A simple (ha!) goal for 2024: Stop the comparison torture

We all do it. And we can't make it go away. But we can get better at it.

Photo by Mat Napo on Unsplash

Nearly every healthcare worker featured on the Netflix documentary Emergency NYC is remarkable, but it was a trauma flight nurse named Mackenzie who taught me an unexpected lesson in self-acceptance.

In the first episode, she comforts a young opera singer who collapsed at a party from an apparent brain aneurysm. Mackenzie is visibly pregnant and wearing a cumbersome helmet as she figures out what to do when her patient slips out of consciousness. The lights of Manhattan pass beneath them as their helicopter speeds toward the hospital. “I’m gonna take good care of you,” she promises the woman as she unfurls an oxygen bag.

As I watched the episode, I felt grateful for Mackenzie, and our healthcare system. But I also felt anxious, and it wasn’t the kind of temporary dread you get from watching a show where real patients are on the edge of death. No, it was more irrational than that. It was about me. 

I could never have her job, I thought, because I’m too lazy and weak.

Fortunately, I paused the show and took a moment to self-reflect. Where was this coming from? It wasn’t envy per se—I certainly didn’t want to be an actual flight nurse, not in any real way. No, what I wanted was to feel as valuable as her. To have someone watch the movie of my life and be just as in awe of me as her. To know that if I were to die tomorrow, there’d be no question I contributed to making the world a better place.

In other words, I was suddenly comparing myself to her, evaluating the worth of her life compared to mine. And I wasn’t coming out well. Ouch. 

Of course, there’s a name for my angst

While some of us may never feel tempted to compare our life to that of a trauma flight nurse, all of us engage in comparison. This behavior is so common there’s a name for it — the social comparison theory. Developed decades ago, this theory states that all humans engage in constant comparisons with others to "determine our social and personal worth.”

We tend to compare ourselves to the people we admire or feel familiar with. But we also tend to pick “paragons,” or people who are the top of their game, whom researcher Amy Summerville, PhD, calls “unrealistic targets.” Ahem, like an unflappable trauma flight nurse.

When we make these comparisons, sometimes we come out on top, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we realize it doesn’t matter, sometimes we lose ourselves in the competition of “keeping up with the Joneses.” (Which I’d modify to “influencers” in today’s online environment.)

Of course, taking stock can be productive and motivating, but the circumstances have to be right. If you feel good about yourself, then you will tend to feel good about your comparison de jour, or at least be realistic about it. You may feel determined to replicate another person’s success, or simply learn from them. Those are good things. But if you’re having a bad day–or week, month, or life–this reasoning will be harder to do. 

What’s brewing beneath the comparison?

Of course, achieving consistently high levels of self-esteem is a difficult, complex journey (especially for teen girls and women), but sometimes it’s enough to simply stop and remember why you make comparisons so much (because you’re a human being), and how come your comparisons sometimes leave you feeling bad (you’re a human being living with trauma, depression, stress, an empty stomach, capitalism, beauty culture, an unruly menstrual cycle, unpaid bills, etc). 

And that indeed did help me after I turned off the show. After a couple decades spent working as an online editor, I’m at a point in my life where I’m figuring out what I want next from my career and life in general. I’m ready for something new, but not quite sure what that is or what it will look like. Most days, I’m cool with this uncertainty, letting myself simmer in my life journey without feeling the need to make urgent decisions. But sometimes, my quest for meaning gives me a lot of anxiety, as it was on the day I watched Mackenzie save that singer’s life. Mackenzie’s a bad ass, but she’s also an unrealistic target.

Maybe it’s time for Netflix to make a show about Susan Casey or Melissa Febos and then I’ll feel more inspired and less anxious? At least, that is, if I’m having a good day.