Instagram makes me feel like a troll: how social comparison is ruining lives...

Hey there. I’ve…never seen you before. Do you...come here often? What’s that? No one reads this blog? I’m asking myself rhetorical questions? Oh…ok...grewl...

ANYWHO, let’s get right into this shit, shall we? Last week we talked about belief systems. Specifically, we talked about the times in life when we ask ourselves, “How/why is this happening to me again?” We’ve all been there, right? Another relationship gone wrong, another night of poor decision-making, another pint of ice cream you swore you’d only eat half of…When we recognize these patterns and ask ourselves this question, more often than not, our belief systems are to blame. Belief systems are formed early on in our adolescence and serve as the foundation that guides all of our interactions, reactions, and experiences in life. These belief systems are influenced by a multitude of things: religious affiliation, socialization, self-perception, and essentially any and all the messages we have received in our lifetime.

Belief systems control our perceptions of ourselves, our self-worth, others, our relational capacity and worth, etc. etc. Not all of them are bad, and in fact, I have a lot of friends who built strong, healthy belief systems that sustain them as adults and help them live healthy, happy lives. Unfortunately, not all of our belief systems are this way. Double unfortunately, our belief systems are so strong that they often manifest themselves in our daily lives. Whenever I find myself in a crumbling relationship, I can ALWAYS trace my thoughts and emotions back to the belief that there is something wrong with me, that I am flawed in a way that makes me undeserving of love. Whenever I get a pain flare-up, it becomes an affirmation of the belief that I will never be rid of chronic pain. So you see, they manifest themselves, and they affirm and reinforce themselves. UGH. That’s a cyclical wheel of nightmares right there. Is it redundant to say cyclical wheel? I left off last week with the challenge to explore, identify, and start challenging some of the negative belief systems in your life.

All of that brings us to the topic of the day: SOCIAL COMPARISON.

I know, right? I’m really pulling out all the Psych 101 stops lately. Thanks liberal arts degree!

So, in working on identifying and dismantling my own negative belief systems, I’ve come to some realizations. One of the most important realizations, I think, was discovering that my negative belief systems are reinforced on a daily basis by the comparisons I make between myself and the people around me aka by the social comparisons I make consciously and unconsciously on a daily basis. Let me start this off with an example:

Anyone reading this ever struggled with body image issues? There’s something we all experience, right? We all have times where we look in the mirror and just think, Jesus H. Christ, who/what the fuck is that thing looking at me in the mirror? Now, for those of you who share these struggles with me, have you ever used a little app called Instagram? Let me say this, if Instagram were my only gateway to learning about what it is to be a gay man, I would assume that something had gone terribly wrong. According to Instagram, gay men are roman statues with smooth, alabaster skin that has been spray-tanned a beautiful, rich bronze who wear only speedos and don’t have to work because they are just THAT beautiful. The only possible conclusion, then, is that I am some sort of sub-species of gay man, probably most closely related to hobbits or trolls...

Dramatic, but you see the point, right? A negative belief system existing around self-worth and self-image is exacerbated by social comparison. It’s an easy concept to start with. I don’t think any of us are strangers to the idea that in the age of social media, social comparison is rampant, and more often than not, it’s not healthy. I can recall several periods of time where my therapist suggested that I delete or deactivate my social media accounts because the constant influx of perfect pictures of happy people on their European vacations was adding so much fuel to my depression as a person battling an ongoing and very intense chronic pain disorder. Of course, we also all know that we only present our happiest/best selves on social media, but when you’re in a shame spiral, that recognition offers very little comfort.

So, social comparison. It’s an almost involuntary part of our lives at this point, right? We live in a culture of scarcity and “never enough” and so we are always looking to those around us to cue us in the direction of what is new or cool or acceptable or worth having. Granted, comparison doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Difference isn’t inherently negative. Competition comes from comparison and it’s not inherently bad. Comparison as an academic tool is taught as early as elementary school (think of every compare/contrast essay you were ever asked to write). So where do we do go wrong?

The answer is very simple: when we start assigning value, comparison becomes dangerous. When we look at things objectively and remark the differences without assigning value to them, we are treading in pretty safe waters. When we begin to assign value and view one thing as better or worse than the other, things start to get dicey. Of course, there is a necessity to assign value in comparisons sometimes. A round wheel is a lot more useful and valuable than a square one, but my point is that when we start viewing things as good and bad or better and worse, things start to get complicated.

Think about the value we have given to all aspects of our lives: our physical appearance, our level of physical/emotional/mental ability, the way we spend our time, the way we relate to one another, the things we read, the way we act, the way we talk, who we love, how we love and list goes on and on and on. All of a sudden, our peers and the rest of the people around us become a constant reminder of all the things we aren’t and all the things we wish we could be. Add into the equation social media and the ability to see the thoughts, pictures, and carefully crafted self-image of hundreds of thousands of people around the world and suddenly we’ve got a real problem on our hands.

