Social Media and the Comparison Trap for Gen X Women (Ep. 49)

0:00 Okay, gen X, that's us. We're in midlife, I think we're rocking it, but we didn't grow up with social media, right. We grew up with trapper keepers and pen and paper and calling on the phone when even your parents might answer the phone the phone when even your parents might answer the phone. We didn't grow up with it, but we have embraced it. I feel like our generation has really embraced everything that has happened in our lifetime, which is just tremendous technological change, and that's great that we've embraced social media and we've embraced this whole life online.

0:44 As long as you are not allowing it to make you feel bad, so let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind your Midlife Podcast.

1:27 I enjoy social media. I like to see what my friends and family are up to. I like the fact that I actually am sort of I'm using air quotes in touch with people from high school and college and grad school that you know I might not really have ever kept in touch with them otherwise. I like that. I like motivational quotes. I like comedy. I am a huge, huge, huge fan. Maybe you heard the comedy episode a week or two ago with Lynn Harris, but I'm a huge fan of stand-up comedy, of laughing in general, so I look for that on my social media.

2:11 I like cute animals, especially guinea pigs. I've had two guinea pigs in my life and I love them. So I love to look at all of that on social media and I hope you have things that you enjoy. But sometimes I feel my mood starting to change. When I open up social media and I will not call out any one particular platform because it absolutely can happen on any of them. It doesn't matter whether it's Instagram, facebook, tiktok can happen on any of them. It doesn't matter whether it's Instagram, facebook, tiktok, whatever else.

2:54 Those are the only ones coming to mind at the moment. It doesn't matter, you may be seeing different things, but it can happen with any of them I can feel my mood changing and a lot of times I'll pick up my social media when I need a little break from something that I'm doing, or maybe I have a few minutes before something else, or maybe I just want to see what people are up to, and so I have a quick look and sometimes that's fine. But sometimes I start in with a comparison. Look at how happy they are. Look at that fun thing they're doing. Look at how smart that person is about advertising. I bet her business must be huge.

3:34 I bet it's growing faster. Look at how great she looks in that picture. She, I guess, looks like that all the time. Why don't I look like that all the time? You hear it. It comes basically from the idea that I could never whatever fill in the blank, because I see someone else doing something and I'm comparing myself and I'm not measuring up. In my mind, it's only in my mind, it's only in your mind. We're comparing ourselves with what we see, and this is mostly social media.

4:16 But I don't want to confine us to just that topic. It could be someone in your life that you see at work or that you see in some other setting that you compare yourself to. Given the information that you have, I do think social media is where most of the comparison trap comes from for us nowadays, though, and we're going to talk about why that is, but here's where this comparison problem comes from, because, of course you, you know we're smart women. You know that you are your own person, you know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, you know that there is no reason you need to be the same as anyone else.

4:59 But just knowing that factually doesn't mean that that's how we're acting, and it doesn't mean that that's what our subconscious brain is working from. There's probably other stuff hidden in there. Your brain wants to be safe, and thank goodness I mean our brains do some amazing work every single day to keep us safe. First of all, subconsciously, our brains are running. All our body processes right the blood is flowing, the heart is beating, all the things are happening, we're breathing in and out. Thank goodness we don't have to actively think about all of that and then the brain is also filtering the input in your environment 24 hours a day things that you would just never get anywhere if you had to process all of this.

5:57 So right now, I'm sitting in my office at my house, and there's a window to my side. There's windows behind me, there's pictures on the wall, there are papers on the desk and other things around the room, there's funny pillows on the sofa behind me, there's just all sorts of stuff going on, and my reticular activating system in my brain is filtering through all of that and picking out the things that I need to pay attention to, and typically it's picking out the things that maybe are relevant to what I'm doing right now. So I'm noticing the light and the computer and the recording and not really anything else.

6:41 Or it's picking out things that match with what I believe about the world. It's not going to notice the things that don't make as much sense to it or that don't match with what I know about the world. So our brains want us to be able to fit in and our brains want us to be able to move through life in a safe manner, and that's all good until it kind of gets extreme. So back when we were kids which was, I imagine, in the 70s or 80s for most of us we probably got very good as kids and as teens and maybe in college, at scanning our environments, at walking into a situation and being able to see who is safe, what is safe, maybe who I am not so sure about who do I want to meet, who do I want to hang out with what looks fun?

