Why do I keep comparing myself to my long-ago ex, and how can I make it stop?
January 7, 2012 12:41 PM   Subscribe

My depressed brain uses my ex as a stick to beat me with. Please help it stop.

Background: we dated in high school and the first couple years of college, broke up for the reasons most long-distance high school relationships break up in college (no infidelity, just growing apart). I grappled with depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder during and since college. I’m at a new, good job in a field I’m passionate about, and a long-term partner who I love. Ex is quite driven, ended up doing lots of international living, is now working somewhere prestigious abroad; these are things I’d like to do, but haven’t felt okay doing because my anxiety gets pretty awesomely bad in new situations. We’re not really in contact, and I have no desire to be with Ex again.

However. Especially since I moved to this new job and new city a few months ago, I’ve been experiencing heightened anxiety and depression. One favored method of my depression/anxiety is to compare me inadequately to others, and a lot of times it’s my ex. Hearing mention of things said ex is doing or has done, or places they have been, can bring me down, and, increasingly, can feel like a total sock in the gut. I don’t just mean mutual friends saying “Ex is doing ___,” I mean mentions of a country where Ex traveled, even if it’s just, say, on the news. There have been a couple days when it’s triggered a total spiral of misery, but there are also just times when I’ll feel like shit for a minute and move on, or times I’ll brush it off without a second thought.

I have theories as to why this ex has started taking on significance (I haven’t always felt it this strongly, but I’ve had a muted version of these feelings a couple times since our breakup), notably that I’m not yet thriving in my new city and I compare that to the imagined international successes of Ex. We started from the same place, and I guess my depression thinks we should be equally successful by now. I need help stopping this semiconscious jealousy, not least because I don’t really care about this person in any other way, and it feels… embarrassing to have emotional engagement of this type with an ex that I have otherwise let go. If you have any ideas, books, or techniques to suggest, I could use them. I guess my question is "how can I make it stop?"

I had a therapist in Old City, am trying to see someone for anxiety+depression through my insurance but it’s taking a while. I should note that college was three years ago. Throwaway email: jerkbrain@gmail.com
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (11 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Did you read the Harry Potter series? Boggarts are shape-shifters who disguise themselves as your worst fear in order to scare yu (and protect themselves). These thoughts are like a boggart that prefers causing depression instead of fear. In the HP books, the best response to a boggart is laugh at it. So I suggest working on a mental picture of a little boggart hiding inside of a projection of your ex, trying to depress you. When you get these thoughts, bring this picture to mind and say to yourself "Aha! I know who you really are. You can't use her to trick me into getting depressed!" then picture the image of the ex collapsing and the exposed boggart running away to hide.
posted by metahawk at 12:55 PM on January 7, 2012 [11 favorites]


Hmm, the comparing-self-to-others cycle is toxic. The harsh perspective of the false "third person."

When I was in my 20s (with very symptomatic depression) I had this terrible habit of comparing myself to people I thought were "cool" and who were totally unlike me -- e.g. world travelers (like your comparitor), rock climbers, surfers, adventure types. Or -- some days it might be people who write fiction, or people who are intrepid journalists. Turns out I am an big-brain coffee-drinking magazine-reading city-living crossword-playing helping-others office-working homebody. Getting older and more living-in-one's-skin-ish really really helps.

Can you imagine yourself as your sweet child self, feel love for that child self? You would want that child to be her best unique self, and not to compare herself harshly to others who are just totally different people with different characteristics. Even if there were another beautiful child who was an adventuresome traveling soul, you would not compare one to the other.

Or -- can you imagine situating yourself sort-of physically within your innermost self, try to pull yourself into that core self. Your unique and beautiful perspective, from your two eyes and ears, your own context. And/related: I -- me me me -- have got a good job in a field I'm passionate about, how cool is that???!!! Do not let yourself float up to that judge sitting on some outer space planet looking down and judging you.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 1:45 PM on January 7, 2012 [12 favorites]


You can give the cognitive approach that ClaudiaCenter suggests a shot, but it seems to me that when your brain just keeps running on this kind of obsessive thought track despite the fact that you are aware that you do it and are quite insightful about why it happens, that you may need medication to help you remap your thought patterns. When you get medical help, ask your doctor about the possibility of meds.
posted by orange swan at 2:13 PM on January 7, 2012


Is there any way for you to identify the "third person" claudiacenter refers to?

It's possible that in your past - maybe during the time you were with your ex, or during the time things were ending (or it could well have preceded the ex-era) - there was someone in your life who was important to you, who judged you harshly. If so, and you believed them on any level, you may be hearing them now when you are stressed or unsure of yourself.

For some reason the mean judgey voice I hear* is that of my brother's wife, who first found me wanting back when I was about 14. I was in my 30s before I recognized my own self-critical voice as this other person whose outspoken negative opinion of me I had internalized so many years earlier.

