Comparison Rage after Sexual Trauma

I name comparison rage as the grief and fury that can sit underneath “I’m happy for them,” especially for trauma-experienced, neurodivergent women watching other lives look easy. I unpack where it shows up, why it makes sense in a survival-wired nervous system, and how to work with it without shame.

• comparison rage as more than jealousy and why both love and rage can be true
• how trauma and neurodivergence shape attachment, trust, and social fluency
• support system gaps and why they are about starting conditions, not worth
• relationship comparison and why calm can read as unsafe
• body comfort after sexual trauma and the weight carried in the nervous system
• career and workplace politics built for neurotypical brains
• parenting while healing and the invisible labor of doing better
• intimacy, touch, and the freeze response as survival wiring
• medical system dismissal and the extra burden on neurodivergent women
• practical tools: name it, journal it, grieve specifically, stop poking holes, build support on purpose

Work With Me Individually

I offer trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women navigating:

• Complex trauma
• Late-diagnosed ADHD or autism
• Nervous system dysregulation
• Relational pattern healing

If you’d prefer one-on-one support, book a free 15-minute consultation here:
http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey there. Welcome back to The Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women. I'm Autumn. All the things I always say of all the things, I guess the most important thing that qualifies me to take on these topics is that I am a licensed professional counselor and a late diagnosed, neurodivergent woman who is also trauma experienced. So been there, done that, and educated to help you as well. We're in the rage season, and today we're talking about something that most of us have a hard time admitting or don't even know that it's happening. Sometimes that like something that lives underneath them so happy for them is something that can coexist, and that's comparison rage. The anger and the grief that comes from watching other people's lives look easy. It comes from watching someone have a support system, a stable relationship, a career that progressed, a body they're comfortable in, a family that's actually safe. And something in you when you see that it's like a little twist, right? Not because you're a bad person, not because you don't actually want good things for others, but because watching what feels easy for them is a cons is like a constant reminder of what was taken from you. And sometimes that reminder hits like a slap in the face. Like for Mihi, younger younger me would be happy for someone before I ever admitted rage or anger. Hell, I didn't even have the words to know it was rage. That's how deep the conditioning went. I could access the happiness for others faster than I could access the fury about my own situation. And for a long time I didn't recognize the comparison rage for what it was. In my 20s and 30s, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how everyone else had everything figured out. Why couldn't I be the executive director of a nonprofit? Why couldn't I stay in one place? Why didn't anywhere feel like home? Why couldn't I be happy with my body? Looking back now, all the times I compared and shamed my body for not looking a certain way, only to realize years later that what I thought was too much was actually pretty damn beautiful. And then there's the support system piece. Watching someone have a group of people who showed up for them, who cared for them without condition, and asking myself, what was wrong with me? What is broken about me that people don't care for me like that? That's comparison rage. And there's more to it. Excuse me, I have so many notes about this. I don't know if it's gonna be a long episode, if I'll split it up in part two. But I did have some good notes. So let's get into it, right? Comparison rage is complicated and can be misunderstood. It's not something readily talked about because I think we've been so conditioned to push negative emotions down so that we can take care of others. Comparison rage is bigger than jealousy. Jealousy wants what someone else has. Comparison rage is the specific fury that comes from understanding why you don't have what they have, and knowing it's because of things that were done to you, things you didn't choose, things that shaped your entire trajectory before you were old enough to understand what was happening. It's not just like, hey, I want that. It's I could have had that. I should have had that. And it was taken from me before I even knew it was mine to have. Or it was never freely given, you know, because of your circumstances or your environment. You can be genuinely sincerely happy for someone and also feel the grief and rage of comparison. Both are very real, both can be used, not used, both can be true at the same time, and that can be very freaking complicated. The comparison rage doesn't cancel out the love, and the love doesn't cancel out the rage. And I'm not, I'm not all positive that comparison rage starts in adulthood. I believe it starts the moment you begin to notice that other people's lives look different than yours, whether that's from being neurodivergent or whether that's being trauma experienced, or both. Some kids have parents who ask how they're feeling. Some kids go home to safe houses. Some kids aren't managing secrets or being parentified, or they're not being they're not managing secrets and shame and a body that's being mishandled.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

