Tired of being told Im lucky!

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I hate when people say your so lucky that could have been so much worse.
Is It meant to make you feel better? Lets say you are in a serious wreck and you come out with a broken arm. They say your so luck you could of died. Is it not the person whom drives to work the has nothing out of the ordinary the lucky one? Just venting but would like your opinions on this just the same.

when i was living on $300 per week and the generosity of my parents, i kept my perspective by remembering that billions of people in third world countries get by on much less than that. if i would have compared myself to my previous self or the average american, i would have felt put-upon. with the world perspective, i realized that i was well-off and i just made the best of my situation.

it's not like i didn't realize or didn't want others to realize that i had lost a great deal and it was tragedy. there's a fine line between unfairly minimizing someone else's problem and helping them gain a useful perspective.

Yeah, and I am sooo lucky that I really appreciate it when people are telling me I am not alone with whatever kind of things ... (Actually this makes me even feel worse)

To be honest this doesnt make sense. All this crap to compare to others and derive from that own happiness, a really fake one.

This just results in lies, because what you need is to come it from inside of yourself. And for me there is nothing really
that could turn around "not being the worst case" into anything useful.

There is no logic behind that

I don't like it when people say that, either. Although it is meant to make you feel better, it does come off as insincere. At least, it does to me. I feel like they're not listening and just waiting for me to quit talking so they can spout off some memorized tripe about how it could be so much worse! I'm not really interested in "could be." I'm interested in what is. I'm also not looking to be comforted; I'm looking to communicate.

Another thing that makes such statements so offensive to me is that instead of listening to me, these people are comparing me to others. I have no problem with the act of comparing per se. My problem comes when the comparison is the only bit of information people are willing to accept. Statements like, "you're lucky you're not much worse" are not only irrelevant, but serve to let me know that they're not interested in anything other than comparing me to people I've never met.

This has happened to me at a church I recently left. There was another autistic person there who was "full blown" autistic. ("Full blown" is how they described him, not me.) To me, they said, "Oh, you're so lucky you're not like Johnny!" That statement, although it was made with best intentions, made me angry. Thankfully, my body language is very hard for people who haven't known me for years to read, so only my father knew how mad I was. There were other reasons I left, but they're not relevant to this topic.

It's my opinion that people who say "you're so lucky; it could have been much worse" have no idea what to say when presented with new information. They memorize things that make themselves feel better and then repeat them to others, hoping it will have the same effect. Usually, it does. So although such things make me angry, I try to remember that even though I don't mean to, I scare them. I'm different and they don't how to handle it, so they feel afraid. They're afraid they'll offend or hurt me and in their effort to avoid that, they end up doing it. In a way, I feel bad for them.

As for the concept of "luck," I find that different people have different ideas of what it is. Luck is a highly subjective thing. To some people, who view death as the ultimate unlucky outcome, emerging from a car crash with only a broken arm is good luck. To others, who define luck as something very, very good, getting into a car crash at all is unlucky. Personally, I see luck as "a force that brings good fortune or adversity." It's both good and bad.

It's really horrible! Especially when the people who say it don't know me, they don't know what has happened to me throughout my life nor what I go through everyday. I also find it very offensive, it makes me feel like in supposed to be the spoiled brat who doesn't care about anyone else. It's not that I don't care, it's that, in some sittiations I don't know how to. People don't UNDERSTAND what a social disability is, they all know physical and intellectual hut thy think you are lucky because you are able to learn- you know what these people, knowledge is a lot but it definatly isn't everything! This makes me worry about what someone would say if I said I had aspergers. I don't want to be the one people complain about for thinking they have nothing- even though I do think I use aspergers as more of an excuse now that I know what it really is and how it effects me- I know people who have been very ill, I've been very ill myself but you know what I'm not the next person and everyone deals with stuff differently. I have very bad self confidence and anxiety- people don't understand this! We are alone in this stuff

In the last couple day I heard it told me no joke more than 60 times in one day at lest 100 times in four days.

They probably think that you seem upset or depressed over whatever it is, so they try to point out that it could be a lot worse. Seeing how much worse it could be does help some people, but not all.

An example of that is when I've been gone, or sick, or busy, and haven't had a chance to do any housework and my house is a wreck and there is so much to do and I'm overwhelmed with it and upset over it, I'll watch some of those hoarder shows online. Even though I'm not a hoarder, a lot of those people on the shows have a whole lot of filth and squalor and mess to clean up, so it makes me feel somewhat better by putting my problems into proportion.

It's sort of like they are trying to give you a bigger picture so you can see your problems in proportion. Like if being completely healthy and unhurt is a 1 and being paralyzed from an accident and having terminal cancer is a 10, then having a broken leg is maybe a 3. Some people feel better because it makes them think of their problem as smaller. However, it's still the biggest problem in their life and a real pain in the butt. Seeing it in proportion doesn't do anything to actually make dealing with it easier, it just sometimes makes thinking about it easier.

If I say it (I usually think it more than not, because it offends generally) its because the person seems to not see ANY positives whatsoever to their life.

'I hate everything in life, but I have a loving girlfriend' 'I graduated with full honors and accomplished something many people didn't but there's nothing going for me cuz i'm not popular"

Any positive. ANY! Other than that, yeah its like beating a dead horse with a stick, who doesn't know that someone else has it out there way worse than you do, as far as the effect--Its meant to tell you to make do with the things that you actually do have and don't sweat what you don't have.

I know what you mean...I find it bothersome because I don't see what would be worse, than mental hell regardless of if anything bad is happening or not.

It seems you get that a lot with mental problems because people without the same issues can't empathize. I think it's true that plenty of people have worse life conditions or physical ailments, yet often these people aren't depressed and that makes all the difference in terms of happiness. It seems like a lot of people can endure really horrific circumstances when they are able to create some kind of broader purpose and hope in their mind, and our culture and media tend to lavish these people with praise and treat them like heroes or superbeings. Yet that same sense of purpose and hope just isn't always available when you've become intensely depressed. Your brain physiology just can't create those positive feelings as easily as a non-depressed person no matter how much worse their other external circumstances may be. But it's like society only cares about the stories with a happy ending or glimmer of hope. It's not that mental illness is really hopeless, it's just that our stupid society tends to shy away from it out of fear and blame it on some intractable character defect, which ironically worsens the suffering. I don't know what to say. People are just stupid sometimes, no matter how well-intentioned they try to be. You just kind of have to get used to taking certain things with a grain of salt, and try not to focus too hard on the mostly unintentional ignorance.

I don't mind it........ I mean, I realize things could be worse for me, really.

Your facing a problem a lot of people with AS who have found some success face.

We are lucky to live in a first world country with plenty of food, clean water, time for enjoyment, the ability to work and make money, that we are alive and healthy and have access to medical care.

A lot of people don't have those.

But at the same time, we do have areas we are not lucky in. I think that when explaining things, you need to prefix that first part.

But then again "Your lucky" can also be another way of saying "SHUT UP."