Comparison Traps

Kate

in sassy blog Posted on

27/05/2022 11:29

Does this sound familiar? See someone else's body on social media, feel shitty about your own, build resentment that even if you do all the things your body won't look like that, eat chocolate while mentally giving the finger to the universe.

Honestly, body image and body confidence and comparing ourselves to people with 'better' bodies, is not only deeply personal for each individual, it is born from a lifetime of diet culture values burned into our brains and experiences with the world that only reinforce how much worth is tied to body shape if you are a woman.

We're not gonna undo that shit in one blog post!!!

But we can make a start.

Awareness
Action
Amplify

But first...elephant in the room... do you want to hear any of this from me?

All of that is fair. I will not say you 'shouldn't' have those thoughts. The emotion brought up by those thoughts is probably not fun though, right?

And emotions are GPS pin drops to let us know we've found something that is a problem for us; we've found a thing that our brain and body want us to heal. Uncomfortable emotions are supposed to suck!

They suck so we are motivated to make a change. I AM NOT SUGGESTING THE CHANGE YOU NEED TO MAKE IS TO YOUR BODY SHAPE! I am suggesting your thought patterns and beliefs about YOUR body (separate from anyone else's) can change... and that might lead to less of the sucky emotions.

This is the AWARENESS piece :) Congrats!! Step one almost done.

Thin privilege DOES NOT exempt anyone from having negative body image, feeling judged, developing eating disorders, or any of the diet culture fallout.

Which means changing your body would not change how you feel and has no place in a body confidence topic. It means the shape of my body has no place in this topic. I've been told my boobs are too small, my muscles are too unladylike, that I need to eat more, that lying next to me feels like lying next to a 12 year old boy instead of a woman because women are 'supposed' to be curvy.

I'm not saying this to make you feel bad for me or to make my struggles worse than yours. Competition is at the heart of comparison and when a society places 'ideal' body standards onto people and rewards a certain look over others, it becomes a breeding ground for pitting women against each other and nobody feeling safe.

My body is not better than yours; yours is not better than mine. They are both bodies with value. What would change for you if you believed that?

The tools I'm going to suggest below are designed to help start that change of belief. However, you need to feel seen, heard, and understood for that to work, so if I am not the right person to be coaching this topic for you, that's OK :)

I want to put this one out there first because I am a big fan of giving you actionable tools that will help quickly.

How does comparison show up for you? (it doesn't always have to be about body size/shape)

Do you compare yourself to a past version of yourself? (damn those FB memories)
Do you compare yourself to a future version of yourself? (I just need to do xyz… and it’ll be fine)
Does social media scrolling make you feel insecure? (maybe you find yourself feeling irritable afterwards or defeated and tired)
Do you feel jealousy over someone else’s achievements? (I could have done, too if I'd had XYZ)

All of that is comparison and all of that is NORMAL!! Comparison is going to happen and it has a purpose (topic for another discussion). The goal is not to get rid of comparison (biologically we just can't do that), but to be able to manage the emotions around comparison and possibly even use it to our advantage (#relationshipwithmyselfgoals)

Step One:

Awareness! Just notice the pin drop. "Whoop, there it is! Comparison trap thoughts!"

Step Two:

Action! Go through the flow chart below.

This one is life changing once you get it. Think about something you don't have that you've felt jealousy or bitterness or resentment over when you see someone else having it.

Now apply this truth...

Another person having it does not increase or decrease our chances of having it. It changes zero about our own limits and abilities.

“So and so can eat whatever she wants and not put on weight”

“I basically had a year at home and I was in better shape before, than I am now.”

“My friend just ran a marathon and I can’t even go for a daily walk”

“All these women without kids who have so much extra time and money to spend at the gym… no wonder I can’t keep up”

Every one of those may or may not be true and either way, it changes nothing about you.

Is that landing yet? Them having it does not change anything about you in a positive or negative way. If they stop having it, your life also doesn't change.

At the core of all scarcity thoughts is “I’m not enough” or “there isn’t enough to go around”.

Try this reverse comparison experiment.

Start with: What does she have that I am jealous of? Then ask...

What has she given up in order to have that?
What do I have that she might want?
What differences are there in our journeys?

You might find you can’t answer some of these questions… and that is a great thing to realize! We can’t know what someone else’s life is really like so our comparisons start to unravel.

Scarcity mindset makes us less likely to:

share another woman’s work
to celebrate her when she achieves something great
to recommend her for a job
to make a meaningful, deep connection with her

Not to be dramatic, but these societal body ideals that encourage scarcity mindset, are a nifty form of control in that they divide women against each other.

What do you think?