7:44 Sure about who do I want to meet, who do I want to hang out with what looks fun? We can tell that pretty quickly when we're in an environment where we are personally with people. We can walk up to a restaurant and decide whether we want to eat there. We can walk into a gathering of friends and decide who we want to talk to, and we're also getting a full picture of those people. Obviously, we don't know their deep, dark secrets. There's always stuff about everyone's life that we don't know. Hence, please always be kind, but hopefully you see my point we get almost like a 3D picture, whereas if we're looking online, we're getting just a flat 2D picture of people.

8:29 And we're trying, and our brains are trying, to do this. We're trying to go online and we're trying to identify who is safe, what is safe, who do I want to meet or hang out with? What looks fun, who looks fun? And we're trying to do that with two dimensional information not the full, whole picture, body, whole person three-dimensional information, and it might work sometimes. We definitely I've definitely met people. I feel the need to do air quotes. There too, met people online who've become great connections.

9:12 I can think of people who are coaches just like me. I can think of people who've been on the podcast that I really connected with. I can think of kind of friends, of friends that I've connected with. It does happen that you meet people online and you get to know them. So I'm not saying we can't do that, but I'm saying we're not seeing the full picture, we're not seeing the whole person. So it's not quite so easy to kind of get a vibe from someone and just know I'm seeing this person in their real habitat, as their real self. What do I mean by it's not the whole person. I think now we know this right.

9:53 Social media has been around for a long time. We know that all of us, for the most part, are putting our highlight reels I'm going to call it on social media. We're putting the fun trip and the smiley picture and the picture that makes us look good and the exciting news about whatever it is. That's what we're putting on social media. We're putting the inspirational quote. I do this too. That's what we're all doing and, quite frankly, if that wasn't what we were all doing, I don't know how much we would like it. Imagine if you opened up a social media app and you saw everything was sad, complaining, negative, annoying.

10:44 Well, you wouldn't want to be there, and I mean, we get that way sometimes when we go through rough periods, but you wouldn't want to be there. If that's what everybody was doing, why would you do that to yourself? So it makes sense that we're sharing the happy things, and I love the fact that we get to celebrate with people and we get to enjoy with people, and when people share something sad, we get to help them. That's great too. For the most part, though, we're seeing the moment that someone picked that shows them in their best light and shows the best angle to take a camera angle, example and shows the best piece of news, and behind that, they could be sad about something else, and we don't know.

11:29 I could tell you I am, and I wouldn't necessarily think you would know. So, for example, last year on Instagram if we're not connected on Instagram, find me at Cheryl P Fisher so last year, one of the most viewed reels on my Instagram was one that I just kind of did while I was sitting on my sofa one day, and I put the camera way down low and aimed it up at myself, so you can imagine the chin problems that were going on there. My face looked all distorted. And then I lifted it up and I held it high, because, ladies, a high angle is good.

12:10 And I did that all in one reel and my face went from looking weird and gross to looking good, if I do say so myself. And I said it's all about perspective, and I think that resonated with people for two reasons. Number one it's a way to remember that the perspective we look at something from is going to color how we evaluate it and what we think. But number two, we are all so self-conscious about pictures of ourselves when it comes to social media, and this is one of the biggest places we fall into the comparison trap. So if you see a picture of you and your chin looks gross, or your eyes are squinty or your hair is sticking out or whatever number one I can almost guarantee you that no one else thinks that your chin does not look gross, your hair is not weirdly sticking out and your eyes don't look weird.

13:07 But number two, it's just the angle. It's just the angle. Anything that's closest to the camera gets bigger. Farther away from the camera, it gets smaller. That's when you take a 3D person and make them flat. That's what happens. So when we know how to get a good angle, then we love our pictures amazingly enough. But no person in your life looks perfect all the time, always says inspiring things and always has tons of fun. No person, not me, probably not you, no person. We all have challenges. We all have our great hair days and our not as great hair days.

13:50 We all have stuff right. But as we look at all of these highlight reels, if we're not careful, look at all of these highlight reels, if we're not careful, because of the repetition over and over and over, of seeing amazing, amazing, gorgeous, beautiful, amazing, gorgeous, beautiful, we're starting to create beliefs in our subconscious minds that people do have that all the time and that creates a should that we should have that all the time and that creates a should that we should have that all the time Great hair, great clothes, great figure, great job, great success, great family, great friends, great fun, great travel Because by repetition, we're seeing it all the time.

