The Unfair Comparison
There is a specific and very common form of suffering that comes from comparing your experience of yourself with your observation of other people. You know, in intimate and exhausting detail, what is going on inside you: the Anxiety about whether you are doing enough, the self-doubt about whether your decisions are right, the fear that you are somehow failing at things other people seem to manage effortlessly, the private failures that nobody else knows about.
Other people you primarily observe from the outside. You see what they present — the Confidence in the meeting, the easy social manner, the achievements they mention, the life they post. You do not see their 3am thoughts. You do not see what they do not mention. You do not see the gap between how they appear and how they feel.
The comparison you are making — between your interior experience and their exterior presentation — is not a fair comparison. It could not produce a fair result. And yet it is the comparison most people make, most of the time, without quite realising they are making it.
The Information Asymmetry
The asymmetry is structural. You have privileged access to your own inner life — every doubt, every fear, every piece of evidence against your own adequacy. You have almost no access to anyone else's. What you have access to is what they choose to show, what social norms allow to be visible, and what the specific context reveals.
Social norms in most professional and social environments strongly discourage the display of self-doubt, fear, failure and inadequacy. Confidence is rewarded. Vulnerability is often penalised. The result is a systematic suppression of the interior experience in public contexts — meaning the gap between how people present and how they feel is larger in exactly the environments where you are making the most comparisons.
Social media amplifies this to an extraordinary degree. The curation is not random. It is specifically designed to present the exterior that the person wants others to see — which is almost invariably a more confident, more successful, more together version than the interior experience warrants.
The Imposter Phenomenon
The imposter phenomenon — the experience of feeling fraudulent despite evidence of competence, and the persistent fear of being exposed as less capable than others believe — is closely related to this asymmetry. Research suggests it is extremely common, affecting an estimated 70 per cent of people at some point in their lives, and is particularly prevalent among high achievers.
The imposter experience is maintained precisely by the comparison of insider knowledge with exterior presentation. You know you are not as confident as you appear. You infer, from other people's confident exteriors, that they are as confident as they appear. The inference is almost certainly wrong — the research on imposter phenomenon suggests most of the people in the room are making the same inference about you that you are making about them. But the structural asymmetry means you cannot access the evidence that would correct it.
Two Examples
The confident colleague
In every meeting, Sarah presents with clarity and authority. Her contributions are well-received. Her manner is assured. James, who works alongside her, regularly feels inadequate by comparison — his own contributions seem hesitant, his thinking less clear. What James does not know: Sarah prepares extensively for every meeting because she is anxious about how she will be received. She lies awake the night before significant presentations. She has had persistent imposter feelings for the entire duration of her career. The exterior James observes bears limited relationship to the interior experience Sarah has.
The social media account
The account posts consistently: achievement, travel, relationship, lifestyle. The person running it has 40,000 followers who regularly tell them in comments how aspirational their life is. The person running it is in significant financial difficulty, the relationship shown in the photographs ended eight months ago, and they spend a considerable proportion of each day managing the Anxiety produced by maintaining an online presence that has diverged significantly from their actual life. The followers have no access to any of this. They are comparing their interiors to an exterior that does not exist.
Three Reflection Questions
- When you feel inadequate in comparison to someone specific, what specifically are you comparing — and do you have actual access to their interior experience, or only to their exterior presentation?
- If the people who seem most confident and capable to you could see your interior experience, what do you think they would find — and what might you find if you could see theirs?
- Is there someone in your life whose exterior you have compared yourself to unfavourably, and with whom you subsequently had a more honest conversation that changed your assessment?
Key Takeaways
- The comparison between your interior experience and other people's exterior presentation is structurally unfair and cannot produce an accurate result.
- Social norms suppress interior experience in exactly the environments where you make the most comparisons.
- The imposter phenomenon is maintained by this asymmetry and is far more common than the exterior presentations of people around you suggest.
- Social media creates an exterior presentation specifically designed to diverge from interior experience.
- The correction is not to feel better about yourself — it is to recognise that the comparison is between incomparable things.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I stop making this comparison?
You probably cannot stop it entirely — it is too automatic. What you can do is learn to notice it happening and insert a correction: 'I am comparing my interior to their exterior. I do not have access to their interior. The comparison is not valid.'
What if someone genuinely does seem to have it more together than I do?
Possibly. Some people have more stable Self-Esteem, fewer fears and more settled lives than others. But the gap between their interior experience and their exterior presentation still exists — and is almost certainly smaller than it appears from the outside.
Should I be more open about my own interior experience?
In appropriate contexts, yes. Genuine vulnerability — sharing difficulty honestly with people you trust — tends to reduce the isolation of the interior experience and frequently reveals that others are experiencing something similar.
Is this related to social Anxiety?
Yes, directly. Social Anxiety is significantly maintained by the assumption that other people are more confident, more composed and less anxious than you are — an assumption produced and sustained by exactly this comparison asymmetry.
Can Simon help with this?
Yes. The imposter experience, the comparison asymmetry and the Self-Esteem that makes you more or less vulnerable to it are all central to the therapeutic and coaching work.
They Are Not What They Look Like From the Outside
Neither are you. The version of you that exists in other people's perception is as incomplete and as exterior as the version of them that exists in yours. The comparison you are making is between two things you do not fully have access to. It was never going to be fair.
Simon Taylor works with people who are tired of losing a comparison that was never going to be fair. A Free 30-Minute Consultation is a good place to start changing that.
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