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Just remember that your anxieties are child's play compared to the anxieties of people worrying every day about paying for their place to live, food or health c

Just remember that your anxieties are child's play compared to the anxieties of people worrying every day about paying for their place to live, food or health care. These worries are tally different.

paxys 6y ago
People out there having bigger problems does not diminish your own. To me, getting my children into a good public school is a current problem which is giving me anxiety. Someone saying "that's not really a problem, at least you can afford to feed your kids" doesn't come off as helpful or ease my concerns. Similarly, billions of poor people in developing countries would kill to swap places with the poorest American, but that doesn't mean the latter has a good life.
- Nemi 6y ago
  I once read something that resonated with me (though I can't remember where), in essence that everyone has a default level of stress and anxiety that they feel (a "stress bubble" if you will), and it does not matter so much what your particular life situation is, you tend to fill up the "bubble" with whatever is going on in your life at the time. The idea is that you feel the same amount of stress as a teenager with your social issues as you do as a successful adult with more than enough money to live comfortably. This really impacted me because I definitely came from a poor-ish background where I lived month to month and only thought about paying rent and whatnot. I then went to community college at 29 to give myself a chance at something else and then ended up making well into 6 figures having worked up to a director of a software company (unheard of in my social circle growing up). At the time that I read this I remember feeling just as stressed about work things and family issues as I was when I didn't have health care and could barely pay my rent. Looking back, I remembered that I would feel just the same way about friend issues as a teenager when that was my whole world - something I would now scoff at as unimportant and incidental. It helped me realize that a lot of my stress levels were "baked in" to me - but that also meant I could affect my stress levels by being aware of my bubble. Now when I am feeling stress about my financial portfolio or my kids getting proper education during the pandemic, I make a conscious effort to compare it to the helpless feeling I had when I made no money and felt powerless and that allows me to shrink my stress bubble. I also empathize much more with my kids and when they are stressing about something that my adult self realizes is not consequential. I remember that this is just them "filling their bubble" and to them it is just as important as the things I am dealing with. It also makes me appreciate those people who have a naturally small bubble and realize that that is also often a factor in their success (e.g., though I don't know Elon Musk, I can imagine that he has a naturally small stress bubble that allows him to drive so hard for success). This is not to criticize you in any way, on the contrary, I agree with you 100%. But it is an empowering way of looking at your life.
seneca 6y ago
This kind of dismissive attitude toward peoples' problems is unhelpful. Following your line of reasoning, there are people with crippling diseases in the world. People worrying about a place to live etc should remember that their problems are child's play compared to theirs. And those people should remember their problems are child's play compared to someone being targeted by genocide. There are nearly 8 billion people in the world. You can always find someone worse off, that doesn't mean people are undeserving of empathy if they aren't the one single worse off human being. This sort of worst-off competition is dehumanizing.
- objektif 6y ago
  That is really a terrible argument. I am sorry but I am not going to feel sorry about you just because you are stressed about which crazy expensive private school your kids should go to. It is not really a worst-off competition it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable.
  - seneca 6y ago
    > it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable. I'm curious, how do you go about establishing that level? Do you think it's really absolute, rather than relative to the stressors the observer feels? In reality, I think that's how most people actually operate. Something (extremely roughly) along the lines of: T >= O, where T is suffering of the target and O is suffering of the observer, results in empathy. That gets caught up in the fact that suffering is more about perception, and is itself relative. So maybe we have to say both are level of suffering as perceived by the observer. Something along the lines of "if I perceive you as suffering more than I do, I can have empathy for you". For what it's worth, I think this gets at the heart of the difference between sympathy (largely pity) and empathy more generally.
nucleardog 6y ago
They're really not child's play. At least not for me. I've been poor. Not homeless poor, but paycheque-to-paycheque, zero dollars in the bank, $1500 on some maxed out credit cards, just budgeted out the non-negotiable bills (rent, heat, credit card minimum payment) for this month and I need to find $8.47 in the sofa to break even and guess I'll hit up the food bank to feed myself again sorta poor. I make... decent money now. Is my life objectively better? Yes. Does the stress of figuring out where my next meal comes from and the stress of figuring out where my meals 30 years from now and how to finance my child's education feel different? No. Anxiety is anxiety. Just because in a global context it's not as bad doesn't mean it's not as bad to the individual.

