Month: July 2019

10 Tips to Stop Comparison Thoughts

I was listening to a recovery podcast the other day, and the guest had been sober for several years. He was talking about how important his daily routine is to his sobriety. When the host asked him what his schedule was, he started in on this long, exhaustive, daunting routine he does every single morning, without fail.

 It was something to the effect of awaking up at an ungodly early time, then sobriety meditation for forty-five minutes, then running five miles, then mindfully showering, then a healthy organic green juice smoothie, then meal planning for the day – all before 8 a.m. The rest of his day sounded equally daunting, and made me want to just give up and go back to bed.

 In addition to giving up alcohol, the man hasn’t had sugar in five years, he hasn’t ingested gluten for three years, he’s vegan, and he doesn’t eat processed foods. Holy Cow! What else is there? And how could I do all that so I’ll be like him? I can’t.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

And that’s when I started feeling really down on myself. I would love to say I do something similar, but I don’t. I know I shouldn’t eat as much sugar as I do, and my overall diet isn’t really all that healthy, but I can’t seem to change it at the moment.

And I know successful go-getters are up at the crack of dawn saving the world, but I hit the snooze button three times this morning. Sometimes I exercise and sometimes I don’t.

So, when I hear sober people like this guy, why does it make me feel worse about myself? I’m sober. Shouldn’t I be feeling good about myself because I achieved that?

 I never seem to measure up.

I’ve been doing the comparison thing my whole life about everything from my physical appearance, to my college Grade Point Average, to how much money I make, to the success of my children. And it always leaves me feeling inferior and often envious.

It’s not that I don’t want others to experience good things, but I want them too. I think I tend to believe that when someone else experiences success, in whatever form, it limits mine, but it doesn’t. So, I have to remind myself of that and turn it around in my mind.

Turn comparisons into encouragement and hope

There is an infinite amount of all things good in this world – joy, love, peace, hope, and success. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this. And just because someone else has something I also want, doesn’t mean it takes it or keeps it from me.

But I’m not wired that way naturally — to always see the good or positive in situations, especially when I’m in comparison mode. So, I have to intentionally turn others’ experiences into encouragement for myself.

Social media and comparisons – an infinite and vicious cycle

While social media isn’t helping matters, comparison has been with man for as long as we have existed. Social media does take comparison to a whole new unhealthy level though. So if you notice your spirits plummet after scrolling through your news feed or checking Instagram, remember you probably aren’t seeing the whole and true picture.

Tech companies aim to make you feel the anxiety of comparisons

“People are most likely to share peak experiences and flattering news about themselves—what University of Houston psychologist Mai-Ly Nguyen Steers calls “everyone else’s highlights reel”—and tech companies, furthermore, use algorithms to prioritize that very information in social media feeds. The narrow, distorted slice of reality that is displayed on social media is almost perfectly constructed to make viewers feel deficient and discouraged. (Rebecca Webber, 2017, The Comparison Trap, Psychology Today)

We evolved as humans making comparisons for survival

So as it turns out, there’s a perfectly good reason for why we make comparisons, and why it’s so hard to stop. It’s sort of wired into our brains as humans. As we evolved, we naturally compared ourselves to those around us to learn how to survive and live in social groups.

Comparison helped us survive, evolve, and position ourselves with other humans in the world around us. Our literal survival depended on watching others around us and mimicking what they did.


“In their book,” Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both, ” Galinsky and Schweitzer argue that social comparison is an innate human tendency, and, whether it’s the wisest move or not, it’s a big part of the way we determine our own level of happiness.” (Taken from and article in The Cut entitled “It’s Impossible to Stop Comparing Yourself to Your Peers” by Melissa Dahl, 2015.)