It can start young.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

I mean this isn't like a super rage forward episode, and it isn't grief forward, it's a little bit of both because comparison rage holds both rage and grief simultaneously. The rage is that this is unfair. I worked so much harder for so much less. The grief is I genuinely don't know what my life could have been. And you don't have to choose which one to feel, you can choose both. So I want to break it down into categories about where comparison rage can show up. So, first off, I've said it already, but I'll touch on it again is the support system, right? Watching someone have a group of people, a real one, right? People who show up without being asked, people who notice when something's wrong, people who call just to check in, people who come when things fall apart. And asking yourself, what's wrong with me that I didn't have that? What do I do to repulse people? Why doesn't anyone care for me like that? For people who have been told their whole lives that they're too much, too intense, too needy, too loud, watching someone be genuinely effortlessly loved by a whole community can feel like proof of everything you were told about yourself. But that's not what it's proof of. People who have support systems didn't just earn them by being better people. They had safe childhoods where they learned to attach and trust. They had families that modeled healthy relationships, they had nervous systems that weren't wired for hypervigilance and social situations. They had neurodivergent needs that were either met or absent from the equation. They had decades of building connection without the weight of unprocessed trauma complicating every relationship, every movement, every thought, everything. Because if you've made it this far, I think we're all understanding that trauma, especially sexual trauma, can take up a lot of space and discolor a lot of experiences for you. You weren't repulsive. You were traumatized and undiagnosed in a world that didn't accommodate either thing. The support system gap isn't about your worth, it's about your starting conditions. And comparison rage can show up watching someone be in a relationship that looks fine, calm, steady, no drama. And for many, not even really believing it's real. Like you could see that and be like, oh, that's crap. That's not real. Behind closed doors, there's something up. Not because you're cynical, but because your nervous system has been experienced, like has never experienced a relationship that wasn't shaped by your trauma responses, your freeze, your fawn, your hypervigilance, your tendency to tendency to mistake intensity for love because intensity is all you know. What looks boring to your trauma-wired nervous system is actually safety, and you've never known what safety feels like in a relationship. So it reads is fake. And what about the social cues, right? The unspoken rules, the emotional back and forth that neurotypical couples seem to manage without effort. That can all feel like watching people speak a language you were never taught. You're working harder in every relationship, masking, scripting, decoding, trying to meet needs you can't always read, communicate needs you can't always articulate, navigating intimacy that your nervous system sometimes approaches with the same freeze response that your trauma installed. It's not just emotional, it's neurological. And watching it looks easy for other people, watching like other people make it look easy is genuinely enraging. What about the body, right? Watching people be comfortable in their bodies, not even loving their bodies, just inhabiting them, moving through the world without the running commentary, the shame, the disconnect, the freeze that can happen during intimacy, the complicated relationship with physical sensation that comes from having your body violated, right? Like it's not, it's hard to watch other people live comfortably in their body when yours has been violated. For many of us, the comparison isn't even to someone with a better body, so to speak. For being gross, for being violated, for being unclean, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

For being something that's misused and mishandled. Knowing what I know now, my body's been beautiful this whole time.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

It wasn't that it was never beautiful, it was that someone saw the beauty and wanted to take it away.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

