The Truth About Comparison: Social Media, Jealousy & How to Use It for Growth

When you find yourself though feeling less than others based on what you see, or feeling jealous of them or what they're doing, these are the comparisons that can eat away at your self esteem.

Hey there and welcome to let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. A space to talk honestly and get real about mental health, therapy and all things wellness. I'm Laurie, licensed therapist, speaker and your host, here to bring you insights to tools and information you can actually use, whether you're navigating anxiety, healing your relationship with food, or trying to figure out which techniques will work for your life.

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Let's dive in and let's talk about it.

Welcome to another episode of let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. We are chatting today all about comparison. The comparison trap, the spiral we go down when we're looking at other people's social media and our neighbors and our friends and everything having to do with comparison. Everybody says, well, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people say that comparison is the thief of joy. And it's something we've heard time and time again for years. And in general, comparison does get a bad rap. So yes, it has the potential to crush your confidence. But I also look at the possibility of using comparison for something good. Is that possible? And that is something, something I talk a lot to my clients about. And so we want to talk about that today. Comparison in the terms of how it can be detrimental, but also how at all can it be potentially beneficial? So can you get anything out of it? Right? Like if you are someone who gets stuck in comparison traps and it makes you feel like shit about yourself, you may not see the upside, but I'm hoping to give you a little bit of perspective today. So the first thing is how comparing yourself to others can hurt you. We do need to talk about the negative. It makes you think things like, I'm falling behind, I'm not enough, I should be doing more. Right. When we're looking at our again, friends, neighbors, co workers, people on social media, we compare ourselves and we're going to talk about how and why. That's natural. But a lot of times those kinds of thoughts come up. I'm behind in life, I'm not doing enough, I should be more productive, I should be doing more with my life, whatever that might be. So there are times in our life, in addition to having those thoughts, where we are going to be particularly vulnerable to that. And that is an incredibly important piece of this. Times when your self esteem is low, when you're coming out of a breakup or after a loss during major changes in your life. You if you're struggling with health issues. And especially for women in their 30s and 40s, it can occur at any age. But I say 30s and 40s because it is an age that I work with the most, I would say, and the changes and struggles that women go through in those decades. But again, generally, we don't have to be going through something to get caught in a comparison trap. But if you are in a vulnerable place or a vulnerable time in your life, or a vulnerable age in, it is likely that you can get caught and not even realize it. And then it becomes a very tough spiral to be able to get out of. It can be done, but a lot of times these comparison traps happen and we don't even realize it. So let's chat briefly about the influence of social media. Just because that's the world we're living in, it is easy to get caught up in comparison over there. I mean, we know this. Whether you use Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever your social media of choice is, there's just comparison happening because we're just seeing everybody else's lives. We know that social media is a curation. Like, even while I very intentionally try to show up with no makeup, at times, I show the messier side of my life. My house, my messy kitchen counter, the busyness. I'm still only filming so much. I'm a one man show. I can't film everything. So I am still making decisions of what to film and what not to film. And I don't know how to use good angles right, So I don't have those to my advantage. But even trying to be as real as possible, I still get to pick what I share. And so there is still a curation there. Even when you're following someone who is very quote unquote real, right? And that's important, being careful who you follow. But you are still only seeing bits and pieces like what they're capable of sharing or what they're willing to share. Something I've been more keen to lately is when people share their day. And I don't know why this has come up so much. Maybe because I am getting up at 5am, I go to the gym. My son's school bus, because he started his freshman year this year, so his school bus comes at 5:55am that is extremely early compared to the rest of his school career. So I had to start getting up early because my day needs to start early. Like I didn't want him getting up on his own and leaving the house. I don't know. I don't know. I just decided I wanted to get up earlier. So I'm up super early. And I think when people share their day and share their morning, I'm just like, there's no way that's real. So what I'm getting at is beyond appearance, right? When people share their day, this is my morning routine. There are still things where I'm like, oh my God, that's not real. And then someone out there is gonna feel bad about themselves because they're seeing this thing that's literally not real. So I was seeing someone and actually they live around here. So it kind of worked out great that they were talking about like waking up at 5am and showing their whole get ready routine and their day. And I'm watching the morning routine and there's light streaming through the window. I think when she got to the point where it was like 5:15 or 5:30 in the morning and. And I know at 5:30 it's still dark as shit outside because I leave the gym at 6:30 and I'm headed home and it is still dark. So I'm watching this person's Spend the Day with me reel on Instagram. And in my head I'm having so much conflict because I'm like, oh, this is so cool. I love seeing behind the scenes and what she's doing. But I'm like, but this isn't real. Like she did not film this actually at 5am at 5:15. So it's fine that she filmed it later in the day. That's not the point. The point is someone thinking, oh my God, I