 10 really good tips to help mitigate your comparison tendency

  • Learn your triggers and try to avoid them when possible. Start noticing when you have the most comparison thoughts. When do you have those sinking, deflated feelings about yourself or your life? Comparison thoughts are unconscious. We don’t even realize them until we’re feeling down about ourselves, so notice the feelings first, then trace it back to the thoughts behind it.
    • Notice when you’re in the company of certain people who trigger you, those who brag or are pretentious, for example.
    • And what activities/events expose you to socioeconomic conditions/people significantly different than your own?
    • Become very aware when you’re on social media platforms; comparison is epidemic.
  • Use social media purposefully and limit mindless scrolling – maybe even consider a detox from social media? At the very least, limit it to an hour a day — and set a timer!
  • Remember that comparison thoughts are just thoughts, like many others we have over and over again, and you don’t have to believe everything you think!
  • Remind yourself that, like you, others are ‘presenting’ the side of themselves they want you to see. It’s not wrong, dishonest, or inauthentic; it’s just what we do.
  • Accept yourself as you are and where you are — for now. (Especially relevant if you aren’t quite where you’d like to be.) It’s not forever; it’s just where you are right now.
  • Focus on your own garden. You can’t grow flowers in yours when you’re focusing on the garden next door.
  • Remind yourself that this tendency has survived from our evolution, but it’s not necessary or helpful any longer.
  • Create some objectivity by talking to yourself, “There you go again, comparing me.” Then realize truly, that there is no one like you — no one else with your exact DNA.
  • Then “experience your blessings”. Don’t count them, that’s an intellectual exercise and doesn’t feel real.
  • Focus on your strengths, differences, the journey we’re all on, and realize imperfection is the way of human beings. But it’s also human nature not to embrace our inherent imperfection, and that’s where conscious effort to do so is helpful.

Part of creating my “Sober Self” has been the use of these tools when the comparison thoughts hijack me.


First 30 Days – Why we Feel so Bad

5 minute read

I guess it goes without saying that stopping drinking is hard. Really hard. Obviously. That’s why a lot of us don’t do it even when we know we need to.

Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. Today isn’t the day. I just can’t today.

Monday. I’ll do it Monday. New week. New start. I’ll quit Monday, after this weekend.

Next month. I’ll do it next month. Day one will be my first day. I’ll quit then. I’m committed.

After my birthday. It’s time. I have to get a handle on this, so the day after my birthday, I’ll quit. I’ll give myself the best birthday gift that I can. This is going to be the year!

After the holidays. New year. New start. Perfect. I’ll quit for good January 1.

Sound familiar? This was me for many consecutive years – around 20, to be honest. And with each commitment, I honestly meant it.

There was a part of me who really wanted to quit, and a part of me who didn’t.

But I couldn’t, at least not long term, and so I went into several rehabs over the years. (You can read a little about this here.)

It sounds obvious, but the thing I dreaded most about going into rehab, was not drinking, especially for the first several days. Why do we feel so bad? Alcoholics Anonymous describes your state of mind as “restless, irritable, and discontented.” They sure got that right, but times ten for me, or so it felt.

How I hate the feeling of those first days not drinking.

Don’t you? Relentless edginess or an absolute lack of interest in anything – either one is equally miserable in my book.

For me, it went one of two ways – either (A) lacking interest, void of energy, and utter boredom even though I had plenty of distractions.

Nothing to look forward to. If this is sobriety, you can have it!

There’s a reason we feel either relentlessly bored or anxiously aggravated, so read on.

How can you feel both bored and anxious at the same time?

Or the other alternative, (B) jittery, tense and anxious with bouts of agitation verging on anger, punctuated by impatience and extreme irritation. Yep, that pretty much covers it. UGH! Do I want (A) or (B)? Neither.

Nothing feels good.

Such a bad place to be. And just a drink or two would do the trick. Seems like such a simple thing, just one or two.

And as you may know by now, giving into it only strengthens it. It is a fix, I understand that, but it’s temporary, and it means tomorrow, or later, you have the very same situation you have right now.

The problem is that, at the time, I didn’t care about later. I only cared about how I felt now.

Pursuing that type of short-term gratification is a common problem as a person addicted to alcohol. (There’s s good reason for that, but that’s another article topic.)

So, if you’re anything like me, long-term gratification isn’t always foremost in your mind. Sometimes it was, and in some areas of my life, but not with this, and it was very confusing and frustrating.