Just remember that your anxieties are child's play compared to the anxieties of people worrying every day about paying for their place to live, food or health care. These worries are tally different.

paxys 6y ago

People out there having bigger problems does not diminish your own. To me, getting my children into a good public school is a current problem which is giving me anxiety. Someone saying "that's not really a problem, at least you can afford to feed your kids" doesn't come off as helpful or ease my concerns. Similarly, billions of poor people in developing countries would kill to swap places with the poorest American, but that doesn't mean the latter has a good life.

Nemi 6y ago
I once read something that resonated with me (though I can't remember where), in essence that everyone has a default level of stress and anxiety that they feel (a "stress bubble" if you will), and it does not matter so much what your particular life situation is, you tend to fill up the "bubble" with whatever is going on in your life at the time. The idea is that you feel the same amount of stress as a teenager with your social issues as you do as a successful adult with more than enough money to live comfortably. This really impacted me because I definitely came from a poor-ish background where I lived month to month and only thought about paying rent and whatnot. I then went to community college at 29 to give myself a chance at something else and then ended up making well into 6 figures having worked up to a director of a software company (unheard of in my social circle growing up). At the time that I read this I remember feeling just as stressed about work things and family issues as I was when I didn't have health care and could barely pay my rent. Looking back, I remembered that I would feel just the same way about friend issues as a teenager when that was my whole world - something I would now scoff at as unimportant and incidental. It helped me realize that a lot of my stress levels were "baked in" to me - but that also meant I could affect my stress levels by being aware of my bubble. Now when I am feeling stress about my financial portfolio or my kids getting proper education during the pandemic, I make a conscious effort to compare it to the helpless feeling I had when I made no money and felt powerless and that allows me to shrink my stress bubble. I also empathize much more with my kids and when they are stressing about something that my adult self realizes is not consequential. I remember that this is just them "filling their bubble" and to them it is just as important as the things I am dealing with. It also makes me appreciate those people who have a naturally small bubble and realize that that is also often a factor in their success (e.g., though I don't know Elon Musk, I can imagine that he has a naturally small stress bubble that allows him to drive so hard for success). This is not to criticize you in any way, on the contrary, I agree with you 100%. But it is an empowering way of looking at your life.

seneca 6y ago

This kind of dismissive attitude toward peoples' problems is unhelpful. Following your line of reasoning, there are people with crippling diseases in the world. People worrying about a place to live etc should remember that their problems are child's play compared to theirs. And those people should remember their problems are child's play compared to someone being targeted by genocide. There are nearly 8 billion people in the world. You can always find someone worse off, that doesn't mean people are undeserving of empathy if they aren't the one single worse off human being. This sort of worst-off competition is dehumanizing.

objektif 6y ago
That is really a terrible argument. I am sorry but I am not going to feel sorry about you just because you are stressed about which crazy expensive private school your kids should go to. It is not really a worst-off competition it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable.
- seneca 6y ago
  > it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable. I'm curious, how do you go about establishing that level? Do you think it's really absolute, rather than relative to the stressors the observer feels? In reality, I think that's how most people actually operate. Something (extremely roughly) along the lines of: T >= O, where T is suffering of the target and O is suffering of the observer, results in empathy. That gets caught up in the fact that suffering is more about perception, and is itself relative. So maybe we have to say both are level of suffering as perceived by the observer. Something along the lines of "if I perceive you as suffering more than I do, I can have empathy for you". For what it's worth, I think this gets at the heart of the difference between sympathy (largely pity) and empathy more generally.

nucleardog 6y ago

They're really not child's play. At least not for me. I've been poor. Not homeless poor, but paycheque-to-paycheque, zero dollars in the bank, $1500 on some maxed out credit cards, just budgeted out the non-negotiable bills (rent, heat, credit card minimum payment) for this month and I need to find $8.47 in the sofa to break even and guess I'll hit up the food bank to feed myself again sorta poor. I make... decent money now. Is my life objectively better? Yes. Does the stress of figuring out where my next meal comes from and the stress of figuring out where my meals 30 years from now and how to finance my child's education feel different? No. Anxiety is anxiety. Just because in a global context it's not as bad doesn't mean it's not as bad to the individual.