the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Today’s prompt from Onsite is : “Comparison is extremely common. How often do you hear an internal voice comparing yourself to others or different versions of yourself? What does this voice do for your mental health? How do you think quieting this voice would affect you?”

I often hear an internal voice comparing myself to others or different versions of myself. Plus, oftentimes, it’s quite subtle and the thought moves through my brain at lightning speed. In the short term, it makes me lower my self-esteem and makes me feel less confident. Overtime, I believe it makes me fearful, harbors shame, and keeps me close-minded to things that can really allow me to flourish and grow.

To be honest, I used to think quieting this comparative voice would be the most effective thing to gaining confidence. However, recently I’ve been learning about how all parts of ourselves need to be met with compassion, even the critic. Some in religious circles may even call this part of ourselves the “devil”. However, to that, I would like to use one of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous quotes: “Do I not destroy my enemies by making them my friends?” Granted, this quote has been interpreted in many ways. However, I’ve always looked at this quote as dispelling animosity with relationship. This is not to say that we “make friends with the devil”, but to befriend the part of ourselves that wants to self-critique, or the part of ourselves that “wants to work with the devil”. I believe whenever there is a tendency toward degrading and dehumanization in any kind of way, there is pain, grief, and heartbreak underneath that tendency. Do we want love and compassion to be the reigning forces in our hearts by allowing God to meet us in our pain and learning to meet ourselves with that same kind of love, or do we want shame and perceived self-unworthiness to grow – further pushing us into easy antics of darkness?

Although in some instances I think quieting the comparative voice is incredibly necessary to achieve something or seek safety, quieting the comparative voice in the long term can look like ignoring or suppressing part of ourselves in the grand scheme of things. Something I notice I do sometimes is that in the moment, I may actually block out a self-critical voice, which in that time was the most helpful thing to do for my mental health. However, if I am giving myself the space and capacity to self-reflect, it could be helpful for me to think back on that moment and to be curious about where that critique originated from. Not only would this retrospective reflection allow me to treat myself more compassionately, but I think it would also help to lessen the frequencies of these self-critiques going forward.

This ended up being a much longer post than expected – so thanks for reading if you did !