What Should Be and Coping with What Is

Emotional problems can arise and be challenging. However, you can overcome them. First, you must realize and accept that they exist. Sadly, this can be difficult.

An upsetting problem is that the concept of what should be can interfere with your acceptance of the reality your emotional distress. There is the issue of comparisons. Your emotional pains might not seem as bad, in comparison, to the hardships of other people. Furthermore, you might review your life, and then not find any evidence to support your emotional distress. Consequently, the feeling that it should not exist arises in you. This causes you to reject the reality of your pain. As a result, you cannot cope well your distress because you have not taken the first step of accepting that it is real.

Your emotional problems are real, even though other people have worse hardships. Your emotional difficulties exist alongside different, and even worse, life situations. Nonetheless, the existence of a worse problem does not indicate that a lesser problem does not exist.