Most of us thought we’d spend our whole lives in academia. So when it turns out we won’t — whether we learn that we don’t want to, don’t get a job that actually pays the bills, or hit a roadbump along the way — it feels particularly craptastic. This is true even if we’re planning to stay but are having to rethink our relationship to academia. So this is a space for talking about the kinds of things that come up for people and how we can move past them.

Have you heard this one?

Something I hear frequently when I talk to people is some variation on the following: “Well, I shouldn’t feel so bad – at least I got a job.” Without fail, people will dismiss their own pain because someone else in the world has it worse.

By that logic, only the person who has it the absolute worst in the whole entire world is entitled to his or her pain. Given that the world’s population is now somewhere north of 6 billion, that means somewhere on the order of … 6 billion people should just suck it up.

This is not the Pain Olympics

We are not in competition for who has it the worst. And we are entitled to our pain no matter how small, how petty, or how much worse off we could imagine ourselves being.

Sure, it’s good to remember, every now and again, just how freaking privileged we all are, on the whole.

But just because we’re privileged in many, many ways doesn’t mean we don’t experience pain or that our pain isn’t legitimate.

Also? It doesn’t work

I don’t know about you, but when someone says to me, in the face of something I’m struggling with, that at least I’m not living in a hovel in Mumbai / I didn’t lose a baby / I’m not being raped in a war zone / put your favorite “worst” here, however gracious and polite I am on the outside, I pretty much just want to punch them in the nose.

On the odd occasion when I somehow take it into my head to say it to myself, I want to punch myself in the nose.

Because saying such things neither makes us feel better nor helps us deal with the very real pain we’re experiencing.

What they do is make us feel ashamed of our pain, of our struggle, of our complaining, of, yes, our whining. The not-so-secret message is that our pain doesn’t matter.

Our pain does matter

Sometimes, no matter how privileged we are, things suck. We didn’t get the job we wanted. We didn’t have the defense we had hoped for. We didn’t win the scholarship or the grant or the award. Our parents get sick or our kid gets sick or our dog dies or our car is totaled in an accident.

Every pain is legitimate. Every one. Even yours.

And in fact, when we are able to legitimize our pain, when we’re able to take it seriously and recognize it as a sign that something is wrong, then we can respond. Acknowledging our pain creates the space for making change.

So the next time you’re tempted to dismiss your own pain and your own struggle, stop. Acknowledge to yourself that you’re hurting. Acknowledge that it’s okay, even if it doesn’t feel okay. Notice what a difference it makes, to your own mood and to your ability to transform the pain into something else, something that might even, after a while, feel better.