So, I got curious about my misery while in the last rehab. What’s really happening?  I found out, and for some reason, just knowing what was going on inside my brain and body was enough to just barely tolerate it until it went away.

Why can’t we just go from drunk to sober without feeling like crap?

The short and simplified answer is this: the brain needs homeostasis–stability, balance, equilibrium. And that’s good. It keeps us alive. Body temperature is a good example. If it weren’t for the checks and balances our brains use to keep our body temperature at a fairly steady 98.6 degrees F, organs would be failing right and left, and we never would have made it out of our cave phase.

And while I’m generally glad we have this mechanism in place, when it comes to drinking, it’s not so great. In the trying-not-to-drink-scenario, it’s a serious deterrent to stopping drinking, because we feel so crappy at first.

Our body obviously gets out of homeostasis when we suddenly stop drinking, and it does, unfortunately, take a little time to come back to normal. And, unfortunately again, we can’t skip this part. If we could go straight to feeling okay, we’d do it, no problem. Right?

Your happiness set point needs time to readjust itself.

Back to homeostasis. It’s not immediate. A delicate balance takes a little time to achieve.

In a nutshell, what’s going on is that your capacity to feel happiness – joy, pleasure, or anything good, for that matter, needs to be reset. What used to make you feel good doesn’t right now because that set point was jacked up with alcohol use. Because you’ve most likely been getting a lot of feeling-good chemicals artificially, by using alcohol, and then you’re suddenly not, your mood plummets.

It will reset. It just takes time. So, this is you in the first days without alcohol.

It’s not pleasant, but it’s not permanent.

How long does it take? I think, for me it was probably at around the 15th+ day mark, maybe less. What did I do? Well, I’d like to say I had a secret magic pill. But I didn’t. I hated every minute of it. I just kept thinking, at least now I know the reason for it. It’s temporary. Hurry up brain chemistry – do your thing!

If you’re here now, please don’t give up, because you’re convinced there’s something wrong with you or this is your personality.

You can do this! If I can do it, you can. I am a normal, average person terribly addicted to alcohol for years. I am nothing special. I am no different than you. We are normal human beings having a normal experience.

I could not imagine happiness was possible, when I was experiencing such a dismal beginning to sobriety. And I gave up often over the years, but eventually, I made myself just push through the doubt.

Your brain will change, you just have to ride it out. Try to realize it’s just your brain resetting your happiness point.

It will, and you will feel different and better soon. Please ride it out! Don’t give up now! This is the hardest part. Trust me.


My Story: The Short Version

You know how some people have a more interesting story than others to tell? And you know how some of those stories have absolutely no relevancy to you at all? You get to the end and wish you hadn’t spent all that time reading?

Well, the short short version of my story is this: I was addicted to alcohol for a long time. Now I’m not, and I can tell you how sobriety happened, if you’re interested. There. Now you can leave if you want.

If the short short version hit a nerve, I may be your girl.

We all have a story, right? Some are more interesting than others, but we all have one. So, this is the short version of mine, and it sums up what’s important for you, so you don’t have to wade through a lot of words. Here goes.

What’s really important for you to know is that I was addicted to alcohol for over twenty years. I struggled mightily. I lost a lot, and at times, I wanted to die because of it. It nearly ruined the majority of the best years of my life.

Things are different now, but I need for you to know that I am “legit” when it comes to understanding this alcohol demon.

Over the years, as I tried to figure out why I drank, I swung back and forth like a pendulum, from the disease model to the non-disease model. I tried both philosophies on for size, among other approaches, but nothing really stuck until now.

I wanted to know why I drank, and I wanted secure sobriety.

A few years ago, I finally managed to quit drinking, but I still didn’t feel like it was over. I felt afraid that I was going to relapse at any minute.  I felt like my sobriety was dependent on something or someone outside myself. Sobriety felt too tenuous and uncertain for me to really be comfortable with it. And to be honest, I still had this “little plan” in the back of my mind, that if things got really bad, I might start drinking again.

 I didn’t understand why I drank, and until I understood it deep down, I didn’t feel like I could properly manage it. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was sober, but it wasn’t the joyous and free sobriety I was hearing about and that I had expected to find.