What about your career?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Watching someone be successful, be seen, be promoted, be funny and charming and politically savvy in workplace environments. And knowing you could do their job, probably do it better, be more, but you couldn't play the game right. Because playing the game requires a nervous system that isn't constantly managing threat responses. It requires the social fluency that neurodivergent women often have to work three times as hard to approximate. It requires the energy that trauma survivors use just by getting through the day. Work culture is built for people without significant trauma histories and for neurotypical brains. The politics, the schmoozing, the unspoken rules of who gets seen and who gets passed over, none of that accommodates you. Watching someone succeed in that system while you couldn't, knowing it wasn't about your competence, but how the game is rigged against you, that's its own specific fury. Sometimes comparison rage shows up when you watch people have families as well, either of origin or of their chosen family, and that they're genuinely safe, where people ask how you're doing and mean it, where gatherings aren't mind-filled, where love is expressed without strings, without conditions, without harm. And grieving quietly or loudly that you didn't get that, that you're building something that other people started with. Like that's that's another really big one, right? Like you're working so hard, maybe 10 times as hard as your counterpart, but they're just superseding you by just playing the game, by doing things that seem unfair, unjust. Another struggle is parenting. Watching people parent from a place of wholeness. People who grew up with safe parents and are now being safe parents, who don't lie awake wondering if they're repeating patterns, who don't have to actively parent against their own conditioning in every difficult situation. For those of you who are parents, this comparison can be the sharpest one of all. You love your children fiercely, and you are also parenting with wounds that haven't fully healed, with a nervous system that sometimes gets triggered in the middle of ordinary parenting moments. Maybe you have that constant fear. Am I enough? Am I hurting them without knowing it? Am I giving them what I never got? The hypervigilance, the guilt, the moments where you recognize something your parent did coming out of your mouth, right? Repeating what you've done, being your mother, being your father, being your caregiver, and feeling the horror of it all. The tremendous effort it takes to parent consciously, intentionally, intentionally against the grain of everything you were shown is so freaking hard. People who didn't start where you started don't have to work this hard to parent well. They just parent from a baseline of having been parenting well, parented well enough. You're doing something much harder. Parenting while healing, parenting while also doing the work of becoming the parent you needed, parenting while a whole while being a whole complicated, traumatized, neurodivergent, healing human being. That's not failure. That's one of the hardest things a person can do. And your children, even if the path hasn't been perfect, have a parent who chose to heal, who chose to see clearly, who chose to do better, even when doing better was the hardest possible freaking thing. And that matters more than the comparison will ever show you. Your efforts matter so much. Another one that I think is hard when it comes to comparison rage is watching people have uncomplicated intimacy. Watching people be touched without flinching, watching people be sexual without having to negotiate with their nervous system first, watching intimacy look natural, easy, wanted, uncomplicated, when yours has never been any of those things. Your body learned that touch meant threat, that closeness meant danger, that the most intimate parts of yourself were not safe, and that wiring doesn't switch off because the abuse ended. It shows up in your relationships, in your body's response, in the moments where you want to be present and your nervous system takes you somewhere else entirely different. Watching someone experience intimacy without that weight, without the internal negotiation, without the freeze. It's its own specific kind of pain. You're not broken. You're wired for survival in spaces where others were wired for connection. That's not a character flaw. That's what sexual trauma does. What about trusting people easily? Watching people just bounce from person to person, sharing from person to person, just trusting all these people. Watching someone extend trust as a default who don't scan every room for threat. Who doesn't read every interaction for signs of danger. Trust as a whole concept had to be rebuilt from the ground up. I mean nervous system speaking, it it was already wired for hypervigilance because of neurodivergence, already processing more sensory and social information than most because of neurodivergence. Adding sexual trauma on top of that means your threat detection system is constantly running at full capacity all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

