Comparison Kills

It wouldn’t be revolutionary of me to say that comparison kills a part of a person’s mental well-being. We know that we are only seeing one side of a person’s life; usually, the side that they choose to show us and yet we all do it. We all make comparisons. You tell your daughter to dry her tears because ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and then you lie in bed wondering how your colleague can afford to go on two holidays a year. You tell your best friend that grades aren’t the end of the world and then scroll through Instagram wishing there was a real-life Face-swap. You smile at a family out for a Sunday walk and wish your family was that close.

Your colleague wishes he had someone to settle down and start a family with. Your Instagram followers wish they didn’t have to re-sit their exams but snap a selfie before they cry their mascara off. And that family were walking miles because they can’t afford a car but the parents return your smile politely, jealous of your financial security.

So, it’s not about the act of comparison in general, it’s about comparing your entire life to one element of another person’s life.  But everyone’s life is hard. You’re not really jealous of others, you just get frustrated when the positive parts of other people’s lives don’t fit with the negative parts of your own life – but that’s not how the jigsaw works. The problem is that we forget to factor in everything about the people we are comparing ourselves to.

“Stop being tormented by everyone else’s reaction to you.” — Joyce Meyer

One thing that I have had to realise is that we all have different thresholds of pain. Your previous experiences may have equipped you with the ability to instinctively deal with what others may really struggle to cope with and you may struggle with what they find easy. You cannot definitively say that someone is strong or weak because people are made up of so many different parts and although you may struggle with something which seems to come naturally to others, they may struggle with something that you find easy. What I’m trying to say is, you cannot judge other people according to your own threshold of pain.

Stop comparing your suffering to the suffering of others because doing so won’t help anyone. Your suffering is valid even if you think that others have it worse. Even if you decide that they DO have it worse, that does not mean that your pain doesn’t matter. Reminding somebody with anorexia that there are children in Africa who are starving will only add to the shame and guilt they feel about their disorder. Telling somebody with an anxiety disorder that they have nothing to worry about when others don’t know how they’re going to get their next meal will not make their disorder disappear but confirm their worries that they are stupid for overreacting or don’t deserve help. Telling somebody who is suicidal that they are selfish because so many people die prematurely, when they would do anything to live, will only reassure them that they are simply a burden, undeserving of life.
You don’t have to be grateful that things aren’t worse.

Mental illnesses can result from significant or traumatic life events as well as an accumulation of ‘daily hassles’ and regardless of how a disorder may have formed they all deserve to be taken seriously. And of course, but what many seem happy to ignore, they do have a biological basis. Having all the money in the world, a high IQ or a loving family wouldn’t automatically erase a person’s past or restore the chemical imbalance in their brain. Yes, these can help. Having a supportive network at home can combat the isolation that often accompanies mental illnesses – but it cannot cure the disorder. Sadly, being wealthy can result in better mental health treatment – but money itself cannot cure the disorder. Pain is pain regardless of its cause or how difficult it is to solve (or whether it can be completely solved at all).

It’s less about being careful regarding your treatment of others because you don’t know what they have been through and more about realising that everyone has their own struggles and are fighting their own battles. Whether you consider their circumstance to be a tragedy or a picnic is irrelevant because we all react to things in different ways. Pain is pain regardless of its cause.

I always thought I wasn’t sick enough to get help. I thought I wasn’t skinny enough to have an eating disorder. I thought I wasn’t damaged enough to have depression. I thought I wasn’t enough of a risk for treatment. And then when I finally realised just how desperately I needed help I thought that I had to prove just how sick I was. But the truth is, if you think you need help, regardless of whether you think others have it worse, you should get help. And if somebody tells you they are struggling with something, you don’t get to decide that they aren’t.

We should all take care of our mental health regardless of whether you have a diagnosis or physical proof of your distress. If you are in pain, you are allowed to seek help in order to relieve it. You don’t have to be mentally ill to take care of your mental health. You don’t have to hit rock bottom before you can start climbing upwards.

Stop comparing people’s pain and start working together to find a solution.

 “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world,
and there’s still going to be someone who hates peaches.”

— Dita Von Teese

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