14:35 The danger is we start to believe that that is how life is and once that belief starts to sink in, then our brains are looking for our lives to be like that as well Great all the time. And if you don't see your outside world matching with that, you don't see yourself looking great, feeling great, dressing great, having great fun, getting promotions, winning this, getting the money, whatever, whatever. If you don't see that evidence in your actual, real, 3d life, that everything is great all the time, then you are going to get really upset with yourself.

15:18 And it's not fair because it wasn't true to begin with. So when we catch ourselves saying, well, why do I not look perfect? Or why can't I come up with something to post that's inspiring and everybody likes it? Or why don't I get to go on trips like that? Or why isn't my family that happy? Why don't I get to go on trips like that? Or why isn't my family that happy? We're judging ourselves, and we're judging ourselves based on a comparison that is not real. And when we ask why can't I? The secondary problem, unfortunately, is that our brain is going to look for the answer. When you ask a question like that, your brain's going to go try to find an answer.

16:01 It's going to try to find evidence in your life, evidence in the world that helps you to answer the question. Your brain does not like to be wrong and it does not like to be stumped. So if I go around all the time saying why don't I have these great friends, why don't I get to do fun things, your brain is going to find you an answer. Why you don't Think about that for a minute. It's probably not an answer that you want, so we're going to talk about switching that question. All of this comes from the idea that your brain is keeping you safe, not the idea this is really happening. And safety comes from fitting in. Safety comes from being like others.

16:43 Safety comes from being in the primitive group that all kept each other safe and fed. So, from the brain's perspective, it's really important for us to fit in, but we can't fit in with a reality that actually doesn't exist. So what is the antidote to all this? Am I stressing you out? I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to make a point that this is something we need to pay attention to. The antidote to all this is self-trust and self-belief, and I'm going to give you a few tips just to underscore how important this is, and then we're going to go into a lot more of it over the next few weeks in Patreon and Substack.

17:26 So find Mind your Midlife on Patreon and on Substack and make sure you have subscribed. Okay, so easy for me to say self-trust, self-belief, that's what you need. Okay, bye. How do you do it? You really want to know yourself and often we know ourselves almost in a comparison way, like I'm as athletic as so-and-so, but not as so-and-so. I'm as successful as this one, but not quite as successful as that one. My family is as happy as their family, but not apparently as happy as that family.

18:09 Whatever it is, we almost know ourselves by comparison. We put ourselves on this scale that we've created and we slot ourselves in on the scale. Now, first of all, that scale doesn't exist and you don't have the full story on any of those other people. But second of all, that's not really knowing yourself, because knowing yourself means knowing what you really want, what you really value, really and truly what you value and what you want, and recognizing how things in your life make you feel and what you're telling yourself about those things.

18:52 That's creating those feelings. So this might come from diving more into your faith and trusting in that. It might come from learning how to calm your body and calm your mind. You can do that with tapping, you can do that with meditation and allowing yourself time to think about what do I really want? What actually makes me happy? Why am I telling myself, for example, that I look like a hideous troll compared to all these other women that I maybe went to school with and now see online looking amazing and glamorous?

19:33 Do I want to be amazing and glamorous or am I happy, being comfortable and taking care of my body appropriately? I mean, sometimes, what we're comparing ourselves with we don't even want if we really think about it. The key is to really think about it. So a few tips, that's the big picture Calm your body, calm your mind, recognize the thoughts going on in your head, recognize how things make you feel, recognize what idea kind of piques your excitement. A little bit Doesn't matter if nobody else is doing it, doesn't even matter if nobody else is doing it. That way, all right. So then, as we're gradually getting used to doing that, you need to give yourself kind of some tools to help along the way.

20:20 First of all, if you have someone in your life in a relationship spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend type of relationship or family, or even very close friend, if you have someone in your life that you can talk through this with and share experiences with, that cuts the power of comparison. And in fact, I'm going to give you some statistics, because there have been studies done on this, as you might imagine, where right now, a lot of different organizations are studying social media, studying its effect on anxiety and depression on teenagers, and all of this.

21:05 So there was an analysis done and this analysis included it's what you call a meta-analysis, included over 55,000 participants over a number of years to figure out is there a correlation that is significant at all between online social comparison and concerns about body image. And, as you might imagine, yes, there was a significant correlation. There was another study trying to figure out is there a link between social media comparison, social networking sites, and depression?

