Mind the Gap: Discrepancy Based Processing

"Comparison is the thief of joy"

Theodore Roosevelt

Comparison is sometimes recipe for disaster.  The phrase "Compare and despair" carries with it particular meaning to those of us prone to a depressive outlook, or a tinge of melancholia.  As human beings, one of the curses of our tremendous evolution is our tendency to look outside of ourselves and jump to the swift conclusion that things are other than they should be, and that we are not where we would like to be.  We compare our observations of others' external appearances to our internal self perceptions and, at the moments we are most likely to do this, we are most vulnerable to arriving at a negative conclusion.  We compare our self perceptions (often inherently and unfavourably distorted) to things as we see them and arrive at a place that confirms our suspicions that things are not as we would have them.  We have not achieved what we think we ought to, earn less than we imagine our peers, do not own our own homes, have yet to tie the knot with the partner of our dreams, and see ourselves as unlikely to bring into the world the 2.4 children we think we should.  Suddenly, a moment of introspection at the end of a long day is an existential crisis - why are we here, and what's the point, anyway?

"Why compare yourself with others?  No one else in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you."

Unknown

"Learn to be what you are,

and learn to resign with good grace all that you are not."

Henri Frederic Amiel

There is another expression that springs to mind - "Don't dial PAIN".  Members of Alcoholics Anonymous talk about the importance of not picking up the first drink, for those of us with a relationship to depression, we need to watch the first thought.  For this is where the damage starts.  Our stinking thinking gets us caught up with the what ifs, if onlys, and shoulds, oughts and musts.  We start evaluating ourselves in the world when we are least able to do an equitable job of this, and so begin our descent into the bottomless pits of rumination.  Knowing this, I find myself smiling whenever I come across the phrase made famous by London Underground - I am someone who must take care to "Mind the Gap".