Transcript:

Steve: Welcome to through the Glass Recovery Podcast, where we believe that connection is the opposite of addiction, vulnerability is the antidote to shame, and that recovery isn’t just rewarding, but it’s also a lot of fun. We’re your hosts, Steve and Julie. Listen, as we get together with friends to shed light on the hard things, talk about the other side of addiction and how we create a life so full, there’s no space left for alcohol.

Julie: Have you ever noticed that you compare yourself to others? It turns out this is something that almost everyone does, and it has a seriously negative effect on our self esteem and self worth. In this episode we get honest about when we compare ourselves to others, and also share some thoughts on how to overcome that so the only person we are comparing ourselves to is our old self.

Steve: In case you haven’t already heard, we’ve been sharing all kinds of extra video content on Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok. We share little bits of wisdom that we’ve gathered along our journeys, and other useful inspiring bits to carry you along yours. You can find us @throughtheglassrecovery on any of those platforms.

Julie: We are here tonight with our friends, Dan, Liz and Alex. I’m gonna ask you guys just to introduce yourselves really quick. Dan, do you want to go first?

Dan: Yeah, sure, I’m Dan, I’m from Pennsylvania. I’ve been sober for 965 days, closing in on that 1000. I can see that coming, that feels nice. I’m happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Julie: Yeah, thanks for being here, Dan. And Liz.

Liz: Thank you for having me. I’m Liz, I am um just about 10.5 months sober.

Julie: Awesome, Thanks for being here! And then Alex.

Alex: Hey guys, I’m Alex, I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio. I’m 39, I’ve got about 16 months sober, almost.

Julie: Awesome. Cool, well thank you guys for being here! I’ll go ahead and read this topic. I think a lot of us struggle with self worth. That causes a lot of different issues that can become real problems in sobriety, from people pleasing to depression. I think one of the most common things we do to contribute to our lack of self worth is comparing ourselves to others. When have you compared yourself to others? How does it affect your life and your recovery and what have you learned or how have you overcome it?

Dan: I think that’s a great example for self worth is comparing ourselves to others, because I think that whether we’re addicts or not, I think everyone does that. This person is better at math than I am, this person, is a better runner than me, This person is… you know? Instead of looking at the right question. And that’s a trap that I fell into also, and I fell into it in sobriety. I want to be like this person, they really seem to be getting this program, they really seem to be doing well. I see this person is recovery, and I just don’t feel that in me. And I had to realize that that was the wrong way to look at it. The question is, is you know, when I hit 30 days of sobriety, the better question is, am I better off now than I was 31 days ago?

There’s the comparison. The comparison is me because I’m the only person to measure up to. You know, if I try to measure myself up against everyone else on earth, I’m never going to live up. If I can measure myself up to the best version of me, I can match that. I can meet that and I can be proud of that. And I should say I am better off now than I was, 2.5 years ago,

Julie: This kinda reminds me of my daughter who shows horses. I’ve talked about her on here before. And at every horse show the judge has a sheet where they score each rider. And then at the end they can actually go look at those sheets and see how they scored and what they did well and what they didn’t do well. And it’s really easy for all of those kids to look around and think I’m not as good as that person, that person is better than me. And they get overwhelmed and they feel like they’re not even good enough . So early on, we started taking pictures of those score sheets, so my daughter could keep comparing herself to herself. Because all of those kids that are showing up with different horses with different amounts of training with different backgrounds, with different trainers, they’re different ages with different experience levels, every person’s walking into that coming from a different place, and I think that’s what sobriety is too.

We’re all coming with a different story and different background and different life experience and different ways of looking at ourselves and looking at the world and so there’s no way we can compare ourselves to the other people around us. The only valid comparison is the one to ourselves. It’s easier said than done, definitely easier said than done.

Steve: I mean, that’s, it sounds all well and good. I think for me, I was thinking about this today and in different places, I feel like right here in my element, I feel a hell of a lot better I’m sitting, I’m in my element and, you know, I’ve been working at the same place for a really long time and right now I do not, it’s almost, it almost ends up paralyzing me to a certain extent, just because I’m comparing myself to the people that are around me and it and I just don’t feel like I can cut it and it just, it’s not, it doesn’t do me any good, I have to work through it, still not working through it very well, but I mean, it’s just it’s odd that it happens in one place and then once, once I remove myself from it, it’s doesn’t happen the same.

