I'm a life coach by trade, and I mostly work with women, although some men. I tell them all the same stuff. You are the author of your own life. You can't control everything what happens to you but you can control how you respond to it. I call out everyone's BS, and pay someone to help me call out mine.

Since you are not being discriminated against due to your race, gender, or sexuality (all things that I advocate for ending) then you have to face the cards you are dealt head on. Some people get dealt worse cards; that's the breaks, but there doesn't seem to be any part of that equation that is related to somebody oppressing you, so I naturally leave that part out when addressing you.

Your hardships count, your pain matters, but please don't set up a contest with others who have your same issues (or other ones that you have never faced), and who also deal with pervasive and systemic discrimination in addition. It's not a good look, and it turns people against you. It's not a contest, but if it were, you would lose. You've dealt with a lot - and you've not dealt with what it's like to be treated like a second class person because of the color of your skin, or due to your gender, or sexuality.

I have overcome a huge, vast amount of shit in my life. No, it's not all the same as the things that you are facing, but some of it is. I don't appreciate being told that my life is roses and I've never had to struggle. It's condescending and clueless and rude. And it's also not the way to get other people to care about you or what you are facing. Where I am now is the result of decades of hard work, focused self-inventory, and facing down my own stories and bullshit. Don't you dare blow that off as nothing, because it cost me a lot and it was fucking hard.

I've only stuck with you this long because I see a sensitive soul in pain, and I care about that, despite all the prickly defenses. If you want to keep blowing me off, minimizing my struggles and otherwise holding me at arm's length so you can wallow, I can quite easily go somewhere else.