should be doing all of this stuff at 5am and she's probably not doing all of that stuff because she wasn't doing all of that stuff at 5am because it's still dark out and she had all kinds of light coming through her windows. So I don't care what people do. I just don't want you to think that, that something that someone else is doing is something you should be doing because you literally don't even know when that thing occurred. You don't know what time that clip was filmed. And that's what I'm seeing a lot more. And that's what I care about is the potential for harm, I guess, in a sense, like how people are possibly affected by what you're doing online. Right? And so people are going to do what they're going to do. They're going to film what they're going to film. They're going to curate what they want to curate, and that's fine. It is our responsibility to recognize that not everything is real. And I think at this point we, with how long we've had social media, we know that, we know things aren't real. But you have to be super careful, like I said, about potentially vulnerable times in your life. And just in general when that comparison pops up. The other struggle that I think people forget about is comparing themselves to themselves. And this is interesting because I was reading research on this about how people thought about themselves when they saw a true image of themselves. So we are used to seeing ourselves in a mirror. Like you can't see your own face. You, you see out of your eyes, but you can't like look back at yourself unless it's like a picture or through a mirror. We can't see our own faces and bodies. So what we see day in and day out actually isn't what others see when they look at us. And this was super interesting to me, the psychology behind all of this. And so what happens is sometimes that someone will have a picture taken or they'll create content and they are more likely to pick themselves apart or struggle with their appearance because they're used to seeing themselves literally differently. They're used to seeing themselves in the mirror. So the image that they see is different than what they're seeing day to day. Because we see ourselves in a mirror way more often than we see ourselves in pictures or essentially like how others would see us. So it's not necessarily comparing yourself to others, but basically, like I said, you're comparing yourself to yourself. And it can really trick your brain and cause struggles with things like self esteem and body image issues, body dysmorphia and things like that. So it's just a little tangent to encourage you to really be more aware of the next time you're looking at a picture and you're picking yourself apart, you're being judgmental. You, you are seeing yourself day to day in a mirror. And then when you see a picture, you have to be aware of that bias that your brain is registering it differently. And it's just a super interesting concept. So comparing yourself to others, but also like comparing yourself to yourself is this crazy phenomenon that like, I actually am gonna dive a little more into in my research and stuff because the studies and when they've shown people images of themselves, responses are, are really, really interesting. So that's just a little side note and kind of A little thing when it comes like comparing yourself to yourself. So let's go back to like an issue of jealousy that can come up when you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else. So a lot of times we'll have thoughts like, oh, they make more money than I do. Or they look like their day is so productive, I'm not doing enough. They're productive. I should be more productive. We measure ourselves against someone else's looks and successes and possessions and things like that. Now if you have really worked on your self awareness or this is something you know of and you've worked through it, we can get really good at catching those judgments and stopping them from taking hold. But it is a very natural thing to measure ourselves or see how we measure up against other people. Because something you might not know is that we're biologically wired to compare ourselves. It has helped keep us safe and alive in groups like, am I keeping up? It helped us stay alive. We're biologically wired to survive. We're not biologically wired to make sure, like we have a great day. So you have to keep in mind literally how your brain works. So comparison can serve a purpose. It has served a purpose to help us stay alive over, you know, years, hundreds of years. I don't know how long humans have been around. I'm really bad at that stuff. But like, there's biological wiring there. When you find yourself though, feeling less than others based on what you see, or feeling jealous of them or what they're doing, these are the comparisons that can eat away at your self esteem. And I've seen people constantly watching the people that make them feel bad about themselves. And it almost becomes addicting to measure themselves up against that other person. And it is a pretty vicious cycle. So before we chat about what you can do when you find yourself in comparison and comparison traps and going down those spirals, let me quickly address, like, when this can help. I mentioned at the top of the episode that there is possibly some benefit to this. So if you find yourself looking at someone else or their accomplishments and you're thinking things like, damn, if they can do it, I can do it, or whoa, that's so inspiring. I think I can try that. You know, thoughts like that. What you're doing is using comparison as inspiration and data and that's productive, that's good. Someone else is showing you what's possible and you're not judging yourself or your limitations or your shortcomings or what you don't have because of what they look like or what they do. Have or what they are doing. This is like what we call upward comparison. You're looking at people ahead of you and you're using it to drive you so it can have its benefits. Comparison isn't always the thief of joy like we've been taught. It does have the potential to drive you. And I say when those moments hit and you find inspiration in others and it's not from a place of judgment against yourself, I say use it. And I do work with a lot of my clients on finding the people where they're having upward comparison and it is benefiting them because I do think it can serve a really good purpose when we're looking to make a change or we're setting a goal or we're working on