Dan: I don’t think it’s unusual to have a comfort zone. Because it’s not a place where we make those kind of comparisons, so we get to feel safe here, you know?

Alex: But I think that’s it’s just an easy trap to fall into. Whatever section of life that you’re in. I can resonate with it.

Just recently I went through a situation of a lot of comparison with my sister’s wedding. Not only comparing myself to a past self that I romanticized, but comparing myself to the others that were there. I’m in recovery right now and my life, energy level, looks different than how it used to look, before I started really doing the deep emotional healing.

So an event like that brought up so much more for me than I needed to process.

Whereas, if I had just been numbing out before, sitting there in a chair and comparing myself to be like, “I should be the life of the party right now,” and then I feel that distress in my head. That comparison. And then I almost have to send myself back down and remember that this is my space of healing. I don’t need to like show up as any certain self in order to be accepted. I can be accepted for who I am right now, because I’ve been open with the people in my life about my sobriety. They know that I’m going through an emotionally taxing time, so I feel that if I don’t like use the tools to get myself back out of it, then it can really be a big problem, comparison to others.

Steve: Almost make yourself feel like you’re out of place without being out of place

Alex: Yeah, and I can almost feel my old self like, “oh I could just have a drink,” you know? I had the thought , and I haven’t had that thought in a long time. That thought can come up, and I can observe that thought, and recognize and be humbled by it. This is an opportunity for growth and to rewrite the story of myself.

Steve: It’s interesting you bring that up. I went on a 6k walk after work. And work was a lot of what I thought about. That’s my next roadblock, that’s the next thing, that’s my next challenge to figure out what I need to do there. When I was drinking, I was a bull in a china shop, but I got some things done. I could I could easily compare myself now to them and right now I’m not a bull in a china shop. I’m still trying to figure out my way, but it’s easy to go back and be like, “I know how to just kind of rammed through all of this,” but it damages a lot of people in the meantime.

So I think I’m still just trying to… I don’t know if it’s that I don’t trust myself or I don’t trust… There’s a trust thing. I think that’s there. Whether it’s with the management that I’m dealing with or I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel supported. I feel like if I ask for help, it’s going to make it more difficult. And so because of that, I’m scared to do it, so I’m left doing not a good enough job.

Julie: I think I’m being part of that in sobriety is just you have to completely relearn how you’re going to do everything. We all used to do things one way or another when we were drinking. We’re all completely different people now, how we accomplish things, how we interact with others, all of that is changing and we’re all just figuring out what that even looks like. It’s really not a comfortable place to be.

Dan: It’s that awareness of it that’s important. You know, I was not at all aware when I was drinking of who I was, what I was doing in the world, what was about me? What am I like? I had no knowledge or thoughts of any of these kind of things. All I knew was that I was sort of an angry guy that most people didn’t like and I didn’t really blame them for not liking me. But I still thought they were dicks for not liking me. That’s the thing to realize now. The other day I got very upset with somebody. I went and I kind of went to a rage and for a minute, and then I caught myself. I brought myself back down to earth and I separated myself from the situation for a little while, and I had the thought, “have I ever made any progress?

Why am I still acting like this?” You still get that glimpse of that, the mean drunk guy. Of course your different. Of course you’ve made progress. You would never have wondered if you made progress when you were drinking. I would be sitting there plotting my revenge. I wouldn’t be thinking about how I could find a way to move on from this, right?

Steve: How do you fix it? How do you face it? How do you do the next thing instead of nothing?

Dan: That’s self worth right there. It’s realizing that that you are.

