Is Comparing Yourself to Others a Sign of Depression?

If comparing yourself to others was a sign of depression, then everyone you know would be depressed. What’s more telling, is the way you see yourself, after each evaluation you make. Almost always finding yourself on the losing end of each comparison, might be a sign you’re depressed.When you’re depressed, comparing can have insidious effects—the dividing line you see between yourself and others feels like a part of your identity. The contrasts you’re drawing accumulate, until you believe you’re just not as good as other people.How can you tell if the way you’re comparing yourself to others is realistic? Never feeling good, or valuable, next to others is a compelling piece of evidence that unrealistic comparisons could be driving your sense of self. Seeing yourself through such a distorting lens is a sign of depression. The negative filter tells you that there’s something so wrong with you, that you’re somehow worse than everyone around you—an illusion that simply cannot be true.In many respects, it is possible to realistically compare yourself to other people. You can compare the way you and your friends treat others, and get a fairly realistic sense of how you’re doing. When you’re depressed, the qualities on which you stage your comparisons tend to be less concrete. During an episode of depression, you’re sure you don’t look as good as others, or that people don’t like you as much. The verdict on such comparisons lies in the eye of the beholder. When the beholder is your depression, you feel like you’re always coming up short.How can you work to change unrealistic, harmful comparisons? If negative comparisons become a habit, it’s kind of like a moving target. You realize that one comparison you were making was unfair to you, but you quickly worry about something else you think is wrong, perhaps with your personality or appearance. It’s important to see that how you’re feeling doesn’t actually come from the flaws you’re identifying. Instead, you feel bad because you’re experiencing depression.Depression nudges you to find something that disqualifies you, and makes you less than other people—because that’s how you’re already feeling about yourself. The real issue is that you’re feeling depressed and you don’t know why.How do you get into the rut of negative comparison?You can get stuck comparing yourself negatively when you’ve been feeling bad for a long time. You’ve probably spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what you’re feeling so, of course, you search for explanations in comparisons to others.Another common factor is having had a critical parent. If your parents compared you negatively, you might quickly turn to those ideas, as an adult struggling with depression. Negative comparisons from the past seem to offer some kind of context for what’s going on in your life now.How can you move forward in a healthier way? The healthier way forward is to address the issue of self-criticism directly: Why are you so self-critical? If you can objectively see you’re not any worse than the people around you, what’s the impulse to criticize yourself, and not accept yourself for who you are?Often this form of self-criticism can be accompanied by a kind of perfectionism. You believe you have to be attractive, smart, and successful. If you’re not all of those things at once, you feel like there’s something wrong with you. Moving forward in a healthier, more peaceful way then involves asking where the belief “if you aren’t perfect then you’re incredibly flawed” comes from. You can learn to see yourself differently by sorting through questions that ask how you can accept yourself—positives, negatives, and all.Are anxiety disorders more common than they used to be? Click here to learn more. Click to learn more about depression therapy and treatment with Jane Rubin, Ph.D.