That's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

The medical system comparison doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to sexual trauma recovery. I think we I talk about this with my clients because I ask them about their medical appointments, I ask them about their health, I ask them about their well-being. It's it's all around encompassing, like mind, body, health, all of it, happiness, like everything, environment, like all of it, right? And watching people walk into a doctor's office and be taken seriously, believed on the first try, not having to fight for every referral, every diagnosis, every acknowledgement that's that's what's happening in their body is real. Because sexual trauma lives in the body. It shows up as chronic pain, as autoimmune issues, as gastrointestinal problems, as sleep disorders, as reproductive health complications. And survivors have been fighting for decades to be believed, like about symptoms that the medical system often dismisses, minimizes, minimizes, or pathologizes. And for us neurodivergent women, this is compounded further, fighting to be believed about neurodivergent symptoms on top of trauma symptoms in a system that has historically dismissed both. I mean, I've seen it even over the last 10 years in the mental health field, where like psychiatrists, just by default, typically would not assess or diagnose a female with ADHD. They had to treat the AD, the anxiety and the depression first. And it was like all you had to do was read a couple of study psychiatrists to learn that the anxiety and the depression are side symptoms from the undiagnosed neurodivergence. Like I figured that out as a baby undergrad. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like I don't have sympathy for people that are ignorant because, like, all medical people have to do continuing education. Um, maybe choose one about neurodivergence, maybe choose one about women in ADHD. Maybe go outside of the box of just men and boys. Because I have seen men and boys just walk right up and say, Hey, I need help, Doc. Oh, well, you're ADHD, son. Here's all the meds you can have. And I've watched women walk up and say, I think I have ADHD. I've researched it. I really want to work on it for them just to be dismissed and turned around and said, No, little lady, it's the depression anxiety that's really important. So let's fix this. It's ignorant. It's stupid. It's annoying. And it angers me about the complete injustice that women get compared to their male counterparts when it comes to medical treatment. So just to be clear, you don't know what fine looks like on the inside for anyone else. People perform healing the same way they perform everything else. The version of someone's recovery you see is almost never the full picture. Sexual trauma healing is not linear and it is not uniform. What happened to you, how long it happened, how old you were, what support you had or didn't have, your neurology, your nervous system, your history, all of it shapes your healing timeline in ways that make comparison meaningless. And for all my audience, all my ADHD and autism ladies, whose nervous systems process everything more intensely, who may have less access to the emotional regulation tools that speed recovery for others, the timeline is going to be different. That's not failure. That's your actual neurology intersecting with your actual history. You're not behind. You're on your own path through your own terrain. And your pace is the right pace for what you're actually carrying. I thought about putting this next section in there, and I thought about taking it out. And even as I see the notes, I kind of want to take it out, but I feel like I need to brush on it. This is comparison rage turn inward. Comparing your investment of time against the alternative of starting over and deciding the sunk cost is too high to justify leaving. This is the most heartbreaking one, I think. The gradual normalization of a relationship that was always shaped by trauma. Until the trauma stops being named, starts being background noise, and the it's been so long logic keeps things in place. Because previous episodes I've shared, and some of my sexual trauma started when I was real young. And it carried with me and haunted me until my late 20s, until I really did some healing work. I did a lot of stuff. I one of my first steps I can remember there was this workbook or this book that had a worksheet about radical forgiveness. Do I agree with that now? Do I feel like I need to forgive my attacker or the person who hurt me? No. But it was a starting point. Not the best point, but it was a starting point to unfolding and releasing the anger and the frustration, but because of how the worksheet was set up. But I did body work.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yoga really helped. Crying really helped. A lot of stuff really helped.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Just because it was long ago doesn't mean it's not haunting you. Doesn't mean it's not swaying some of your decisions, especially when it comes to romantic relationships or friendships, close, intimate relationships. So this is the one that is the most heartbreaking because it can be one that we just convince ourselves that it's just because of money. It's just because of this situation. It's just because of the season. It's just because of this. It's like, no, ma'am, it's because you were sexually traumatized and you need to heal that. That's still screaming for help. So if it's been a long time, don't ignore it. Get therapy. Get a somatic coach if you want to start with the body. The comparison rage, the sense of something is wrong with me to their sexual trauma history. It's just a thing that happened, compartmentalized, not