12-Step meetings felt familiar and accepting; but relapse could be right around the next corner.

I was attending AA meetings, but I didn’t completely buy into the philosophy. I always felt accepted as I was, and at times the meetings felt familiar, in a weird way. I think they remind me of going to church when I was growing up.

Eventually, though, I starting needing to understand more about why I drank and how to have secure sobriety. I didn’t trust sobriety granted — or not — by a nebulous “Higher Power”.

Sitting in meetings, repeating words I didn’t fully believe, reminded me of growing up in the Catholic Church. And, frankly, if I was hoping for a “Spiritual Awakening” (AA believes this is necessary for recovery) from that God, I may be in trouble; we weren’t on good terms.

I stuck with it though. I completed all the steps, and got a 1-year chip. Once the drunk fog lifted, I started searching for the underlying reasons I drank.

I didn’t completely believe in the AA/12-Step concept that drinking was because of “character defects” – negative aspects of my personality like fear, selfishness, and dishonesty, which needed to be removed by a “Higher Power”. While I may feel these things at times, they’re normal human characteristics or emotions, and I believed there was more to it.

Who’s to blame?

I felt like putting the blame on my shoulders, even though I was the one doing the drinking, wasn’t effective. Looking for what was wrong with me, didn’t empower me. When people are already blaming themselves for something they can’t understand or even explain, blaming them doesn’t help.

Even after being sober for a year or so, I still felt the need to drink – not an uncontrollable craving or an urge, like when I first quit drinking. No, this was something deeper, underneath. Something was lacking in me, or needed to be filled, completed, made whole or something.

I worried that I would relapse.

And that’s when I realized that the reason I started drinking to begin with, was still there. I had just been covering it up with alcohol, all these years. I had a drinking problem, don’t get me wrong, no doubt. But once the alcohol was removed, the true need remained. That’s what I needed to address.

Fast forward to now, and I have discovered the underlying reasons I drank for all those years.  It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I was drinking, it felt far too complicated and entrenched for me to recognize, much less change.

The point of no return.

I am now not just sober, but I feel Better Than Sober, because I understand and can explain alcoholism. And as contrived and trite as that may sound to you (it would have sounded that way to me if I had read this when I was still addicted), it is truly how I feel.

I don’t crave alcohol. I don’t obsess about drinking anymore, and I’m not afraid to state that. This should be very clear – not feeling the need to drink is not a temporary thing.

It’s a brain thing! Good news: you have one of those.

Addiction is complicated. It can be all-consuming, and it can absolutely wreck your life. But when you understand alcoholism, and how your brain works in relation to it, everything changes. For me, there is no uncontrollable, capricious demon lurking in my psyche just waiting until I let my guard down so it can pounce on me.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I believe there are other people like me, and I want them to feel like they’ve found someone who’s been in the trenches, found a way out, and can help them do the same.

Alcoholism is a lonely existence that only you can change. But when you’re stuck in it, it’s really hard to see how to get yourself out of it. I get you. Keep reading. There is hope, I promise.

The Beginning of the End

Some people believe the addicted are weak. Little do such people realize how strong we must actually be. I know we are braver than even we believe, and more resilient than anyone could begin to imagine. For it is impossible to fathom the incredible strength and character required to be knocked down by your own hand; then get up and face “the enemy” in the mirror again, and again. Day after day . . . until you finally get yourself out of that perpetual self-defeating cycle.

You, my friend, are braver than you believe and stronger than you know.

For most, drinking is pleasant. For many, it becomes a conditioned and sub-conscious habit or association which gets carried away and derails them for a time. But for me, drinking was something much different.

It felt like security, and I don’t know how else to describe it. There were even times it felt like emotional survival. I couldn’t explain it then, but now, it’s very clear. There was a safeness–a surety–it gave me, which was lacking in myself.

I didn’t just look forward to it; I obsessed about it.  Not only did I plan my next drink, I knew the minute I was awake when I was going to feel more at ease with myself–and it couldn’t come soon enough. Once upon a time, I did reward myself with it; but by the time I’d gotten past the first failed rehab, I required it. I didn’t know another way.


