If it's truly similar, yes. Actually, I prefer it. I hesitate to tell people things that I'm afraid they're going to interpret as me asking for them to pity me or comfort me. So if I tell someone something that's likely to be interpreted that way and they don't appear to be struggling to keep it just about me, I'll feel a lot more comfortable in my decision to tell them in the first place. I feel like I haven't "burdened" them as much.

I don't assume that other people feel this way, though. I'm aware that a lot of other people are not as dysfunctional as me, so I don't automatically do this when they share their own bad news with me.