I still hear it now & then but since i know where it's rooted in my head, it's much easier to laugh it off. My brother's wife found our entire family wanting and is in general an unkind person, so her opinion of me doesn't carry much weight now, but it was painful back then, and that pain does bubble up from time to time in the form of self-criticism.

*fortunately I do not literally hear her shrill, nasally voice.
posted by headnsouth at 2:21 PM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


Here's the thing--our self-regulating mechanism is largely out of the control of our conscious minds. Its a feature, not a bug, because if we could shut it down at will, it wouldn't be effective.

The problem is that someone in your past (parent!) set that system to a level where it interferes with effective living.

What to do? I suggest learning to recognize the "Ex voice" and everytime you see it say this silently to yourself: "I am acknowledging this Ex voice, but I am not required to accept what it says as true. There is no rule that says I have to value myself in a way that focuses on the types of places I've been or the recognition of others "

Also, if there are a lot of powerful emotions that go along with this, acknowledge those feeling but realize they are likely from a past, not a current situation."

More importantly, you made your decisions for a reason. That reason is no better or worse than the reasons your ex made the decisions they did.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:28 PM on January 7, 2012


I just read something today that might help....it went something like this:

Are you comparing someone else's highlight reel with your backstage scenes?


You have no idea what Ex could be struggling with and in comparing yourself to Ex's supposed successes you are not being fair to yourself. Muse on that a mite.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 2:36 PM on January 7, 2012 [11 favorites]


Is there something you would like to achieve for yourself and could be working on?
posted by tel3path at 2:57 PM on January 7, 2012


Your real life is calling you. You want to travel and have the success that ex is having and yet you don't. You keep thinking about him because a huge part of you knows that you are not where you are supposed to be in life.

I would rather do anything than be afraid. I've been shackled by anxiety and panic attacks for most of my life. I'm finally at a point now that it's under control, because I pushed myself. I make myself talk to strangers, I make myself go places alone, I make myself talk to people that I admire.

I guess I'm luckier than you- chronic health problems and having children with a horrible abuser that still won't leave me alone even though we have been divorced for 4 years has kept me from going to college and even getting close to traveling. You are not burdened with all the crap that I am. Live free for all the women who can't. Call ex up, where ever he is, tell him that you think his life is cool. Ask if you can come visit him for a bit and see what it's like living the dream. And then do it. At least that way you will know what your life should look like up close. And maybe he can help you with your career.
posted by myselfasme at 2:59 PM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


Delete your facebook account.
posted by irishcoffee at 6:34 PM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


From a commenter who'd prefer to be anonymous:
So, at my company's holiday party, I had this profound moment of realization when I was walking around the room chatting with people. I was wearing the seriously most amazing dress I have ever put on my body and everyone was giving me lots of positive attention and I was feeling tall, thin, blond, stacked, and outrageous. I saw one guy notice me and mouth "wow," etc. And I thought to myself, there are probably people at this party who are looking at me and feeling jealous because I look absolutely fantastic and everyone is noticing me and my tits are like fucking out there and my hair is working and I probably look like the whole package. And what none of those people know is that my fucking hemorrhoids are just gushing bright red anal blood.

My advice to you when you think of your ex is to picture a shocking amount of crimson blood spurting out of your ex's anus. That may not literally be happening, but some equivalent fuck up poisons everyone's existence, however happy, beautiful, or successful they seem from the outside. The map of the world is smeared with the anal leakage of your ex's hemorrhaging anus. Not an image that inspires much jealousy.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:23 PM on January 7, 2012 [7 favorites]


I see two issues which are contributing to your current pain and which left unaddressed will likely lead to future pain - you are obsessed with what you haven't got more so than with what you have, and you are overly focussed on self. Rather than obsess over all of the things that you don't have (and that others do) now would be a good time to take stock of all of the wonderful gifts life has bestowed upon you so far. Try to replace some of your jealously and longing for what you do not have with gratitude for what you do have (say for instance a lack of bleeding anal ulcers).

Obsession with what we lack, with desire for material or other gain, is really a subset of obsession with self. You seem overly worried about yourself, what you have, what you will do, how you feel, etc. It is amazing how paying a little attention to others, their needs, their wants, pays huge dividends to one's own self.

Every day try noticing at least one gift in your life and doing one nice and unselfish thing for someone else. For instance, while treating someone with cancer the other day, I reflected upon my general good health. That seems pretty big, but on others days it might be something smaller, like a flower on a plant outside my door blooming. The size of the thing seems less important than that it be noticed, that you are consciously aware of the gift. This Christmas people were paying other people's lay-away accounts. Wow, that is pretty generous, and beautiful. A smaller act could be doing the dishes when it is someone else's turn.

You have come here with a specific obsession, but I think that if you attend to the basics of your obsessions with what you lack and self, then the specific problem will fade away. That to me seems just a symptom of inward thinking that you can easily turn around by focusing a healthy portion of your energy on making others feel good and by finding gratitude in the benefits life has already bestowed upon you.
posted by caddis at 6:13 AM on January 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


« Older To API or not to API   |   How to restrict Wordpress RSS feeds Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.