reading your opening post
you are saying your mates say about you that...
any conversation you reply with statements about bending the convo to relating to yourself

so:

mate: feel really down my mums died- im at rock bottom
you: yeh my mum and dad died and then my cat and i killed myself 4 times and then the village lit a candle in my families memory
mate: (thinks) (what a bumlord)

so- why do you feel you need to relate everything someone says to you with your own shit (made up or otherwise)

its because you are viewing the interaction with your friends as a power oneupmansship
which means that you are weak, feel of lower value and feel the need to be one better or on equal footing

realize that, dwell on it for a bit
call me a cunt if you like

in future when you don't feel the need to do that anymore and you can just accept your mates convo for what it is without feeling the NEED to see it as a subconscious competition
you are one more step closer to be awesome

that's my opinion

if i am having a conversation with someone, like for instance at work
i was chatting to a lad that was feeling really down about his girlfriend binning him off and not letting him see his child and he was depressed

i didn't feel the NEED to say well Ive suffered with severe depression before and maxed out the depression scale
i talked him through what he was feeling and the only time i mentioned that i had suffered with depression was at the right time he needed to know about this information to HELP HIM understand his situation
he left that interaction feeling better about himself and understanding how he felt--
i felt better because i genuinely helped him.

does that kind of make sense?