“What Is The Wildest Thing Someone Has Said To You While You Were Going Through A Hard Time?” (40 Answers)

Went to an elite boarding school. I have dyslexia so when I started struggling academically the first term, so I went to the learning center for help. I was told by the academic support teacher, "Put a skirt on, brush your hair, and you'll do fine.".

Had a physical check up as a part of a job interview process and they sent me to a doctor I had never been to before. She literally spent the whole half hour telling me i was so fat. She just kept repeating that and looked at me like she had never seen someone as fat as me before. I’ve always been on the big side but I was wearing a 1x at the time which is hardly a massive size.

I was so embarrassed and humiliated that I cried in my car after. .

During an ugly divorce.
My brother- You have your life, I have mine
My sister- Don't come asking me for money.
Haven't spoken to either of them for 18 years because of it.

I just came out of the hospital and my friend of 12 years turned around and basically said “you need to pull yourself together. I had a friend that has cancer. Your problems aren’t that bad”. Never blocked someone so fast in my life.

So I was going through a really rough patch, right? Like, everything felt like it was falling apart. And this one person, I won't name names, but you know the type, comes up to me, totally serious, and goes,
Well... maybe this is happening to teach you patience." Like... what?? 😭 Bro, I don’t need a life lesson right now, I need a nap and a pizza.

My father began slapping me in the ER because he was convinced I was faking my symptoms to humiliate him. Turns out I had a stomach ulcer. At age 7.

I had a friend who was always very dismissive of this and told me repeatedly that I was likely perceiving it to be far, far worse than it really was because I’m too Westernized. Until one night this friend overheard a discussion with my mother over the phone and told me they finally believed me, but, in their defense, they “wanted to be the one with the worst family.”

So you were dismissing my pain for years because you were playing oppression Olympics with my experiences? The worst was that I was always readily available whenever they needed a sympathetic ear and I never dismissed anything. And the discussion with my mom really wasn’t that bad, I wouldn’t even put it in the top 40% of worst discussions.

I was in the hospital with severe corneal trauma, and had completely lost my eyesight. I had literally just learned that I would never ever see again. My best friend says, “Well just think about Helen Keller. It could always be worse.”

😑.

Mine was that when the pet I had had for 10 years passed away, the most common thing I heard from other people was "when are you going to get another one?" .

"I hope God doesn't have to bring you to your knees in order to bring you back to him. If you're not careful, sometimes that's what it takes, so don't let it get that far."

I was a struggling college student who was grappling with questions of faith and had basically realized that I'm an atheist after being a Christian all my life. The guilt and shame were overwhelming, as was the new-ish experience of forging my own path. I was taking 14-18 credit hours of classes per semester while also working 2-3 part time jobs at any given time so I could pay my bills at 20 years old (I'm almost 40 now; sorry 20-year-olds, but you're still kids for all intents and purposes, and so was I). I was stressed to the max, grieving my faith, wrestling with residual shame, anxious, riddled with self-doubt and emotional dysregulation partly due to undiagnosed ADHD, and yeah.

My own father decided to tell me that somewhat gleefully. The words themselves aren't the worst ever. It was the tone, the clear self-righteousness from someone who *wanted* me to suffer so that I might decide to share his beliefs once again. As if I didn't have enough cognitive dissonance with which to contend.

My very senior dog had a sudden neurological event where he was paralyzed in the back legs. We went to an urgent care who sent us home on crate rest with meds. After a restless night, we gave him meds, but it wasn’t helping. Within the hour he was hot to the touch, struggling to breathe, and seemed like he had rigid paralysis/seizure(?), so we ran him to the only open urgent care. I realize I should’ve tried an ER but all of them were 30+ minutes away vs 5 minutes and I was afraid he wouldn’t make it. They took him back and the vet came out and said “Your dog is going to be brain damaged. You shouldn’t have brought him here.”

She transferred him to an ER sedated after that. We still don’t know what it was. Nobody had guesses for me. I called the first vet again and they never called back. I was told I could transfer him to a fourth vet clinic in 12 hours for an MRI ($5000) but that his temp had hit like 110F and he was indeed brain damaged to the point he wasn’t responsive or able to move, so we’d still have to put him to sleep. It’s haunted me this whole past year. He was almost 17 years old. We ran bloodwork while we waited to put him to sleep and all of it came back normal.

