"For myself, I am a hard act to follow"
Comparison is the thief of joy unless you're comparing yourself to your other self
This is just a quick couple of thoughts I’ve have lately.
After I first read Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, I’m reasonably sure that I spent the next several hours lying prone on the floor, unable to form another thought. Though I am a voracious consumer of media of many types, it’s rare that I come across a piece of text that is just. So. Right.
It made me feel like there was no purpose in me ever writing on mental illness again because it had all be written already. Like it was so perfect, there would be nothing left to say. But it’s also a book that’s nearly 30 years old, which means like, there is in fact plenty more to be written. And anyway, there should probably be a proliferation of writing on the subject because, you know, it’s complicated.
Anyway, one of my favorite parts of the book is when the author describes comparing herself to, well, herself. Here’s part of it:
I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.
This is very profound to me, because we are often told not to compare ourselves to others. To remember that everyone has a mess going on behind the scenes. That no parent is all matching outfits and tidy, tiny meals. That no workplace is all giant windows and saying “cheers!” with La Croix cans in hand. That no relationship is all kissy pictures and ~special days~.
Here is the challenge of modern life and mental health. Because one of the first things most of us do every single day is open up an app specifically designed to present an ultra-refined highlight reel. But it’s double hard for those of us who inhabit multiple headspaces because we not only have everyone else to look at, we also have ourselves.
Like, you not only have to feel shame about your messy house or your sticky children or your shitty job, you also have to remember that one time you were manic that you were vacuuming your house at 1am and also thought it was a good idea to send some emails while you were up because lol why not.
Last weekend we went to go see a poetry reading of a poet I’ve loved for like, more than a decade, and all I could think about what how I used to feel things really deeply and make things based on those feelings and now I don’t anymore and I guess that’s a good thing? Because when I am feeling things that deeply I am also wont to spontaneously cry mid-sentence?
Again, from An Unquiet Mind:
I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations
When I’m at my most even, I am like, 60% as productive as I am when I’m manic. I am less creative. I am less driven. I make less stuff. Which is fine, most of the time, because I also don’t spend money I don’t have. I don’t ruin relationships with my inability to contain an emotion. That’s the trade-off.
Therapies over time have changed on this front. A lot of people among earlier generations were told that the bad side-effects of getting medicated were shitty, yes, but you just had to shoulder them and thank your lucky stars for your newly flattened affect. In the 1950s, the entire idea of treating mental health issues was to make them go away entirely (see: ECT).
You were not, though, encouraged to look back or ever to make those comparisons. For many, many decades, people in therapy would be encouraged to strive to be their best (read: most sane) selves and not consider the alternative.
In the 1960s, this changed thanks to Dr. Aaron Beck, the Granddaddy of CBT and an early believer in actually probing at the difficult parts.
“Cognitive therapy seeks to alleviate psychological tensions by correcting misconceptions,” Beck wrote. “By correcting erroneous beliefs, we can end the overreactions.”
As I think about this, it occurs to me that this is precisely why, once people start to feel better, they decide to go off their meds — because unless you are actively going down the rabbit hole of comparison (am I more or less crazy than I was yesterday? Last year? When I was 23 years old and I survived almost exclusively on small pieces of cheese and fell asleep in unusual places?), it’s very difficult to see why it is you are in treatment in the first place. Instead of correcting the erroneous belief, we are striking it from the record.
Like, if you feel better — you feel normal — you may be duped into thinking that you are better, that you are normal. And then that’s when you’re reminded that you are not. As my girl KRJ wrote:
Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.
We’re fortunate to live in a time when people are actively working to unravel the stigma of mental illness, and that psychology is more interested in exploring and processing our brains than literally rewiring them. That leaning into the comparison with ourselves is so acceptable. Because I can tell you that trying to steamroll over the bullshit that your brain puts in front of you is not in any way a recipe for an Instagram-perfect life.