned to the pain of others, it can be easy to invalidate your own. I once heard an exchange on public transit where 2 strangers were discussing their hardships and a sort of one upping of trauma was occuring. Eventually one of the participants said “we all feel pain in our own way” and that stuck with me as a tool for understanding my own tendancy to under value the trauma I have experienced throughout life.
Hope that helps provide some insight or a thread to tug at for understanding.