something in life. So some tactical things you can do if you're getting caught up in comparing yourself to others and it's messing with your self esteem, creating self doubt, causing you to feel bad about yourself are things like auditing what you see on social media, reframing your thoughts and using the jealousy that you might feel as reflection points for yourself. So I want to break these down because I always want to leave you with tangible tips on here's this thing and Lori, what do I do about it? I love tangible takeaways that you can then think about or put into action in your life to try to make a change or use for the better. So auditing your socials. I can't tell you how many times I've talked with clients about auditing their social media, unfriending or muting certain people that they struggle with or curating their home feed so that they're not seeing day in the lifes if that's what they're, you know, getting stressed over or other things that cause them to feel like they're not good enough. It sounds like something we've all heard before, but if this is something you struggle with, you actually may feel a little resistant to doing it because like I said, there's almost this addiction to causing ourselves to feel bad by looking at certain things. It's almost like, well, I feel bad about myself. And then we find more evidence as to why we feel bad about ourselves. It's, it's this weird thing that we do. But as hard as it might be, I really encourage you to go through unfriend mute block whatever you need to do to make sure that your self esteem, how you feel about yourself as a human and your confidence isn't at the mercy of social media. The second action task or Whatever you want to call it, something you can do is being able to reframe the thoughts. So when you have thoughts like, I could never do that I should be doing X, Y, Z, you have to address them. They don't just go away. So just like any unproductive thought, we can't just ignore them. They will continue to pop up and they'll continue to irritate you. So when you hear these thoughts, you have to say something to yourself like, okay, I'm having the thought that I could never do that. What's one small step or one thing I could take toward that thing or that thing that that person's doing? Or I'm having the thought that I should be doing XYZ and reframing it into, who says I should be doing that? Or is this something I even want to do? For example, I feel like we went through a time when everybody, every therapist, because I'm very cued into what other therapists are doing, because that's my industry. Everybody was writing a book. I'm seeing all these therapists write books, and it was super inspiring. And yes, people are still writing books, but I feel like a lot of things go in waves anyway, so I was seeing all these people write books, therapists specifically, therapist, psychologist. And I am like, oh, my God, should I be writing a book about, like, my experiences and my approach to treating mental health and what I do? Or, you know, should I be writing a book about, like, how to build a practice and business? I was like, everybody's doing this. And not in the sense of, like, shiny object. Everybody's doing it. I want to do it. But more in the sense of like, this is where my industry's at right now. Am I behind? Should I be doing this thing too? And honestly, it did not take me long to reframe and realize that I honestly had no interest in writing a book. I love reading and would absolutely prefer to read other people's books, but I don't want to write one. And I had to recognize that I was having these thoughts of self doubt and measuring myself up against some people with no true desire to back it up. Those are the kinds of reframing activities that you can do to keep your finger on the pulse of how comparison is impacting you and how to shift your thoughts. And the last point is using jealousy as a reflection point for yourself. When we feel jealous, it's a sign that we might feel like something is missing or a sense of judgment. Jealousy can be a sign that we have some unmet desire or when we see it in others and we feel bad about ourselves, we feel like something's missing. Jealousy makes you human. It's not something to be ashamed of. So many of my clients, I honestly cannot tell you how many times I've heard things like, I'm so jealous of this person and I'm so embarrassed that I'm jealous. Like there's such shame around jealousy. So yeah, you don't have to shout it from the rooftops. But when you experience jealousy, use it as a way to reflect. Do they have something I truly want? Is there something I can do to move in that direction? Is there someone else who has that thing or that success that I can use to motivate me or learn from or be inspired by? It's okay to feel jealous. So if and when that happens, try to reflect and think about what it means for you. You have to remember comparisons are going to show up. It's natural, like I said, and something that we've evolved to be able to do, it's. Well, we've needed to do it to. To be able to evolve and stay alive. And we're biologically wired to measure ourselves up so that we can stay with the pack and keep going. We just live in civilized society now where we don't necessarily need to, but it's still like our biological wiring. So you're very human if you catch yourself comparing what we need to do and what matters is what you do when that shows up. What matters is knowing when you're feeling especially vulnerable, putting things in place to limit the potential that you can be at the mercy of measuring yourself up against others. If you find yourself struggling with self esteem, it is something you can work on and I'll link a couple podcast episodes and Instagram reels in the show notes where I talk directly to self esteem, where I talk directly about it. But in terms of comparing yourself to others, keep an eye on yourself if you're engaging in upward comparison and address any thoughts that may come up. If it's causing you negative thoughts or how to start to reframe the things that are unproductive, keep in mind that yes, comparison can be the thief of joy, but it doesn't always have to be and it is something that we can work on. Until next time, take care of yourself.

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Podcast grow, and I so appreciate you being here today. I want to help people just like you feel like they're not alone and gain the tools they need to grow. Until next time, take care.