I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone who works as a project engineer, returning to a site after an extended break. They were telling me why he felt anxious about returning: after so much time away, there would be new things to pick up and changes to get used to. They felt that was different from someone working in retail returning to the shop on a Monday each week. Their circumstances were certainly different. But what I was suggesting was that the anxiety itself could be just as intense for both of them, because we experience our feelings within the context of our own lives, not by measuring our circumstances against someone else’s.

For them, returning to the project site meant facing the unknown after an extended break. For the retail worker, returning on a Monday could bring its own worries about the week ahead. One situation might look more demanding from the outside, but that doesn’t automatically tell us whose stomach is churning more on the evening before.

That was the heart of my argument: different circumstances do not necessarily mean different levels of anxiety. Two people can feel equally overwhelmed by situations that look very different.

I wasn’t claiming I could measure their feelings and prove they were identical. I was challenging the idea that one person’s anxiety must be greater simply because their situation sounds bigger. Each of us has our own frame of reference: what is familiar, what feels uncertain, what we’ve experienced before and what else we’re carrying at the time.

It’s why “But other people have it worse” rarely helps when we’re struggling. Knowing that someone else faces a different challenge does not automatically turn down our own stress response. Our feelings aren’t calculated on a universal scale of whose life is hardest.

There is a useful neuroscience explanation for this. The brain doesn’t respond only to what is happening outside us; it also responds to what that situation means to us. Networks involving the amygdala, which helps us detect emotionally significant information, and the prefrontal cortex, which contributes to interpretation and regulation, work together as we assess what we’re facing.

Our past experiences, expectations and sense of control help shape that assessment. So do the demands we perceive and the resources we believe we have to meet them. If something feels unpredictable or beyond our ability to manage, we can experience a strong stress response even if another person would see the same situation as manageable.

That doesn’t mean anxiety is “just in your head”, or that real circumstances don’t matter. It means the situation and our interpretation of it interact. Someone facing an objectively demanding experience may feel well supported and prepared; someone facing a more everyday event may already be exhausted, uncertain or stretched to their limit. The intensity of their feelings cannot be read straight from their job description.

For me, that makes the comparison between returning to the project site and returning to the shop more understandable. Neither person’s feelings need to be dismissed. Both can be experiencing something equally intense within their own lives.

Uncertainty adds another layer. Before we return, our brains are trying to anticipate what might happen with incomplete information. We can find ourselves rehearsing conversations, imagining problems or thinking through everything we might need to do. The body may respond with tension, restlessness or that familiar sinking feeling.

Once we arrive, some of those possibilities become facts. We find out what has changed, speak to someone, start the first task and begin to get our bearings. The brain has new information to work with, and the anticipatory anxiety may ease. That isn’t guaranteed, and genuine difficulties may still need attention, but how we feel beforehand is not always how we feel once we’re there.

People can also become more familiar with changed circumstances over time. That is one reason the initial emotional impact of an event does not always predict how someone will feel later. But adaptation varies: there is no fixed six-month point at which everyone’s happiness becomes equal. I don’t need that claim to make my point. We already have good reason not to assume that the outside picture tells the whole story of someone’s inner experience.

As a solution-focused hypnotherapist, this is why I’m interested in what a situation means to the person experiencing it, rather than whether someone else thinks they should be able to cope.

We don’t need to establish whose anxiety is more justified before helping. We can take the feeling seriously and ask: what would make this a little more manageable? What has helped before? What strengths, routines or support could this person draw on now?

For someone returning to the project site, that might involve thinking about what helps them settle back into the project. For someone returning to the shop, it might mean identifying a manageable first step for Monday morning. The details are different, but the aim is the same: to help the person feel better equipped to meet the demands they perceive.

The solution-focused conversation looks for exceptions as well as difficulties, times when the anxiety was a little quieter, when the return went better than expected or when they handled something they had been worried about. Those experiences can help build a more balanced picture than the anxious prediction alone.

Hypnosis sits alongside that work, using guided attention, imagery and suggestions to support relaxation and practise a more helpful response. Someone might mentally rehearse arriving, getting their bearings and taking one thing at a time, rather than repeatedly rehearsing everything going wrong.

The aim isn’t to tell someone to “just think positively”. It is to help them recognise what they can influence, access support and approach the situation with a little more confidence. Feeling anxious does not, by itself, mean they will be unable to cope.

What stayed with me after that conversation was this: you can’t measure the intensity of someone’s anxiety simply by comparing their life with someone else’s. A Monday morning and a return to the project site may look worlds apart, yet feel just as overwhelming to the people facing them.

Different circumstances. Potentially the same intensity of feeling. And both deserving of understanding, not a competition, but a starting point for finding what might help.