Let’s talk about something we almost all do, but very rarely admit.
We believe our problems are special.
Not just difficult. Not just painful. Special. Unique. Complex.
More complex than other people’s.
More unfair.
More layered.
More uniquely ours.
And the moment we start believing that, we quietly hand our problems authority.
When we do that, we silently stop utilizing our own agency.
When your struggle becomes special, it becomes untouchable.
And when it becomes untouchable, it becomes permanent.
You stop asking, “What can I do?”
And you start asking, “Why is this happening to me?”
That shift is subtle. But it changes everything.
One question moves you toward responsibility.
The other moves you toward identity.
When our problems become our identity, they become our purpose and when they become our purpose, we lack any reason to change them.
They become a key component of our personality.
When Pain Becomes Personality
We all have real struggles.
Betrayal.
Anxiety.
Family dysfunction.
Addiction.
Financial stress.
Grief.
None of that is imaginary.
But somewhere along the way, many of us allow the struggle to become the story.
Instead of:
“I’m working through anxiety.”
It becomes:
“I am anxious.”
Instead of:
“I experienced betrayal.”
It becomes:
“I’m someone who always gets betrayed.”
Instead of:
“I was hurt in childhood.”
It becomes:
“Of course, I have issues, have I told you about my childhood.”
Notice the shift.
The problem moves from something that happened to you to something you are.
And once it becomes who you are, healing feels like losing yourself.
The Seduction of Uniqueness
There is something strangely comforting about believing your pain is unique.
It makes you important, more complex than the regular people.
It makes you misunderstood and gives you a ready excuse for poor behavior that no one can impeach.
It protects you from comparison, offering a fake shell in which you can hide from the pain of growth.
It protects you from responsibility.
We cling to the uniqueness of our pain because it shields us from the discomfort of accountability.
If I’m special, I’m stuck.
If I’m human, I’m accountable.
Accountability feels more daunting at first.
But it is the only path to freedom.
A Repeated Pattern Seen in Therapy
I’ve sat across from people who were convinced their situation was different.
They’ve been hurt. Repeatedly. By people they trusted.
Their pain was real.
But underneath their pain was a belief that kept them stuck:
No one has been hurt like this.
No one understands this pattern.
And once that belief locked in, something else happened.
They stopped experimenting.
They stopped adjusting.
They stopped trying new responses.
Because if the problem is uniquely complex, the solution must be uniquely impossible.
The shift didn’t happen because they were magically able to make their past change.
It happened when they were willing to ask a different question:
“What now?”
“So what?”
“Then what?”
That’s when movement began.
Not when the hurt disappeared. When the identity shifted.
When they accepted that their problems were real, and they were responsible for what they did next.
How were they going to respond? What were they going to try to do in order to heal? What were they going to do next?
That’s when healing began.
My Own Version of This
There was a time where I believed I was uniquely overwhelmed.
Too many responsibilities. Too many expectations. Too many people needing something from me. Too much hard going on in my life.
I remember thinking, “No one else is juggling this much.”
That belief created a sense that it was OK to feel sorry for myself instead of focusing on growth.
It also justified my irritability.
My exhaustion.
My lack of boundaries.
Because if my load is unique, my reactions are excusable.
The turning point didn’t come when my calendar changed.
It came when I realized something humbling.
Millions of people carry heavy loads.
Parents.
Leaders.
Business owners.
Caregivers.
Life is hard for almost everyone.
I wasn’t special because my life felt overwhelming. Life is hard for almost everyone.
And once I accepted that, I had to ask the harder question:
If this is a human problem and not a uniquely mine problem, what am I going to do about it?
That question changed my behavior.
Not my circumstances.
When you believe your problem is uniquely heavy, you give it authority.
You defer to it.
You build your life around it.
You excuse behavior because of it.
You lower expectations because of it.
You shrink because of it.
It becomes the ruler of your decisions.
Anything that rules your decisions without your consent is a form of slavery.
Freedom is not pretending your problem doesn’t exist. It is refusing to let it define you.
Responsibility Is Not Blame
Let’s be clear.
Responsibility is not blame.
Responsibility is agency.
It’s saying:
This happened.
It matters.
It hurt.
And now I choose how I move forward.
No one is coming to solve it for you.
That isn’t harsh. It’s empowering.
Because the moment you stop waiting, you start moving.
And movement breaks chains.
In Episode 337 of The Joe Martino Show, I go deeper into this and outline practical steps to stop letting your problems define you and start reclaiming agency.The Good News
We are not special in our suffering.
And that is good news.
Because if we are uniquely broken, we would be uniquely stuck.
But we’re not.
We’re human.
Humans struggle.
Humans adapt.
Humans grow.
Humans rebuild.
Our problems are real.
But they are not our identity.
And they are not our master.
Freedom begins the moment we stop worshiping the uniqueness of our pain and start owning the responsibility of our growth.
In my podcast, I explore these five steps to move toward healing.
1. Tell ourselves the truth. We have to tell ourselves the truth about what happened to us. We can admit the problems we are facing. We can admit how difficult our life is because of those problems. The goal isn’t to diminish those things, it is to admit them fully.
2. We can admit those problems and their pain but then we have to ask the questions of what we are going to do about them? I had an abusive father in childhood? Ok, now what am I going to do about it? You have a terrible ex? So, what are you doing to heal from that experience? Your life has fallen short of what you had hoped it would become? Admit it, but ask, “Then what I am doing next to live a full life?”
3. Maybe the hardest thing to do is examine our own actions to discover where we might be giving agency to the problem. Where have we allowed the problem to become our identity? Where have we made excuses for poor behavior because of our problems?
4. Choose to do the smallest thing we can to initiate change. Sometimes, we get stuck because we think we have to do the big changes, take the biggest swings. That can feel overwhelming. Instead, figure out what the smallest step you need to take in order to imitate change in your life.
5. Build momentum by stacking one small behavior on top of another. Just keep going.
If you’d like to explore this topic more, be sure to listen to my podcast episode on The Joe Martino Show, which is available in your favorite podcast store or you can find it here.
May we stop defending the uniqueness of our pain
long enough to examine our participation in it.
May we have the humility to admit
that being human is not the same as being helpless.
May we release the comfort of being misunderstood
if it means gaining the courage to change.
May we refuse to let our wounds become our identity
or our history become our excuse.
May we own what is ours to own.
May we face what is ours to face.
May we move where we are able to move.
And when we are tempted to believe
that our struggle makes us special, may we remember:
It makes us human.
And humans can grow.
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