Dear Therapist:

I’ve been feeling something lately that I’m not even sure how to put into words. I have a sibling who I’m close with, and I do care about them a lot. But when I hear about all the good things going on in their life — whether it's their job, their social life, or how smoothly everything seems to go, I sometimes walk away from our conversations feeling frustrated or not good enough.

I don’t want to feel this way, and I definitely don’t want it to affect how we get along, but it’s been on my mind. Is it me or them? Should I just get over it? If yes, how can I push myself past this?

Response:

It sounds like your main concern is the sense that you shouldn’t be feeling this way—that you should simply be happy for your sibling.

It’s important to recognize that your feelings are normal. Naturally, you’d rather not have them, and it would be nice if you could completely separate how you feel about yourself from how you feel about your sibling (and others in general). Realistically, though, we all judge ourselves—at least to some extent—in comparison to others.

What differs from person to person is the degree to which we do this. If you expect yourself to always be happy for your sibling and never let their success affect how you feel about yourself, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. That can easily spiral into even more self-blame (“What kind of person am I if I can’t just be happy for them?”).

Humans are naturally egocentric. This doesn’t mean we don’t care about others—it simply means we tend to view things primarily through our own perspective. People with a strong, intrinsic sense of self are generally more able to feel good about others’ accomplishments without it threatening their own self-worth. In a sense, you could say that the better we feel about ourselves, the less egocentric we are.

When our self-esteem is shaky, though, it becomes harder to separate others’ success from our own value. If I don’t feel very good about who I am, I’ll tend to seek outside validation—and when I see others succeeding, it can feel like proof that I’m somehow falling short. That sets off a cycle: low self-esteem leads to negative feelings about others’ accomplishments, which then leads to guilt or shame for having those feelings—reinforcing the sense of inadequacy.

Breaking this cycle means addressing all three points: (1) building self-esteem, (2) recognizing and normalizing negative feelings, and (3) reducing self-blame for those feelings. The last two can start right away—by reminding yourself that it’s human to feel twinges of comparison and that this doesn’t make you a bad person.

As for self-esteem, the stronger your intrinsic sense of self becomes, the less external factors will shake you. Many people base their self-worth on things outside of who they are—appearance, achievements, social status, how they stack up to others. That can work temporarily, but it’s unstable: these things can change, and even when they don’t, there’s always anxiety that they might.

We tend to judge others based on who they are, not what they have. If you think you’re judging someone by their accomplishments, you’re probably actually judging yourself in comparison. Shifting toward valuing your intrinsic qualities—your character, your values, your way of thinking and feeling—can help build a steadier sense of self. The stronger that becomes, the less you’ll feel the need to measure yourself against anyone else.

-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW

 psychotherapist in private practice

 Woodmere, NY

 adjunct professor at Touro University

 Graduate School of Social Work

 author of Self-Esteem: A Primer

 www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200