Liz: It’s interesting to listen to y’all talk about this because as I was listening, I was thinking, I don’t think my comparison points happen that often when it comes to sobriety anymore. Maybe in the early days, but not so much now. Where it indirectly plays a role in my sobriety is how I feel about myself. So, this self worth that you were talking about in the beginning, here was something today that happened that was actually a pretty good example of this, which involved me looking into adopting a puppy. Part of that conversation, the woman who I was speaking with asked if I had a partner who would be there to help me because I was there with my my two dogs and my kid, and I told her no. And she later ended up saying to me that she would support my decision regardless, but ultimately, she didn’t want me to overwhelm myself.

And she meant it in a very kind, empathetic way. It wasn’t meant maliciously, but what I took away from it with my brain the way I twisted it was you’re not good enough . Because there was another woman who was there also interested in the same dog. So my thought was okay then clearly this other woman is going to be able offer a better life, a better home or whatever, because here I am single mom. A failure, you know? So when that type of thought process starts and I take that and apply it to my entire life and all of my bad decisions, that’s when I start spiraling downward.

Which of course then could potentially threaten the sobriety.

Dan: Absolutely. I definitely identify with feeling like a failure, like a fraud. People may not know how terrible I really am or whatever else. And There was somebody from our meetings who actually said to me once, “why don’t you try looking at yourself through your daughter’s eyes for a little while?” And so I started journaling and trying to think about it that way. The start of the self worth journey for me really was just trying to see what she sees and maybe see something a little better than what I saw. Because what I saw was terrible. I didn’t like anything about myself.

And that’s kind of my natural inclination is to go back to that when these kind of thoughts and feelings pop up. But that’s when I start thinking about a drink, it’s right through there. But to come back to that and think, “what do they see, what do you guys see? What does she see?” That brings us a sense of objectivity back. We’re never going to show the same kindness to ourselves that we would show to someone else, or that someone would show to us. And so that’s usually a good place to reset and say, “What do these people see?” Okay, so let’s let’s start there and think about why they think this.

Julie: I do the same thing Liz does. Any comments, depending on what head space I’m in, can be turned into, “You’re not good enough.”

If I’m already in a place where I’m feeling bad about myself, and I’m already frustrated with myself about whatever else is going on in my life, somebody can say something and even mean it in the kindest way, and I will think to myself, “She just doesn’t think I’m good enough.” There was a time back when my kids were fairly little and we had just moved to this really small town. I ran into this guy on the road and he asked how I was and I just started crying. I had two little girls, I was on my own all the time because my husband was working out of town, I was trying to raise all these farm animals and I had no idea what I was doing and I was overwhelmed and he was like, “How are you today?”

And I just started crying. And he was so sweet and just wonderful. And was also like, I don’t know what the hell to do with this woman because she’s crying on the side of the road. But later that night I got a phone call from his wife, who I had maybe met twice. They’re older, they’ve got kids my age. And she was like, “I was just calling to see what I can do to help you today.” And that was the kindest thing. And I cried and I told her I was fine and I got off the phone. And the first thing I thought was, “She doesn’t think I’m doing good enough.”

That’s what I turned that to and all it was, was a very kind and compassionate woman who had probably felt the exact same way I felt. But I turned it into, “She doesn’t think I’m doing a good enough job.” So looking back on it, I can see what it was at the time. I just used it as one more thing to pile on top of me and I think a lot of us tend to do that.

Steve: How much does shame play a factor in all of that and all of comparing ourselves to others?

Julie: That’s what one thing that I was going to bring up was just all of the ways that I compare. I compare myself all the time. I think it was how I was raised. Liz and I have actually talked about this a fair bit, but I was thinking about all the different ways that I do compare myself to others. I compare my physical appearance to other people. I compare my lifestyle and my house and everything to other people. And a big one is comparing my parenting and my success as a parent to other people. All of that is shame based every time I feel like a failure, it’s all because of shame.

Dan: Don’t they say at the beginning of this show that vulnerability is the opposite of shame? And I think that that’s the thing that shame takes from us is the ability to find that that self worth and vulnerability. It makes me shut down more if I feel judged or disrespected. I go from a place where I was probably already not doing so great, and now I’m shutting down completely. I am moving as far away from everyone else as I can and that is shame.

