Do You Compare Your Relationship To Others? Then THIS is for YOU (ROCD/Anxiety)

I understand comparisons so well, I used to look at couples all the time and compare myself and feel a complete feeling of dread in my stomach and anxiety that would spin me into obsessive thinking or spin me into feeling that I wasn't enough, that my relationship wasn't enough, and that somehow something was wrong with me and my partner.

If you are here because you compare yourself, if you compare your relationship to other people, you are not alone. And this is such a good place to be right now. My intention is to somehow bring about a little bit more healing, to be able to take you through a little bit of a journey through an interactive exercise that we'll be doing together to help start to rewire your brain to offer you a different perspective. When you step out into the world, when you go on social media, when you see other couples when you see other people around you and you start to compare if you are here, because you compare yourself, if you compare your relationship to other people, you are not alone.

I hope that this video will offer you a little bit more wisdom and help your heart when it feels really fearful and constricted, when you start to compare yourself to other people and when you start to feel like you and your relationship are not enough, that something is wrong with you, that something is wrong with your relationship. I hope that this will offer you some more clarity and understanding.

So before we dive into today's video, I'm going to just invite you to take a moment and pause and just take a couple of nice deep breaths. Maybe throughout the day you've been running around and this is the first time where you're sitting down and you're present within yourself. Congratulations. You being here is literally taking this courageous step to start the healing process. And I'm going to help you today and starting to rewire your brain and start to create a different pathway.

When you start to compare, when you start to see other people and you start to feel a feeling of anxiety in your stomach, feeling like you need to start to obsess or start to run away. So just take a moment and take at least five nice deep breaths. And as you do so, feel the ground underneath you, feel your belly expanding, feel your heart. So take a couple of nice deep breaths. If you feel comfortable, close your eyes and feel the inhalation and exhalation of your breath. You are alive, you are here, and you always have these opportunities to awaken, to change your neural pathways, to come into a deeper state of healing and awakening within yourself and your relationship.

So before I start this exercise, I really want to say that there's no right or wrong way to do this. You're surprised by your answers and you notice yourself judging yourself. I'm going to invite you to really use that opportunity to give yourself just more compassion and kindness. You are human. In the next couple of minutes, I'm going to be showing you a bunch of photos, specifically couples from all around the world. And there's a couple of things that I'm going to invite you to do as you watch and look at these photos. The first thing I'm going to invite you to ask yourself is do these couples look happy? Do they look like they have it all together? Ask yourself what reaction comes to your mind when you believe that these couples have something that you don't. They are happy and you are perhaps lacking something within yourself and also your relationship. And I'm going to really just take this moment to give yourself compassion for whatever comes up. There is no right or wrong answer, but just look at these photos in a simple way. Ask yourself these questions.

So when you do this exercise, you most likely saw these couples and saw that they were really happy that they maybe had it all together, that they probably weren't suffering and that they were so in love and they looked so blissful and that many of them look like there was absolutely nothing wrong with their relationship. If you looked at these photos on a regular day, especially on social media, and it had a caption that was really nice and loving, you probably went more into a comparison mode and tried to compare yourself with your relationship.

And maybe there's a part of your brain that tried to figure out what it was that you were lacking and went into obsessive thinking. And I get it. I understand comparisons so well. I used to look at couples all the time and compare myself and feel a complete feeling of dread in my stomach and anxiety that would spin me into obsessive thinking or spin me into feelings that I wasn't enough, that my relationship wasn't enough, and that somehow something was wrong with me and my partner.

I really want to add in that especially in this time period that we're in and in the society, we are literally being programmed to compare ourselves constantly to other people. So if you do this and if you did this, please give yourself that compassion, give yourself that kindness. You are not alone in the journey of comparison or even judging other people. And you're not doing it because you're wanting to be mean or you're trying to find reasons as to why your partner is not enough in a purposeful, intentional way.

You're actually doing it because you're afraid, afraid that you might be missing out, or are afraid that if you're not feeling the feelings that other people are feeling, then there's something wrong with you and your relationship and that you most likely may have to lose your partner. I want you to take a moment and think of the thousands of photos that you see on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. I want you to think of how these photos that we see on social media or that we see in front of us or the couples that we see in front of us start to become subconscious when we constantly compare ourselves feeling as though we are not enough. Maybe we scroll through a hundred photos a day unconsciously on social media, which becomes seven hundred times a week, which becomes about two thousand eight hundred a month through thirty three thousand six hundred photos that we most likely look at throughout the year, that we compare ourselves to feeling as though there's something wrong with us or our relationship.

We do this because we unconsciously look at other people and we mistakenly believe that they have it all together, that we don't have it together, that they have something that we don't, and that inherently there's something wrong with us and that we need to fix ourself and our relationship. Notice how this happens. We may innocently see a photo. We unconsciously judge or compare ourself to this person or this couple. We react asking ourselves why we feel a certain way, and then we put shame and judgment on ourselves, which spins us into obsessive thinking, which spins us into compulsions, constantly bringing about this pattern that we need to check more and more to make sure that we feel a certain way to validate that we are in the right relationship or that we are enough. Though why do we do this? Why do we even compare if we know that this comparison is actually hurting our self and our relationship? I first want to bring up the fact that there's actually nothing wrong with comparison. There's also nothing wrong with shameful comparison, just more so that it hurts us and it actually hurts our relationship. So as humans, we are actually meant to compare. We're actually meant to judge other people. Yes, as humans and as animals. We are actually born to compare. We are born to judge. Why do we do this? Because it helps us survive. It's not our way to be mean or not a way to put other people down. But if we compare ourselves to another animal or another person, we can notice if our tribe is healthy or not, if we are healthy or not, and if we can survive, we know that we still have this reptilian brain. So with the Awakening to love method, we are constantly working with it in a way to actually help us awaken, not to push it aside or get upset about it or try to fix or erase it, because that's not going to happen. We need to be able to work with the reptilian brain in order for us to actually come into a deeper, higher state of consciousness. Now, the problem, again, is in comparison, our judgment. The problem in the suffering lies when we start to compare with the feeling that there's something wrong with us or that there's something inherently wrong with the other person.

