Emotional Dysmorphic Disease--How to Create a Better Reality

Seeing ourselves relative to someone else is not only untrue, it's not useful. Believe me, I am an expert on human relativity. I am a twin. Picture the most popular girl in your high school or college. Picture the perfect bouncing golden locks, the winning smile, charismatic personality and uncharacteristic kindness. The captain of the cheer squad, a track star and never with out a boyfriend. This girl is my twin. Enter the fraternal twin sister. My family characterized me as shy, a late bloomer, a bit awkward and an uncoordinated dancer (very different from my sister who did the running man amid throngs of clapping early 90's groupies). These value laden words haunted me all through childhood and adolescence and still hide in the closet of my most unsure moments. Looking back, I don't even know if I actually was shy or awkward. I was just more shy and more awkward than my sister. The comparison was the damnation. I was not me for me. I was me relative to another.

Comparison is stagnation. It is emotional amputation. Comparison is adjacent to allowing a short-sided doctor to take extreme and aggressive medical measures. This fictitious doctor may say, "your leg doesn't have a great future, so I'll just cut it off. Save you the pain and heartache later." This would never pass. There would be uproar. Second opinions. Yet emotionally we cut off blood supply to dreams, confidence and personal development everyday because I am shy compared to the most popular girl in school. The person in the cubicle next to me got a promotion and I therefore I must be bad at my job. My neighbor is a fantastic entrepreneur and by virtue of her accomplishment mine diminish. My social media accounts have fewer followers and likes than another. I am less of this or more of that. News alert! Other people's accomplishments say nothing about you. Nothing.

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