That is absolutely shame, and that’s when I know I need to get back to a meeting. Because vulnerability will at least slow me down and keep me from moving so far away that I don’t find my way back. That’s the place I know I don’t ever want to find myself again.

Steve: I mean we’re talking about where we kind of lose our self worth, but getting it back. You mentioned going to meetings. Just giving back itself, like finding something that you’re passionate about and then sharing that with someone else. I think when you have the opportunity to share something that you’re passionate about with someone else that they’re interested in really helps pull that back.

Dan: Absolutely.

Alex: Yeah, it really does. I mean passion really helps. I think the big thing that was obvious, but mind blowing when I really saw it clearly is how much we all compare ourselves to each other. Everyone is like suffering from that. I’m not alone in this and that kinda brings me comfort, because everyone’s trying to curate their perfect image to present to the world. So I’m only seeing a piece of what others want to show me.

Julie: One of the things that came up for me and kind of plays into that is social media. Social media was the main place that I would fall into the comparison trap. All you’re seeing is the things people want to show you and it’s really easy to compare my mess of a life to the perfect pictures that people are posting on facebook and instagram. I haven’t used social media, I quit facebook the same day I quit drinking. But I remember kind of wishing that I could just have as perfect of a life as some of those other people.

Like what would it be to just be that confident and to have a life so good that you didn’t have to worry about what others thought of you? And reality is those people are posting those pictures for exactly the same reason I posted my perfect pictures. It’s because they just wanted everybody to think they looked great too, because they were busy comparing themselves too. And yeah, it is something we all do and I think social media encourages that, like it pushes us towards that.

Steve: It’s like showing the best part of your crappy day. It is right? It’s like the here, we just captured the one smile. The rest of the day was garbage. I heard a story once where two friends went to the same place, two friends with their families, they went to the exact same place and then the one friend was like, their day was shit. Their day was garbage. The one picture on facebook was of the entire family smiling. The other person that was there was like, “This day was horrible.” And so it doesn’t tell the story, right?

It’s like the picture here. You look at me right now and you see a gray wall. What you don’t see is the clothes on the floor over here and what you don’t see is the turkey fryer back there. And what you don’t see is the climbing tree stand over here, right? Like it looks clean here, but it’s not. It’s only what you see and it’s only what I’m letting you see. I guess that’s the main thing. It’s only what I’m letting you see.

Dan: Well, I think a lot of that too comes from a place that we don’t want to admit that we are imperfect. And and it’s important to realize that we’re gonna make mistakes. I mean, we’re gonna get tickets. We’re going to make mistakes with our kids. We’re going to leave the house a mess and forget a deadline. All these things are just a thing that people do. We try to avoid them, but at the same time they are human errors. We can’t hold that against ourselves for being human. Everyone else is out there making these kind of mistakes and we can’t pretend that they’re not. And that’s where the shame came in for me because it was always, “This person’s got it together, this person’s got together, why don’t I have it together? Why do I feel like I’m a mess all the time?”

But you know, like you said, everyone else is going through this, at the same time at the same speed. But I just was I just could not let myself see that. It was accepting that and accepting that I need to forgive myself when I make a mistake.

Steve: My self worth always came from the outside. I was always looking for some sort of affirmation from some someone, so I could feel better about myself. And I mean, it got to a point where the compliment was hard to find to begin with. But I had to come here to find… I had to be shown, had to be retaught, “This is the reflection of you that I see,” and to start believing that because it was shown in a way where I could understand it. And I had to learn that. It took people like you to show me, so I could actually put that together inside and be like, “I have value, I don’t need it from you guys anymore.”

But I needed it from you guys at the beginning because that reflection of me looked completely different than the reflection that you guys saw of me and it needed to get embedded. That’s where that healing came from. Surrounding yourself with the right people makes a huge difference.

Alex: Totally does. It’s just that pure acceptance that we have of each other. We accept each other for who we are, and we know all the little things about it are there to help us to heal. When we have that pure acceptance for another person, then we can start to see what that would feel like for ourselves. If I gave myself the grace that I gave Steve, how would that feel? Or the grace that Steve has given me. If I was that compassionate with myself, how would that feel? What would that be like? And the comparison to others is the thing that would fall away. Because I’ve learned that my individual emotions in the way I process the world has validity to me. And that’s okay, to be that way. That’s how I need to be to get better. I need to be myself.

