A person being allergic to something is no joke. You would never hand a peanut butter sandwich to someone with a peanut allergy. If you knew someone with a peanut allergy and someone slathered peanut butter on a table, you would make a point to either clean it up or, at the very least, warn the person. You would not, I hope, tell the person to "get over it" or infer they should decide not to be allergic! An allergy is not something a person can wish away or "get over." Neither is fear, anxiety, AD(H)D, or depression.
Discounting someone's feelings on any level is lousy. Just because you do not feel a certain way, or worse, just because you went through a hard time and came out of it unscathed (or so you portray it) does not mean that everyone else does. If everyone reacted the same way to everything, every smoker would have lung cancer, or every smoker would not get lung cancer. There would be no in-between.
Think of painting a room. You are painting four walls with light grey paint. Each of the four walls is currently different; one is white, one is a dark navy blue, one has wallpaper, and the last is paneling. If you cover each wall with the same light grey paint, each will look like a different grey, even if just slightly. The difference is that each wall would absorb the paint differently. Now take the same four walls, but each prepared the same and then painted with the light grey paint - there is a perfect chance that there would still be a difference in the grey color due to a window, furniture placement, or how the light hits the wall. Each of us absorbs differently—light hits each of us differently.
No two people are affected precisely the same by events or genetics, not even twins. How an event or stressor affects anyone is very personal, and judging how someone should feel is not ours to say. Instead of deciding how people should be before telling someone, they need to bully through, how about we take a breath and meet people where they are and listen? Be patient with one another. Let's acknowledge that even if we have gone through difficult moments, even if we feel it was more difficult than what another may be going through, we all need love and understanding. Kindness is never wrong.
Love Lots; Smile Often
MommaHattie