[ Rules / FAQ ] [ meta / b / media / img / feels / hb / x ]

/feels/ - Advice & Venting

Talk about relationships of all kinds, ask for advice, or just vent
Name
Email
Message

*Text* => Text

**Text** => Text

***Text*** => Text

[spoiler]Text[/spoiler] => Text

Image
Direct Link
Options NSFW image
Sage (thread won't be bumped)


Check the Catalog before making a new thread.
Do not respond to maleposters. See Rule 7.
Please read the rules! Last update: 04/27/2021

Screenshot 2023-08…

Comparison is the thief of joy Anonymous 103673

How do I stop making myself miserable by comparing myself to other people?

For context: I woke up today feeling depressed, these days have become more often recently. By all measures my life is going fine but I can't stop comparing myself to other people. I have a lot of bad vivid memories of things I've done like a loop in my head. Things that really don't matter anymore or everyone has long forgotten about. Moments of awkwardness and being autistic when I was younger. I compare myself to everyone else and just wish I wasn't me, like I could start over.

What do I do to get out of this loop? I miss phone calls from people trying to get in touch and I'm just stuck.

Anonymous 103678

>By all measures my life is going fine but I can't stop comparing myself to other people.
If you are fine then what is it you are comparing about yourself to other people? Other people too, maybe you don't know about very well or deeply so why compare yourself to them? We cannot have the full picture or understanding of other people's minds and lives therefore we should not compare, maybe this way of thinking will be helpful.

>I have a lot of bad vivid memories of things I've done like a loop in my head. Things that really don't matter anymore or everyone has long forgotten about. Moments of awkwardness and being autistic when I was younger.

It is hard to not be self-sabotaging, have you confided in a trusted person? If not, maybe find a therapist. Although it is generic advice, being able to finally verbalize your concerns will make you release some tension. When you finally air it out you may feel a little lighter. But I do not think the looping of certain memories ever stops, the most you can do is learn to live with it.

>I miss phone calls from people trying to get in touch and I'm just stuck.

Have you messaged them at least, or do you completely ignore them?

Anonymous 103684

IMG_9372.png

I struggle with the same thing nona, though maybe in a different way.

I hate feeling pressured to act feminine; I rarely do my makeup and like to wear comfy clothes, I play games and make art, and stay at home with my cat most of the time. I’m genuinely happy with myself but I find that I still compare myself to other women and it makes me unsatisfied. I despise the pressure to stay up to date with the latest styles, to look pretty for moids, to be social and active on social media. These are things I don’t care about but when I compare myself to most other “normal” people I feel like I have less than them, or on bad days I even feel like I am less than them. I’m trying to get better at it but it still bugs me when I slip and do compare myself with others. I wish my brain wasn’t like this because I do what makes me happy and I know giving into the pressure of fitting in wouldn’t make me happy, but I desire it anyway

Anonymous 103687

My life is not worth living because I’m not a billionaire supermodel Nobel prize winning astronaut.

Anonymous 104327

>>103673
Converse with those you envy. Engage with their perspective long enough and you'll begin to appreciate your own good fortune. You'll also have a more holistic understanding of what it means to be a beneficiary and whether or not it's as romantic as you once thought.

Anonymous 104377

>>103673
Instead of comparing myself to others, I compare myself to who I was 1,2,5,10,20 years ago.

Most of the time it helps. I generally find that I'm better than who I was; I'm wiser and capable of more. If I feel like I'm slipping, I can figure out what I need to do to get back on the proverbial horse.

>>103687
>Nobel prize
Dropped, I won't settle for less than a Field's medal

Anonymous 104379

>>104377
>I compare myself to who I was 1,2,5,10,20 years ago.
That's the trick. I can't wait to get older, because I know I'm getting better as time goes.

Anonymous 104382

4B519465-AF1F-464B…

>>104379
But what if the rate of improvement is decreasing as well, such that you'll always be stuck behind an asymptote?

Anonymous 104392

>>104379
That's the spirit, but I will add one little thing. Stop saying: "I can't wait til XYZ." Stop putting off your life for the future. I will elaborate more on this below.

>>104382
In my final year of university, a guest speaker said: "you will rise to your level of mediocrity." Usually the quote is "you will rise to your level of incompetence," I like to think the choice of 'mediocrity' yields the following interpretation:

1. We humans are all limited to some degree
2. No matter how 'high' you are you'll always feel mediocre, so don't get hung up on it

When taken in a professional context, this is not such a worry (in many ways it's better than the incompetence outcome). I say this knowing full-well that some people are just better. But it doesn't bother me. Some people can cut an onion faster than I; this is nothing to lament over. Some people can predict quantum states of an ammonia molecule using fourier transforms, thus allowing them (and not I) to design masers; this too is nothing to cry home over. Both of these are specialised tasks; if anything I am more concerned that I would be unable to identify poisonous berries from safe ones.
In a spiritual context, I don't believe the asymptote is a worry either. This is because, I believe, all people are endowed with the same capacities in this dimension. Your asymptote is the same as mine as far as understanding our place(s) in the universe goes. I conjecture that reaching the asymptote dissolves the importance we put on the asymptote in the first place.
There is a super moon at the moment; if you can see it I implore you go outside to look, it's beautiful. Well, actually the moon is not beautiful at all; the beauty is constructed in my (your) mind. It took something like a super moon to remind me that beauty, humour, joy, grace, etc… are not out there in the world, but in here (I'm ponting to my head). In many ways it is pleasing to know that the abstraction of this asymptote is readily available to me; what an interesting way to view reality.
There's also a third way to dismiss this idea once and for all. $80 000 a year would be more than enough for me to live a life of high comfort. Let's say I get a lucrative job that gives me this ideal salary, and that there's room for a pay rise, lets say the pay rise will asymptotically approach $100 000. If I start at 80k, and go up to 100k, should I be dissatisfied to know it won't go higher? Only insofar as I forget that my life is more than just the consumption of goods and acquisition of 'status.'
Anyway, just my thoughts.

Anonymous 104393

>>104382
You're assuming the one same scale to grade improvement. The whole point is you change, all the time, so you change how you measure yourself as time goes by. Otherwise I'd be stuck measuring myself by the desire I had some decades ago to be like one of my Barbies.

Anonymous 104706

Cut yourself off from vacuous social media. Anything where you can be just plastered with other people's presented lives and successes, that you'll subconsciously compare to then later feel bad. Focus on what you can do and do it



[Return] [Catalog]
[ Rules / FAQ ] [ meta / b / media / img / feels / hb / x ]