Julie: I think the solution to all of this goes back to authenticity and vulnerability. Brene Brown would be so proud of us, right? That’s what it is. If you show up authentically? When I showed up and I was like here are my flaws, here are the things that don’t look perfect.I let people see all the real stuff. All the clothes on the floor. Whatever it was in my life. And I just started letting that show and I started talking really honestly about the stuff that I was struggling with. I mean I’d show up and talk about comparing the way that I look to other women. That stuff is hard to talk about. But as soon as you show up and talk about that, if you’re with the right people, a lot of times you get, “Yeah I do that too.” And as soon as you get that it all starts going away. You don’t even have to compare yourself anymore. Or not as much, because as soon as you start talking about all of those things, your self worth increases dramatically.

We all think that our self worth is going to come from putting this perfect image out there and reality as the self worth comes from like letting people see all of the real stuff and letting them accept us for it. And then we don’t have to work so hard.

Dan: If I can talk about it, I take away its power over me.

Steve: Shame dies in the light. Just like that. Squeezing it out is the hard part. Taking it out from the shadows. That’s the scary part.

Dan: That’s something that I think I’ve learned along the way. I was very much in the whole anonymous side of the program early on. I didn’t talk to anybody about any of it really, outside of meetings. But I’ve really started to tell the people who I’m friends with and people who I used to work with or things from a while ago. And you know, I told somebody recently about it about, about my journey and and she was like, “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there for you. I didn’t know you were hurting.” And I was like, “Well not many people did.” And I appreciate that. I think that if I could have let people be that close to me back then, I probably wouldn’t have found myself in as deep a mire as I ended up being in. And I think that’s the thing to learn now. People who are not in recovery, to be open with them. And to say I’m not going to compartmentalize anymore. I’m not going to show you just the part I want you to see. I’m going to show you me. And if we still have a friendship after you see all that, then we are friends. And if not, well, I wish you well.

Julie: Liz were you gonna say something?

Liz: Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, if I am showing people what I feel to be the most unacceptable parts of myself and am accepted anyway, then that’s that’s how I start to regain some self worth. Which I know it sounds like external validation, and it is. But in some ways it’s also just reflecting. And also just hearing back that the things that I think are worse about myself. I mean, some of it’s bad, right? But it doesn’t make me a terrible human being. It makes me human and that we’re all actually living this way in terms of we all have our mistakes, our regrets, our shame. Some of us are talking about it openly. Some of us aren’t. And some of us are using – as I did – alcohol or other substances or forms of addiction to try to hide all of that. But as y’all said, exposing it to the light, being authentic. That’s at least for me how I’ve started to regain some of the self worth. Although it’s it’s a journey.

Steve: It’s a journey.

Dan: Definitely. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And it takes time. To drop another AA thing in there, progress, not perfection is what we aim for. You know, perfection is impossible. Holding myself to that standard is never gonna work. But I can say, “look, I’m better than I used to be”. And I can continue to aim to be better and to be more aware. I think that the best thing we can ever do for ourselves is be proud of who we are , for who we are.

Steve: Liz, I think you said something about external validation. I think there’s something to be said about saying the hard thing: once you say it, you take it out of your own head and then you get to believe it. You get to believe that that piece, whatever it is, that it’s real. And then once you can see that that is real, whether it’s the shame or it’s the guilt or you can start finding the self worth in that because a lot of the times, the story that we tell ourselves isn’t reality. So once you do say it, I think you end up finding more pieces of yourself.

So I want to say thank you Dan, thank you Alex, and thank you, Liz for your time tonight, it’s really great to have you guys on.

Dan: It’s always a pleasure, thank you for inviting me, I’m always happy to be here.

Julie: Thank you guys. And as always, we want to thank our listeners for sharing space with us today. We encourage you to share this podcast with any of your friends or family that might also need a bit of encouragement as they navigate their way through life. We’re all in this together.