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Why do I always think I have it harder than everyone else?

The entire office migrates to a new system on Monday. Everyone loses two days. At lunch, you find yourself explaining why the disruption was worse for you: your projects were larger, your deadline was tighter, your login failed twice.

Nobody disputes your account. Yet the relief of being understood does not arrive.

A cold day in Yarmouth

In chapter III of David Copperfield, young David stays with the Peggotty family in an old boat converted into a house on the beach at Yarmouth. Mrs. Gummidge, a widow living with them, repeatedly calls herself “a lone lorn creetur’.”

The weather is bitter. Her corner by the fire appears to be the warmest spot in the house, and her chair the most comfortable. She complains about the cold anyway and weeps. Peggotty responds:

"'It is certainly very cold,' said Peggotty. 'Everybody must feel it so.' 'I feel it more than other people,' said Mrs. Gummidge."

— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), ch. III

At dinner, the fish is small and bony; the potatoes are slightly burnt. The group is disappointed. Mrs. Gummidge claims she feels the disappointment more than the others do.

Peggotty’s response

Peggotty does not scold her or suggest she cheer up. She agrees that the day is cold. Then she adds the part Mrs. Gummidge cannot accept: everyone feels it.

This is a generous answer. It confirms that the cold is real and that Mrs. Gummidge is not imagining it. It also implies she is not alone in her discomfort. But Mrs. Gummidge hears something else. If everyone feels the cold, her experience loses its distinctiveness. She becomes one person in a cold room, indistinguishable from the others.

So she pushes back. Not by denying the cold, but by insisting she feels it more.

The role of the sufferer

Dickens plays Mrs. Gummidge for comic effect, but the scene contains more than humor. She has lost her husband and lives in someone else’s home, sustained by their kindness. Being the one who suffers most is a social position.

“I have it harder” operates similarly. It does not always reflect objective facts. Sometimes it is a way to ensure that one’s trouble registers as significant. If the new system was difficult for everyone, then two lost days are merely a line in a memo.

It is also lonely. Mrs. Gummidge sits in the warmest corner and cannot feel warm, partly because feeling better would mean becoming ordinary.

The shift

Later in the novel, when the family faces real grief, Mrs. Gummidge changes. She stops focusing on herself and begins caring for others, so much that David can scarcely believe it is the same woman.

Perhaps the lunch speech is fine. The system really was difficult. But one can ask why it did not help when nobody argued.

What would I lose if it turned out that I have it exactly as hard as everyone else?

Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.

About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy

This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.