My aunt once called a mental health crisis hotline type number and was told to “look at the trees.” As if seeing a leaf would instantly cure her depression and trauma.

"You'll be rewarded for your sacrifice, so be happy."

Sure! No problem being happy while sacrificing my health, money, time, interests, marriage, and family time, just so I can drive an hour to and from wiping someone's ungrateful behind when I leave work. Joy! Joy! Joy! 🙄

Yes, I care about the person, but I'm human, and this is hard. I need to feel what I feel. 😭😭.

I was out with my friends one night for a going away party (one of them was moving to Germany). I was one drink in, and I get a message from my bf at the time telling me that my dog couldn’t walk and maybe she fell down the stairs. He was a very insecure man and said “I’m here taking care of your dog and you’re just out partying and drinking”. I was already in an uber home when he said that. I got home and stayed up with her all night until we could get to a vet in the morning. I went to the vet, and she had broken her spine. It was a $17,000 surgery with a 25% chance of it working. The other option was to put her down, it was the hardest decision of my life - but I knew she wouldn’t be happy if she couldn’t run around. A month after we put her down my bf at the time said to me during a fight “why are we even together anymore, Fran was the only reason I stuck around”. I stayed with him a year after that, still don’t know what happened to her while I was gone for an hour….

I was in a hospital bed, arms stitched up, loads of stitches, bandaged up and at one of my lowest points, and my step Dad just went "I don't see the point, mental health isn't a thing".

While a friend talked about how upset she was that she lost her mum to cancer, one of our mutuals decided to tell us how his mum is responding really well to treatment.

I was ~25 and about to move in with a boy for the first time. I was freaking out about how my dad was Very Against Cohabitation Before Marriage (tm) and how he'd told me he wouldn't pay for any wedding if I lived with a man before we married.

All of my coworkers at the time were in their 40s/50s and the ones I was closest with kept reassuring me that it would all be okay and my dad loved me very much even if I upset him.

Then a woman who treated me like a child the entire time we were on the same team came around the corner and told this story about how her grown daughter, a few days before her wedding, was about to leave her parents' house to sleep at the apartment she'd gotten with her soon-to-be husband and my coworker flipped out telling her things like "I GUESS WE DON'T EVEN NEED A WEDDING" and "I GUESS WE'LL JUST CANCEL EVERYTHING BECAUSE WHAT'S THE POINT IF YOU'RE LIVING IN SIN ALREADY."

Basically everything I was freaking out about, she threatened to do to her daughter (who turned around and slept at home rather than continue the argument).

It's been over twenty years since that day and I still think about how strange it was that she thought telling that story would be helpful to my situation in any way.

I was chronically ill and bedridden for two years when my husbands aunt called me. When I asked how she was doing she rambled on about how wonderful and healthy she was and how she’s the healthiest person she knows and how it makes life wonderful and how she was in awe that everyone around her seemed to have failing health but her. She giggled with delight and laughed while telling me this. I told her she was rude and what she just said was akin to describing your gourmet meal to a starving poor person. It’s one thing to say she was doing great and felt good but she went on about it for 30 minutes. It was disgraceful. She’s like that with everything though. Everything she has is better than everyone else’s, even her health. Sad thing is she was 100 pounds overweight and had not been to a doctor in years and refused to go.

An old friend popped up out of the blue and compared in detail, my brick and mortar business to her instagram page with 400 followers she just started.

I told my older cousin that I was probably depressed. He told me "Really? Just go eat ice cream and watch TV for the next 6 hours." I thought it was dumb. Here I am a year later, taking his advice. I saw it as wild at first, now I'm slowly giving in to it. Send help 🙏.

A ways into my 1st heartbreak, my best friend/roommate and I went to the grocery store. Before we got out of the car, I said to him that I was still hurting from the breakup. There was a pause, then he looked at me and started reciting the 1st half of Garth Brooks's The Game. When he finished, we just stared at each other for a beat or 2. Then we lost it laughing. I hadn't laughed like that in months. It was such a relief.

He has absolutely no recollection of that moment, and didn't even know that he knew any parts of that song. This was 02, maybe 03.

I know this may not be the wildest thing, and it certainly wasn't the toughest time anyone has ever had, but it was so random, so hilarious, and it really helped.