Therapy Thought: Fight negative comparison with gratitude and self-compassion
You may be able to un-follow people who make you feel yucky, but you can still feel like crap about yourself even if you avoid people for the rest of your life. I want to introduce two techniques to build self love.
We’re going to use gratitude and self compassion as your two biggest tools to work with that self critic, feeling bad, “comparison drug” that is so prevalent on social media.
Let’s say you're scrolling through your social media feed and you see someone wearing a sick outfit and you immediately start comparing and feeling, "Dang! I don’t look that cool, I don’t measure up.” I want you to switch out of that self critic into gratitude for what you do have.
This is the problem with our self esteem driven individualistic society. We are all hustling to be the best at all things, and we can’t be the best at all things. So, instead, gratitude will give us an internal focus of “I’m good enough. I love myself”
This ties into self-compassion which is honestly the best long term approach to this whole comparison game. Become compassionate to YOU. When you fall short or feel like crap, BE KIND TO YOURSELF.
If you’re scrolling through social media and you’re really jealous of someone, self-compassion offers you a kind response, it acknowledges your humanity. What would you say to your best friend or someone you love? Would you be mean to them for not being self-compassionate? No. Would you say they were inadequate? No.
Self-compassion and the research around self compassion is phenomenal. It is the number 1 therapy recommendation I give, next to meditation. It fights depression and anxiety, especially in this comparison game.
Therapy and tacos for all,