spoken of, not being actively healed. And so in the trauma, so so that there continues the trauma. And that trauma continues to shape everything without ever being named to the source. You can't compare yourself out of a wound you haven't acknowledged yet. And some other rage I want to go into is like the core, maybe, of comparison rage. And that's the rage is that they didn't have to work this hard just to feel okay. Other people don't have to work this hard to feel okay. They didn't have to learn about their nervous system to understand why they freeze. They didn't have to untangle which of their relationship patterns or trauma responses. They didn't have to reclaim their body as their own. They didn't have to grieve a childhood that was supposed to be freaking safe. They didn't have to learn to trust from scratch as adults. And they didn't have to find words for experiences that stole their words. They just lived, and their baseline was already so much higher than yours because of the things that have nothing to do with their merit or effort. It's not only did you have to work harder, it's that you had less support while doing it, less resources while doing it. My animals are moving around. Sorry for the background noise. You had less family support, less financial stability, less community, less energy, less neurodivergent accommodations, less everything. You had to climb, and you're still maybe probably climbing a steeper mountain with heavier gear and less support than the people you're comparing yourself to. And still, somehow you're here, still fucking climbing. And I'm so fucking proud, excuse me, proud of you. I'm so happy for you. I want the best for you. And this ugliness right now, going through this, acknowledging this, and working through this is getting you one step closer to being free of your sexual trauma. Not that it'll ever go away, not that you'll forget it, but it won't haunt your body. It won't haunt your thoughts, your images. It won't rob you of moments. Everything you've done to get to where you are, every therapy session, every time you name a trauma response instead of acting from it, every boundary you set, even though it terrified you, every time you chose to stay in your body instead of dissociating, every morning you got up and did it again. That's work that doesn't show up on a resume. It doesn't translate to visible success markers, it doesn't look like achievements from the outside, but it is achievements, enormous, enormous achievements, the kind that people who didn't have to do it genuinely don't understand. So what helps, right? Here's the solution focus section of the episode. What can I offer you to help with the comparison rage? First off, name it. Before you can do anything with comparison rage, you have to be willing to call it for what it is. Not just I'm happy for them, not just sadness, rage, grief, the specific fury of what was taken from you. So here's a journal prompt. Feel free to write this down. Feel free to answer it out loud. Feel free to come back to it. I'll read it twice. When I see insert a specific comparison, the honest feeling underneath I'm happy for them is when I see someone is succeeding at a job, I know I could do better. The honest feeling underneath I'm so happy for them is that I could have done better. I was looked over. I count up for that job. No one asked me. I put my two cents in. I saw that I'm all of it, right? That's the grief. That's the rage. Let yourself write the truth, even if it's ugly, even if it makes you feel like a bad person. You're not a bad person, you're an honest one, and that's okay to have feelings. Comparison rage whispers, this proves something is wrong with me. But comparison is not evidence, it's context. Their stable relationship doesn't prove you're unlovable, it shows what was available to people who didn't start where you started. The comparison is real. The verdict it whispers is false. Because honestly, I always say this, but comparison is the root of all evil. Stay in your lane, focus on you, be better than you were yesterday. If you're gonna compete, if you're gonna compare, compare yourself to who you were yesterday. But the rage is valid, and and underneath it is grief, and the grief needs to be tended, not just fueled. When comparison rage hits, after you let the rage be there, ask yourself, what am I grieving right now? What specifically do I wish I had different? Or what had been differently? Let yourself grieve it specifically. Not my whole life was different and abstract, but I wish I had known what it felt like to be held by a whole group of people who love me. I grieve not having that. Specific grief is workable, abstract grief is just wait. And next tip up is stop poking holes in other people's good things. This requires a little bit of honesty. When you found yourself not believing someone's stable relationship was real, when you looked for the cracks, the problems, that it can't actually be that good, that's a defense mechanism. It's easier to disbelieve their good thing than to fully grieve that you didn't have it. I just want you to notice when you're doing this, not to shame yourself for it, because it's a very human response, but to see it for what it is: protection from the grief. Tap into that grief, say hello to the grief, give it some space, give it some love and compassion. Build your own support system differently. Because comparing support systems can be very painful. You may not have been given a support system, but you can build one. And it looks different for neurodivergent trauma survivors. It's going to be smaller, quality over quantity, fewer people who go deeper because that's who we are. We are deep people, we're not surface level people. And a smaller circle is less