Connection Over Comparison

My husband hates Facebook.

He sees it as this game of trying to one-up each other, as if life hasn’t happened unless it’s documented: Look at this great vacation I went on! Watch my perfect partner and I smooch on the beach. Look at this delicious dinner I’m about to eat. Aren’t you jealous? 

I don’t mean to condemn all social media, because there is a place for it. For example, I will most likely post this on Facebook, giving you access to read these very words. Of course, it helps us to connect. But I notice in my own life that it can also make me feel terribly disconnected. So, what I am advocating for is having balance, connecting face to face in person with people who know us, and noticing when the comparison and jealousy game start to change your mood.

            I don’t hate Facebook as much as my husband does. But I do see what he’s getting at, and it has made me pause. Personally, I would much rather sit across from a friend and talk over coffee. I would like to stop by and hang out with my parents and look them in the eye and feel known. So then, why is it that I find myself mindlessly surfing through this fake version of life that others present? It feels dissociative, passive, deceptively innocuous, and way too easy. One could argue that social media helps us stay connected; people are busy, relationships take effort, and so pressing ‘like’ on a friend’s picture can be all we have capacity for. Sure, that’s not terrible, but is it enough?

From a mental health perspective, we need real and genuine connections with people who love us at our best and at our worst. In a sense, I’m talking about experiencing a secure attachment in relationship. This comes from feeling attuned with another person: feeling understood, accepted, and given space to be oneself even when it is different from the other. It means learning healthy boundaries of where you end and I begin. (More on the topic of boundaries to come!) Therapy can offer attunement, and it can also be found in healthy, secure relationships.

A messy truth about relationships though, is that we are human, and that includes a dichotomy of being both “good” and “bad”. Whereas social media primarily shows the picture-perfect version of what people want to show, reality confronts us with our deficiencies. We are all too familiar with our own failures, ugly underbelly, loneliness, and bowls of top ramen for dinner.

I want to be someone who is bravely vulnerable about my insecurities, and also steadily joyful in what I can offer the world. I seek to hold both the “ideal” me and the “real” me, and choose not to beat up on the real me. Having compassion for my flaws moves me to find positive solutions to improve these. In this way, I choose kindness instead of condemnation. It also opens me up to have compassion and non-judgment for others.

That fear of judgment seems to be at the crux of social anxiety, disconnection, and low self esteem. And with it is this deeper need to be validated by others. We want the hit of endorphins when someone likes what we express, to have what matters to us matter to someone else. Ultimately, we want to feel seen. However, what I argue is that social media does not do a good-enough job of providing what we need.

For, behind it all are the questions: Am I enough? Am I worth being loved? Do I matter?

So often, I hear women asking these questions in various ways as they sit across from me. The answer can only in part be resolved when another exclaims: ‘Yes, Yes, Yes; you are enough!’. The trickier track is that we have to know it deep in ourselves and own it as truth, because no one can take that away.  

Even as I write this, I feel aware of my own desire for perfection and insecure fear of being judged for my writing or content; my desire for validation is real and needs my attention. Being honest about it helps me to dismantle the disappointment that could result from posting this. In that, I know my worth is not how many nods I receive, but acknowledging to myself that I had something worthwhile to say and you can do with it what you please (that boundary line where I end and you begin). In the end, I am advocating for balance, for letting go of comparisons both on and off our screens, for compassion of our flaws, for deeply attuned, in-person connection, and for being enough to ourselves.