What happens when deception is so widespread that the standards for asserting the quality of our experiences have become faulty? We live in a culture that normalizes deception. Formerly trustworthy pillars of democracy and freedom such as the government and the press often seem to have normalized deceit. The addition and dominance of social media and A.I. in recent years, has magnified the opportunity for deception to unprecedented levels. Now, more than ever before, it is incredibly easy to believe in a reality that is completely fake and manufactured and as a result, repercussions in the realm of mental health have become the real global pandemic of our time.
The concept that the world we experience reflects our perspective and our set of beliefs and conditioning is nothing new or original. Reality has always been subjective and influenced by what each individual seeks to find in what they see or simply by what their own awareness allows them to see. However, the environment we are exposed to today more than ever before- and unfortunately starting from a very young age if not at birth- exponentially magnifies the opportunity for deception.
The idea that there is one absolutely perfect way to be, to look, to parent, to interact, to socialize, to love, to "do life right" is a haunting and reverberating message. Social media posts, podcasts, and reality shows add immense pressure to the illusion of perfection as the standard. In the past, it was only famous people that were in the public eye, thus making them more of an unattainable ideal, a one-in-a-million scenario one could aspire to, rather than the be-all and end-all universal goal. Today, we have millions of regular people that with a click of a button can send us an image of perfection we then compare ourselves against. The ease by which everything (from endless wealth and impeccable beauty to bountiful opportunities and adventures) seems to just happen for “others just like you” portrayed on these platforms, is a dangerous deception.
With so many people constantly on display, it’s inevitable that there are just as many people suddenly feeling entitled to mercilessly judge and criticize them. People spend hours scrolling and judging either in the privacy of their heads or in the public arena of comments. This is a culture where everyone tries to appear perfect all the time and in doing so falls victim of the inexplicit and unspoken rule of thus deserving any and all comments from manic obsessive adoration to the harshest and cruelest of judgements. It’s the wild wild west of social and human decency where anything goes.
The desire to be perfect, to compare ourselves to others, and to compete is, to some extent part of human nature but it can be notably exasperated by a toxic environment. We develop this desire to be perfect -possibly rooted in a mentality of lack, unworthiness and of validation-seeking- and then we are led to aspire to meet an ideal that is not only unattainable, but also fake and non-existent to begin with. There is no perfection and there will never be. We base our comparison on the highlight reel of someone's real and messy life. Everything we see is curated and manufactured and ultimately only a misrepresentation of reality.
This is not to say that there aren’t any genuine people on social media, but even the most genuine people don’t share their darkest secrets, or their most mortifying moments on a social platform and even when they do, it is always somewhat filtered, performed, edited, manipulated. The moment they are portraying something rather than simply being themselves, they are performing.
Think about your own life for a moment. Take out a photo album, if you still have one of those, and see yourself in pictures where you look happy and are smiling for the camera. Look closely, yes you were younger, yes you were thinner and prettier, but try to really remember. Were you really always as blissfully happy as you seem? Hadn't you just had a terrible fight with your spouse an hour before that shot? Hadn't you you just yelled at your child’s meltdown at the park, minutes before that shot? Hadn't you just had a drink too many after a painful breakup when you took that photo of you laughing with your friends? And the list goes on and on.
Good things happen to everyone. Bad things happen to everyone. Sometimes we are happy, many times we are sad, angry disappointed, frustrated, and overwhelmed. More people share the good things than the bad, you included. Thus, what you see is never, EVER the whole picture. We must not forget this fact when that feeling of sadness suddenly starts creeping in, after spending an hour scrolling on social media, seeing all the great bodies, vacations, quotes, and fun times that others all over the world are sharing.
If on a cerebral, mental plane we already know and understand that we simply cannot compare our whole, unedited, complex self to the edited, partial, retouched version of someone else; on an emotional level, we can’t help the emergence of comparison and consequent feelings of self-doubt and self-mortification.
This is why we need to descend to the body. Once we process the invalidity of these faulty standards we measure ourselves against in our thinking mind, we need to allow it to literally sink into the body. Why do we feel the way we do even if we know we have no reason to? What past wounds are stagnant in the body that reinforce the story of “I am not good enough”, “I should be doing X, looking like Y, making Z amount of money”, and so forth?
The only valid and sustainable standard to measure our own level of success, progress, greatness, approximation to perfection, is comparing the you of today with the you of yesterday. Ask yourself. have I personally evolved at all? Based on my own starting point, my experiences, my background, my baggage, am I going in the right direction? Am I bettering myself, healing myself, learning to love, forgive and repair myself and my relationships with others? If the answer is yes, you are on the right track and if not, you have some work to do but only for your own personal growth.
In an environment like the one we live in today, the greatest skill one can develop, is the ability to connect with one’s own inner compass, intuition, higher Self, and allow it to guide us. This ability is called discernment. You cultivate this by connecting with your physical body. That drop from mind to heart, is the path to integration, and once you are integrated, you are able to be truly content, regardless of your haves and have nots.
An integrated self is aware of its past wounds and can retrace the original source or the events that lead to the habitual behaviors and mental narratives that support our need to compare, to be perfect, and to believe the deception before our eyes. This awareness, if cultivated, nurtured, and allowed, can give way to a space in which we are able to pause, reflect and redirect. We practice this until we rewire our brain to think differently. The trick is to feel it first, to transform the emotion in the body first. A deceived eye sees perfection, a discerning eye sees reality. The deception will continue until we make the discernment on a visceral, body level not just on a mental one. The mind will always validate the negative narratives, in spite of evidence of the contrary being true. The mind is capable of tricking us into believing all sorts of baseless theories about ourselves. The body doesn’t lie. The body carries the experiences and the wisdom of true knowing but also the wounds. These wounds need to be tended to, worked on and released. Somatic therapy, yoga, and meditation, are all ways I which we can acknowledge, validate, understand and release these wounds and the hold they have on us.
The higher our self-awareness, and ability to be in touch with and listen to our inner compass, the more likely we are to be content with who and where we are in life, and the less likely we will be to fall into the one of the many traps of deception we will doubtlessly encounter.
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