Some drinkers know alcohol’s secret power, and we hide that truth with our other secrets.

It didn’t even scratch the surface to say I was “taking the edge off” or “relaxing” or using it as “social lubrication” as some people describe it. The fact that alcohol was so profoundly important to me was another secret to keep to myself. I was ashamed of it.

Drinking felt almost like survival

Look, I had long since departed from the realm of a nice buzz, ok? This was far and away a much more insidious need, with years of pain behind it. So much so that I – like many others – inexplicably, incrementally, and oh so reluctantly put alcohol before everything else. Even though, somewhere in our heart of hearts, we know better – and we want better. We just can’t access that part of us.

At one point or another, some of us put it before our marriages and children, our careers, our health, our safety, our self-respect – everything! Sex, food, personal care/safety – the basic foundations of existence for normal humans, become what feels like a matter of survival, almost, for some. And that was me.

So now for the “highlights” of the rest of my drinking days. If you’ve read the blogs before in this section, you can guess much of what life was like. I don’t feel the need to go into a great deal of detail, but suffice it to say that often it was hell for me, and I’ve no doubt, for those around me.  

A dubious list of shame, and only me  to blame.

  • After the first rehab debacle, I went back to Continuing Education – another thirty days on my own dime, this time. (Remember, I told you I’m a slow learner.) I was sober for a few months. Then not.
  • Consequently, my husband of twenty-two years lost all hope and gave up on me. 
  • My parents/family were bewildered and exasperated. I appeared to be a lost cause. 
  • I wrecked four vehicles, (fortunately, no one was ever injured), and was charged with DUI.
  • Because of the DUI, I did a brief stint in county jail (read that scintillating story here) Quite the experience for a sheltered housewife.
  • I tried SMART Recovery online – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program for addiction. Was sober for a few months. Then not.
  • Consequently, I wound up in ER one night with “lethal amount of alcohol” in my system.
  • Stayed drunk off/on for a few more years.
  • Wound up in the ER with broken ribs – don’t ask. Kept drinking.
  • I got another DUI.
  • Because of that, I halfheartedly attempted suicide trying to fix my problem.
  • As a result, I spent four days in a psych ward.
  • Went into a mandatory Twelve-Step Intensive Outpatient Program. I was sober for a while, using monthly injections of Vivitrol until Insurance quit paying for it.
  • I was drunk off/on again for a couple more years.
  • Finally, I went into the last rehab, where I learned something that began what I now call my personal paradigm shift. This was by no means over, but it was the beginning of the end of this shit-show. You can read what happened there to turn this upside down for me here.

It has indeed been a long, miserably difficult, dirt road.

Somewhere, somehow, I still had hope. Deep inside me, I knew there had to be more to me than this person everyone saw. On the other side of drunk was someone healthy, whole, and happy – I just knew it. We’re all born that way, after all. Aren’t we?

It’s difficult to describe how I felt through all of this. Frustration and fear? Yes.

Embarrassment and shame? Check.

Pain? Yes. A type of pain that you will either understand because you’ve felt it, or you never could. And if you’ve not quit reading yet, you might get it.

Those like me are carrying an inconceivably heavy burden. And we’ve been carrying it our entire lives. We believe it is, indeed, us – because we’ve never been separate from it. An ancient wound we seem to have been born with. It is a part of our personal fabric – who we are.

And so we try to relieve it with alcohol. It almost works for a while, and it’s hard to quit something that almost works.

And we’ll continue until we get to the real problem. Or die with it. Because this feeling was there BEFORE we started drinking. The drink just covered it up, alleviating it briefly.

Deep down, the pain of

  • not being good enough,
  • or not fitting in,
  • not being wanted, accepted, or valued as we are,
  • feeling like something’s inherently wrong with us deep down,
  • and/or vague and persistent emptiness

This feeling is so familiar, and so pervasive, it’s just who we think we are. It has always been there. Read on, friend. I found a way out of that feeling and out of the alcohol cycle. Let me be your guide, we’ll hike this trail together.