I am looking for a term to describe the line of thinking that goes something like “I hate my work, I am sick all the time, I am depressed, I can’t find happiness. But I should be happy. Those problems don’t matter. All my problems are so insignificant, there are little. They’re just some stupid first world problems. I have it good, I have food on the table and a loving family. There are millions of people who have real problems, people living in severe poverty, starving to death, being bombed.”
I think about this often, it came up when I was talking with someone with mental health issues and I remember him telling me that this way of thinking has a name/is a common symptom that occurs in people with a specific personality disorder, although I cannot remember what disorder he claimed it was. Also this was more than ten years ago so it might have either changed or my memory of this event changed.
Martyrism. There’s also an odd variant of narcissism that revels in pity.
The suffering one automatically has the stronger argument. Because you aren’t allowed to argue suffering, you have to just accept the truth of it. If you question it you are guilty of minimizing the suffering of a suffering person, which is a sin.
Therefore establishing yourself as “the suffering one” has automatic power in a debate. So that’s something nice to have.
Also, is that the martyr? If the point is to draw attention and such, that’s narcissistic, sure.
(being a martyr is a big power. Half the Catholic Church’s saints are martyrs. They build churches to those guys)
And if you present yourself as the representative of the suffering ones then it’s martyr by proxy? Narcissism by proxy?
Also, re the downvotes you’re experiencing. The kids really hate having their game analyzed, even to this minimal degree.
I swear somebody’s gonna get a research paper out of this stuff.