When comparison starts to affect your mental health

Comparison is something most of us do from time to time. We notice what other people are achieving, how they look, where they live, how successful they seem, or how quickly their lives appear to be moving forward.

In small doses, comparison can sometimes be motivating. But when it becomes constant, it can gradually affect how we see ourselves.

You might find yourself scrolling through social media and coming away feeling worse than when you started. You may feel behind in your career, relationships, finances or appearance. Or perhaps you compare yourself to people in the same industry and feel as though everyone else is progressing while you are standing still.

Over time, this can contribute to anxiety, low self-esteem, perfectionism and feelings of inadequacy.

Why do we compare ourselves? 

Comparison is a very human behaviour, and we often look to other people to understand where we fit and how we are doing. The difficulty is that we rarely compare ourselves fairly. We tend to compare the parts of ourselves we feel most uncertain about with the parts of someone else’s life that appear most successful.

Social media can intensify this. We are often seeing carefully selected moments rather than the full reality of another person’s life, yet our minds can still interpret these snapshots as evidence that everyone else is happier, more attractive, more successful or further ahead.

Comparison can be particularly difficult for people working in creative industries, where success is often visible and difficult to measure objectively.

You may find yourself comparing followers, opportunities, reviews, sales, streams, commissions, exhibitions, bookings or recognition. When your work is closely connected to your identity, another person’s success can begin to feel like evidence of your own failure.

How comparison can affect mental health

Constant comparison can create a cycle: you notice someone doing well and immediately turn your attention towards yourself.

Thoughts might appear such as:

• “They’re much more successful than me.”
• “I should be further ahead by now.”
• “Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing.”
• “I’m not good enough.”

These thoughts can then create anxiety, shame or self-doubt.

You may respond by working harder, criticising yourself, withdrawing or repeatedly checking what other people are doing. Rather than making you feel more motivated, comparison can leave you feeling exhausted and increasingly disconnected from your own goals.

It can also contribute to perfectionism.

When we believe we need to reach a certain standard before we are allowed to feel successful, nothing we achieve ever feels quite enough.

Signs comparison may be affecting you

Comparison may be becoming unhelpful if you notice that:

• social media regularly leaves you feeling anxious, low or inadequate;
• another person’s success makes you question your own worth;
• you constantly monitor what peers or competitors are doing;
• you struggle to recognise your own progress;
• you feel pressure to reach certain milestones by a particular age;
• you change your goals based on what other people are achieving;
• you find it difficult to enjoy your successes because someone else appears to be doing better.

The problem is not noticing other people; the problem begins when someone else’s life becomes the measurement you use for your own.

What can help with comparison?

Notice when comparison is happening

Comparison often happens automatically. Try noticing the moment your thoughts shift from observing another person to judging yourself.

Instead of immediately accepting the thought, you might simply recognise:

“I’m comparing myself again.”

Creating that small amount of distance can help you respond differently rather than automatically believing everything your mind tells you.

Ask whether the comparison is fair

Consider what information you actually have.

Are you comparing your everyday reality with someone else’s carefully presented version of their life? Are you comparing yourself with someone who has completely different circumstances, resources, experience or opportunities?

Two people can appear to be on similar paths while having very different starting points.

Reduce behaviours that keep the cycle going

Sometimes the strongest intervention is practical.

If you repeatedly check somebody’s social media account and feel worse afterwards, consider muting or unfollowing them for a while. This does not mean you are jealous or unsupportive; it may simply mean you are protecting your mental space.

Reconnect with your own values

Comparison becomes particularly powerful when we lose sight of what we actually want.

Ask yourself:

• What matters to me?
• What kind of life am I trying to build?
• What does success mean to me, rather than to the people around me?

Your goals do not have to look impressive from the outside to be meaningful.

Compare yourself with yourself

Instead of looking sideways, try looking backwards.

Think about where you were six months, one year or five years ago. Progress is often difficult to notice while we are living through it, and keeping a record of achievements, changes, or things you have handled can provide a more realistic picture of how far you have come.

Be curious about what the comparison represents

Sometimes comparison points towards something deeper; if you feel intensely affected by someone else’s success, ask yourself what it seems to represent.

Perhaps their career makes you worry you have wasted time, perhaps their relationship brings up fears about being alone, perhaps their appearance touches on long-standing beliefs about your own worth.

Understanding what sits underneath the comparison can be much more useful than simply telling yourself to stop doing it.  

Therapy and comparison

Therapy can provide space to explore why certain comparisons affect you so strongly.

Often these feelings connect to deeper beliefs about success, worth, failure, belonging or what we believe we should have achieved by a certain point in our lives.

Rather than trying to eliminate comparison entirely, therapy can help you understand the beliefs beneath it and develop a more stable sense of self that is not constantly dependent on how you measure up against other people.

You do not need to stop noticing what everyone else is doing.

The aim is to become more able to return your attention to your own life, your own values and your own definition of what is enough.