21:47 And yes, that was confirmed, there is a link. Interestingly, a study in China found that, even though some of these comparisons we make can lead to depression, can lead to envy, being in a good relationship, like I'm saying, a marriage, a relationship, a strong family relationship, can buffer the effect, buffer the effect. So, gosh, how many times have we talked on the podcast about how it's so important to be in community? You might be married I am you might not be. You might be in a relationship. You might have a sister, a brother, a cousin, a parent, a child, a best friend that gives you the same benefit.

22:34 Being in a good relationship, where they value you and you value them, buffers this effect. I don't know if anybody has figured out why, but I think we could guess, couldn't we? It's because now you're seeing a 3D picture and you see you have evidence that shows you that there is at least one person, and probably more, in your life who values you. That cuts the power of all this comparison. So community, please community. What else can you do? Notice your triggers. So I'm not saying not to use social media.

23:14 We can certainly fall into the comparison trap in real life. As I said at the beginning, I just think this is mostly what we're dealing with right now. If you notice yourself with your mood kind of going in the toilet when something you are doing is starting to make you feel bad, make a note of it. Now, this is probably not a journal that you would really want to keep for very long, but maybe for a week or for two weeks on a note in your phone. Make a note. If you've been doing something and you catch yourself starting to feel kind of you know what I mean Bad about yourself, or depressed or uninspired, what were you doing when that started to happen?

24:04 Make a note of it and see if you can find a pattern and figure out what your triggers are, because the more you know right, if you know what your triggers are, you can avoid them. You can also curate what you see on your social media. This is one of the reasons I enjoy TikTok, because I have very carefully scrolled on by stuff I didn't want to see, liked stuff I did want to see, and it does what I want. I get a lot of comedy on my TikTok, so it's like a comedy break, and I'm aware there's all sorts of other stuff there, but it doesn't show it to me. I would also say find people who seem more real and authentic.

24:45 Can you really know that for sure? No, but if you notice them every now and then, just being real and not always showing the perfect version, okay, maybe that's good. Reality over glam. And the other thing that has really helped me and I'm not always great about this is to set an intention before I go on social media, or before I go into a group event, or before I go to a networking event All of those places are where comparison might start to happen I set an intention. What am I doing there? Am I looking for connection? Am I looking for inspiration? Am I looking to laugh or just kind of take a break? Because if I've decided that ahead of time and again social media or real life then my brain's like all right, this is what we're looking for and it's not going to pay attention as much to the other stuff.

25:37 Try it. Setting an intention before you walk into a situation online or in real life, is powerful. Okay, so oftentimes the comparison trap is particularly potent, particularly powerful when something is going on in our lives that is either new or is really really tough. Some emotional upheaval is going on and that sends us down the path of looking at other people and asking why not? So I promised you I'd come back to that. We need to figure out how to ask our brains different questions. Maybe it's how can I feel better?

26:18 What can I do right now to move forward? How might this get better? Instead of there's plenty more questions we can think of, but instead of why don't I have that? Why can't I do that? Do you see the difference? The answer to those first questions maybe your brain, once you calm it down, is going to come up with some great ideas. They often do. The second group of questions is just going to tell us why we stink, and we don't need anything more to tell us that we do that enough. So think about the questions you're asking yourself. And this is just pausing, catching your emotions, catching your thoughts, just like I help you to do in the story cycle.

27:00 So grab the story cycle resource if you don't already have it. Cherylpfishercom. Slash story cycle. Come and join us in the collective Subscribe on Patreoncom. Slash MindYourMidlife or MindYourMid midlife dot substack dot com. Same resources. This month in September, I am doing a live video series for paid Patreon and Substack subscribers on what to do when your job situation has suddenly changed. So many people have asked me to do this, so that's coming soon this month. Make sure you're in there so that you can grab it, because talk about a time when you could fall into the comparison trap.

27:44 Why me? Why, like they, have this great job? I'm a smart person. I don't understand all that kind of stuff, so I'm going to help you in there with tapping to calm down, to figure out how to move forward. We're going to go through a whole series on what to do and make sure you've hit the follow button, because the next episode of Mind your Midlife. I have a physician's assistant joining me to talk to us about hormone health in midlife. She works specifically with midlife women about this exact issue and does not affect all of us, so I'll see you then. In the meantime, slow down, notice what's going on around you, what's going on in your head, and let's create something amazing.