Comparison – Killing you from the inside out

Comparison is the thief of all joy.  Theodore Roosevelt

I still remember the day, its so clear in my mind – I was sitting at a kinder meeting for my son and all the parents were laughing, rolling their eyes about how much their child was signing the bones song.  You know the one …. The foot bones connected to the leg bone and so one.  Now that song is stuck in your head. Sorry not sorry.

And as I sat there in silence.  Trying to smile through my gritted teeth, wanting to burst into tears because all I could think was – my child can’t talk, let alone sing a song.  I sat there, envy and despair oozing out of every pore of my body, wishing, hoping, praying that one day I would hear my sweet angel boy say a word.  Say I love you.  Say anything.  I longed for the day that I would be able to hear his voice or for me to tell him to be quiet because he was such a chatterbox.

For a while, comparison would consume most of my waking thoughts.  It was as if the world was showing me in very clear detail all the things that he could not do, unable to do or hadn’t managed to do and yet here was a child, the same age, the same gender, the same background and for that child, this task was simple.

So, if I could go back to that time I would demand myself to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.  Stop sipping the poison.

Society, unfortunately, is geared towards comparison and wining from a very early age.  I saw it with my first born.  The mother’s group were so competitive on who was going to sit up first, crawl first, walk first, who ate the most, who was taller.  This notion that comparison is just part of the societal make up is false.  The same could be said about smoking back in the 90’s.  It was well accepted as part of a societal norm; however, it was indeed killing you from the inside out.

Comparisons are sneaky.  They can sense when you’re weak or vulnerable.  They know they can get a direct hit when you’re just about to fall asleep, when you’ve just woken up or when you’re in the shower.

However, there is a solution.  Humans in general don’t do so well when we take one thing away.  We need to replace it with something else.  A healthier option, a zero-alcohol option and so on.  So, when we are conscious of the comparison thoughts, we must override them with a gratitude thought.

My thoughts went something like this “My angel boy will never talk, crap, stop, start again.  I am so grateful that I get to be my angel boy’s mum”.

I put the “crap, stop, start again” bit in because this is literally what I would say to myself to interrupt that pattern.  I would recognise it and then I’d change it.  Because I was the only one in control of my thoughts.  No one else.  It’s like a muscle that needs to be worked on every single day to be made strong.  Doing it one time isn’t going to cut it. It needs to be repetitive.  It needs to be constant.

I type this to you to tell you – I’m still yet to meet a mum that hasn’t at some stage compared her special needs child to their typical peers or typical sibling.  You cannot compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.  Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.  It isn’t serving you.  It will never serve you because your child is gorgeous and special in their own right.   And they will do things in their own time, just not on your time schedule.

If this resonates with you, please book in a free chat to discuss further.

And remember You Are Seen.