The impact of social comparison hit hardest when my chronic pain was at it’s worst, around 2014. There I was, a former Division 1 athlete in my early/mid-twenties, newly exploring my sexuality for the first time, and oh...right, I was sick AS FUCK. At my worst, I couldn’t walk more than half a mile at a time without pain so intense it made me want to throw up and reduced me to tears. I knew all the messages and expectations the world had for someone like me. My life was supposed to be full of travelling, partying, hook-ups, adventures, new friends, social sports leagues, etc. etc. Instead, I was spending the majority of my time switching between my toilet and my bed, all the while looking at FaceBook and seeing how seemingly ALL of my friends and their friends and their friend’s friends were living the life I was supposed to be living. My pain grew, my body weight fluctuated, my emotional state diminished. Soon every runner on the street, every vacation picture on FaceBook, and every Instagram fitness model became a shame trigger, reminding me that I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to be living. That my life was worse or less than those around me, that my life held less value.

As my health has improved and my time in therapy has gone on, I’ve been able to learn my triggers and reign in my social comparison. But, of course, it still comes up. Every day is an opportunity to choose to compare and assign value or not. Some days I do a great job of letting things be (***my therapist to me: it’s not better or worse, it just is…***) and other days I am a raging comparison maniac who has to buy that $45 button down shirt because it will make me look cool like that guy who is wearing it in the picture and then someone will fall in love with me because I look cool…

Most recently, I have found myself falling victim to the dangers of comparison when it comes to getting more involved in the LGBTQ+ community here in Charleston. Having come out only about 2-3 years ago, I have long been wanting to meet more people within the LGBTQ+ community to build a network of queer friends, as I felt like I’ve never had that before. Working for the local HIV/STD clinic has definitely upped my involvement in the LGBTQ+ community, as has my involvement with the PRIDE board of directors. So on one hand it’s been great to be exposed to the Charleston LGBTQ+ community and meet all the incredible people that make up this community. On the other hand, it has been difficult to manage my social comparison.

Here is this community and here are these spaces where I want to meet people and fit in, and so of course, I’m going to be looking to see what everyone else is doing. Add to that having only been out for 2-3 years I find myself often looking to others for guidance on “how to be a gay man”. So more often than not, rather than choosing authenticity and waiting to find the spaces within the community where my authentic self fits, I find myself making comparisons and feeling the need to change or adjust myself to fit the mold and fit in. After all, I want people to like me. DO YOU THINK THEY LIKE ME!?!?!

All of this, of course, is predicated on us buying into this negative cycle of social comparison. While some are relatively immune to it, I would venture to say that everyone on this earth has, at one point or another, felt the pang that comes with making a comparison wherein you end up the lesser of the two. The antidote, as far as I can see, is a mixture of authenticity and courage. I would like to add here that this is something I have chosen to make an active effort to work on in my life right now.

So first we have authenticity. It’s a word we hear often and paint on pieces of home decor even more often. The definitions of authenticity that I identify with most are the ones that recognize authenticity as a collection of daily choices to act and be true to ourselves. Authenticity is a muscle that must be built through daily practice. So to start, we have to take a hard look at ourselves and determine what feels authentic and true to ourselves. This one is, in my opinion, the easier of the two, at least at this point in my life. Make no mistake, I’m not saying it’s easy in its own right, just the easier of the two. There are many a time when I can’t even begin to process what feels authentic because I barely know who I am, but that’s another story entirely.

Courage is the part that feels more complicated to me, at least in this equation. So say you’ve gotten yourself to a place where you have a decent understanding of what feels authentic to you and you can see the spaces in your daily life where you have the opportunity to practice that authenticity. What’s required next is the courage to flex that muscle. That is something I don’t always have. Because I am so good at making comparisons and because I often assign value to the differences I see (with my difference most often being of lesser value), I find myself constantly struggling to muster the courage to practice authenticity.

Furthermore, when you live in a world of social comparison, a world where you may not see many other people doing, acting, or expressing themselves in ways that feel similarly authentic then fear sets in. Am I wrong to want to be this way? I don’t see anyone else doing this so maybe I shouldn’t do it. I often think about this in the context of relationships. I feel like I’ve had and seen many relationships end because there was some aspect of the relationship that seemed to go against the status quo and because of that, at least one person in the relationship loses confidence in this authenticity as an acceptable way to exist. Conversely, I think the strongest relationships I have seen in my life are the ones where both parties are on board with the unique, authentic make-up of the relationship and are resilient enough to dispel the alluring idea that there is something wrong or lesser about the relationship because it doesn’t match up with the status quo.

So in conclusion, your honor, my hope is to continue the work of flexing my authenticity and courage muscles rather than my abs and my arms. Mainstream media culture tells me abs and arms are all that gay men care about, but I know better. My newly decided mantra in this pursuit comes from a quote by Albert Camus: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” I’ve got some issues with the semantics of it, but at the core of it all, I can dig the idea of letting my very existence be a challenge or act of rebellion against the status quo. So take the challenge with me. Let’s rebel. Let’s resist.

Peace, love, and neurotic-blog writing,

Adam