Social Comparison Fatigue: How we weigh our worth on the scales of other’s achievements!

Imagine you are back in school and you got your marksheet which says that you have successfully passed and secured 85%. Then you try to peer over your classmate’s marksheet and to your surprise, your classmate has scored 90%. You start to think about all the times you studied together and have knowledge of the subjects at an equal level but still somehow your classmates scored more than you. Eventually, your brain starts tingling about how your abilities or caliber might be less than your classmates. After a while, this might start influencing your interests and choices, and you might even start studying under stressful conditions just to be better than your classmates.  

Now, imagine a time lapse to your current self. You are scrolling through your Instagram stories on a sunny day in your leisure time. You stumble upon your friend’s story of how they got admitted to Oxford University. Your fun, leisure mood starts to spin around into feelings of incompetence, envy, self-doubt, sorrow, and you start critically evaluating your own self and your credible achievements so far. You start to ponder why you didn’t fly across oceans and got into everyone’s dream university and then you would’ve built a great life for yourself; these thoughts pop even if you are in one of the best Indian universities or earning great money. All these years of social comparison start feeling tiresome and builds fatigue, also known as Social Comparison Fatigue – The mental exhaustion that arises when your better version is being exposed to someone else’s best version. 

Roots of Social Comparison: Why do we compare ourselves to people?  

Constantly comparing ourselves to other people within our social surroundings is not at all a character flaw. Rather, Festinger, a psychologist’s ‘Social Comparison Theory’, claims that people have a natural born drive to evaluate themselves in relation to other people because we don’t have the objective means to measure our own abilities and we don’t want to be equal but better than most. This can affect our motivation to grow in life and our self-esteem where we can change our strengths according to other people.  

Imposter Syndrome can also be a consequence of social comparison where despite your achievements you feel like you will be exposed as fraud, but it goes deeper than normal comparison and only some people experience it. Generally, people either compare because they want to improve or they want to have some knowledge about how much they have really succeeded. 

Starting to connect your worth with other’s achievement is a sign of social comparison. It is either upward or downward. For example, an upward comparison is where you look at your friend getting into Oxford or getting an award for specific achievements. On the flip side, downward comparison is when you hear of a distant friend who has a gap year, low grades and is still in a city they dislike. In these conditions, upward comparison might give you motivation but still you may feel envious or inadequate but downward comparison can boost your self-esteem and you might reflect on your achievements in a celebratory way. 

The Indian Comparison Normalcy:  

The influence of parents can also fuel your tendency of comparison. It is very common in Indian households where this phenomenon is informally known as ‘Sharma Ji ki beti or beta’ – meaning that ‘today, my parents compared me to my neighbor Sharma uncle’s daughter or son because they might have better marks than me.’  It happens irrespective of whether we passed our exams or get a job. There tends to be some comparison about marks or salary with other peers. Parents may have good intentions about their child growing, but it still affects the child’s self-esteem and he/she starts feeling small. Rather, everyone should understand not comparing someone’s day 1 to someone else’s day 100.  

How do you take action on worthy steps against this tendency? 

• Limit social media: It is always better to take breaks from scrolling because it won’t feed into the loop of looking at glamourized versions of people’s lives. Keep track of your timings and avoid checking social media immediately in the morning or late at night.   

• Talk to someone you trust: Talk to your family or friends about your feelings. If you have a mentor who can guide you, it is a cherry on top. If you are a motivational video person – go for it! 

• Shifting your focus internally: Celebrate your own achievements and be proud of all the efforts, the heart and soul that you have always put into the things you love. Understanding, envisioning and continuously working on your personal growth is the key.  

• Define your goals: It is essential to build a bridge between your goals and someone else’s. You should be aware that you are not chasing your goals just by looking at someone else’s idealized life.  

• Detach yourself from unhelpful environments: If you feel certain social circle is draining your ability to see your own worth or potential, the best option is to distance yourself from it. 

• Practicing Self-Compassion: Being kind to yourself will make you feel 10 times better. Don’t connect your worth with good or bad days.  

• Start a Gratitude List: Write all the things that you are grateful for in a diary. Here, downward comparison seems fair as it would give you a chance to seek improvements and take pride in your accomplishments. 

• Make sense of your thoughts and emotions: Noticing your automatic thoughts and emotions is significant to understand your triggers and from where they originate, so you can ask yourself the right questions and make sense of the thoughts more intrinsically. 

• Try to celebrate others’ success: The last lap of this race is to celebrate others’ success irrespective of your emotions that go along with it.  

Feeling social comparison fatigue is a normal human experience; you just need to figure out and make sense of your own experiences and life. Understand your patterns, work on them, and chase your goals. You are your own cheerleader!