Now, again, the problem and the suffering really don't lie in comparison or judgment. It lies in the feelings of feeling unworthy and shameful. When we see another person and we go into that comparison, instead of allowing others to inspire us or allowing our triggers to help us awaken, the shameful comparison goes into feeling as though there's something deeply wrong with them. Feeling guilty, feeling shameful, and then pushing ourselves and pushing others away because we feel as though we are not enough, we might then shame ourselves and feel bad and then start to go into a victim mentality, feeling as though everyone has a better and you have it worse than everyone else.

How do we start to work with this comparison? How do we use it in order to help us awaken? When we have gone into shameful comparison, we have forgotten five inherent truths about ourselves. The first truth is that shameful comparison can help us become aware of our own stories and our own unconscious beliefs that can drive us throughout the world and drive us into different behaviors and actions when we can use the shameful comparison as a little mindfulness bell telling us that our stories or our beliefs are somehow distorted, then we can use those stories as a way to start to question our distortions and to move more into our wholeness and our love.

We need to remember that our stories are really our perception of how we see the world, that the great news is that we're able to work with these stories. We're able to work with these beliefs in order to start to change our perspective on how we see the world and how we actually see ourselves. The second part is that we've forgotten that life is great. Things aren't so black or white, so shameful. Comparison is pointing us toward remembering that life lies in the gray. But does that mean it means that everyone and everything has a story. Things aren't so one way or the other. So black or white, everyone experiences life in a very complex, difficult, intriguing, and challenging way. And nothing is one or the other. Things are moving. Things aren't just static, just like you, just like me. The third truth we've forgotten when we go into simple comparison is that we all suffer, which means that we are all connected. We have forgotten that like all humans, as all of the photos that you might have looked at, all the people that you've compared yourself to, that they suffer, too. And that doesn't make you less alone. It actually makes you more connected because it means that as a human species, as a collective, we are all doing this together.

Shameful comparison brings us into the dark corners of the beliefs that make us feel as though we are not enough and that there is something inherently wrong with us. The fourth truth that we've forgotten when we go into a shameful comparison is that we've forgotten that we are enough, just as we are shameful. The comparison shows us the dark corners of ourselves that feel lacking the feel as though we are constantly not enough and that there's something wrong with us. We may believe when we go into this comparison that others have it more, that they are better, that there's something wrong with you, and that they are in a state of abundance and you are not. This leads us to the fifth truth, which is that we have forgotten who we are. Magical, incredible, beautiful, unique people on this planet. We compare with shame because we have in that moment forgotten our magic, forgotten our uniqueness, forgotten our empowerment, and forgotten the love and the presence that we already have within.

Now, knowing this, I want to tell you something. All of the people in those photos that I showed to you were struggling, suffering, many debilitated at that time of the photo by our ROCD and by their suffering. In fact, some of them sent us their stories telling us that at that exact moment, at that exact time, they were suffering so much, but they felt so alone and they felt as though they had to fake a smile or pretend to everything. It was OK, when in fact, deep down they were suffering and debilitated with doubts of our ROCD. But we wouldn't have known this, not at first glance, unless we allowed herself to be an observer and allowed herself to watch the judgments and the comparison that comes up, which is so very human. But we wouldn't have noticed this because typically our judgments and our comparison cloud our minds. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through these photos again and what I'm going to invite you to do altogether with all of these thousands of people who are watching this exact video, is to place your hand on your heart, take a couple of deep breaths and look at these photos with a different perspective and a different lens. You notice yourself going into shameful comparison.

Remember that you never know what others are going through just because someone looks happy, just because someone looks joyful or just because someone looks like they have. Altogether, they most likely don't. They're most likely hiding something or feeling a difficulty that you have no idea about, and it doesn't mean that you're not going to judge or compare because you're human and you're going to do this. But if that judgment in comparison brings you into a place of shame, brings you into a place where you feel as though you are less than or you are not worthy, then it's a great time to look at that trigger as a mindfulness bell to brig more recognition to the truth that you are worthy and that you are not, and that you are so loved just as you are.

It's so important to remember that our stories, our beliefs all stemmed from the past in many cases are how we really perceive and view the world. But it's also so important to remember that we are all connected and we all experience difficulty. We all experience challenges. And we are really in an era where social media and what we see online can really skew how we see ourselves and how we see our relationships. We are not alone. We all cope. We all go through different protective mechanisms and we all go through this challenge of being human. So let's use this exercise. Let's use this challenge. Let's use this comparison. Let's use these difficulties as a way to awaken deep into the essence of who we already are, enough worthy and just human.