The other day, my Uber driver shared something that stayed with me long after our ride. When I asked if she had children, she described her 18-year-old son, a “teddy bear” of a boy with severe, non-verbal autism. He communicates by pointing to pictures, functions at a three-year-old level, and cannot use the bathroom independently. As she spoke about her care-giving exhaustion, she said, “But I have to remember that others have it worse.”

She said these words with an optimistic tone, but they carried a quiet ache. I heard the familiar echo of what psychologists call “downward comparison,” a coping mechanism described by Thomas Wills (1981) in which we comfort ourselves by comparing our suffering to those who appear worse off. In difficult moments, downward comparison can help us find perspective and even gratitude. Yet over time, it can also silence grief and convince us that because someone else’s pain is greater, our pain does not deserve to be heard.

As she drove away, I kept thinking about her words. We live in a world that teaches us to measure and even rank everything, including pain. What is the cost of that habit? In a culture where social media magnifies feelings of “not-enoughness,” I often think of the quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I would add that comparison is also the thief of grief.

I witnessed this phenomenon poignantly several years ago........

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