These are not the distressing difficulties of human existence.
"The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I"
Marcus Dods
The situation actually became distressing.
"In Desert and Wilderness"
Henryk Sienkiewicz
For we ought to recognise that though the problem of the unemployed is not, as many persons imagine, one of increasing gravity in our time-although, on the contrary, if we go back thirty years, sixty years, or a hundred years, we always find worse complaints and more distressing sufferings from that cause than at present, yet it is certainly a constant problem.
"Contemporary Socialism"
John Rae