overwhelming, more intimate, and easily manageable as far as like upkeep. Because hi, hello, neurodivergence. Relationships are more intentional, they're chosen rather than inherited, right? Your support system is chosen. It's slower to develop. Trust takes longer when you've been betrayed. And it's more structured, explicit agreements rather than assumed understanding. It won't look like the support systems you're comparing yourself to. It will be yours. Built from scratch on purpose with people who can actually handle you. Don't ask yourself, how does my body compare? Ask yourself, what does my body feel like right now? What does it need? What is true about my body today? Your body has carried things that most bodies haven't had to carry. It has had to survive things, protected you, done what it could with what it had. That's worth something, even if it even when it doesn't look like what you thought it would look like. And the career and work piece, the work culture rage is valid. The game is rigged. You are not wrong. And your path has also taken you somewhere specific. Like my path has taken me to a private practice. It took me a long time to get there, I feel, because I didn't start that my private practice career until I was in my 30s. I have a podcast that reaches people who need exactly what I have to offer, which is such a blessing. I, as I got into my career, I just felt like I wanted to do more, wanted to do more. And I almost started a podcast with someone else that was ADHD-based, but it was just missing some sort of component. And then like it all just unfolded, and I was be able to create this. I've built work that has been built on my own terms rather than succeeding within a system that was never built for me. I say all this to say, not look at me, whoa, whoa, ego. I say this to say it is doable. What I'm preaching is doable. I'm not gonna sit here and preach something that I haven't tried, that I haven't studied, hell, that I haven't even been through myself. The path was never linear for me to get to where I am. It had gaps and it had disruptions and years where it looked like failure. I, in between my license graduation and getting my license, I had a kerfluffle of a time with supervision. I had someone falsify their credentials to take money from me to be my supervisor. It set me back a whole year. And instead of jumping right back into supervision, I quit. I walked away from the mental health field and I went and worked in a yoga studio. It was easy. It was mindless. It was calm. And that's what I needed because I was so disappointed. I took my time, I licked my wounds, so to speak, and I got back on the wagon. I got back to my goal, to my dream, because it was there for a reason. I just needed a breather. So when I say not linear, it really was not linear. But it also led somewhere that a linear path couldn't have. That doesn't erase the rage at what was harder than it should have been. But it's also true. I I've done very well. The path has been hard, but how much success I've achieved by working, by healing, you can't count that. You can't put that on a resume. Neurotypical people navigating neurotypical workplaces, their social structures, their relationship templates, that's not a fair baseline for your comparison. You are doing something they have never had to do, living a full human life in a world designed for a different kind of brain, while also healing from trauma, while also building skills and scaffolding that others got to inherit. Stop using their timeline to measure your progress because it was never a fair measure. Every time comparison rage hits, every specific thing you compared yourself to, it's pointing directly at something you actually want, something that matters to you, something you're grieving, not having. You don't have rage compare about things you don't care about. So when the comparison hits, they have a support system. You deeply want community and belonging that matters to you, that's information. Their relationship looks stable. You want steadiness, safety. You want to know what that feels like. That's information. Their body looks comfortable to them. You want to be at home in your body, that's also information. Their career progressed. You want to be seen and recognized for your actual competence. That's also good information. The comparison doesn't prove you're lacking. It shows you what you're building toward. The people you're comparing yourself to, the ones with the support systems, the stable relationships, the career, many of them inherited those things from safe families, from stable childhoods, from nervous systems that weren't wired for survival. What you're doing, you're doing from scratch. Building what they inherited while also doing the work they never had to do. That's not behind. That's a different fucking kind of miracle. Remarkable, amazing human being. The grief and fury that lives underneath. I'm so happy for them. The specific slap of watching things look easy for people who didn't carry what you've carried. That's comparison rage. It's real, it's valid, it deserves to be felt. Not bypassed, not spiritualized into pure gratitude, not shamed into silence. You worked harder. You are working harder with less support for a longer time. And you're starting from further back. And you're still here, you're still healing, you're still building. The comparison rage is pointing at what matters to you. Let it feel the rage, feel the grief, and then let both of them tell you this is what I want. This is what I'm building toward. This is what I deserve. Not what they have, what you want. Build on your terms in your time. So that's that. That's my comparison rage notes. I thank you so much for sitting here today with me and listening. If you have questions, if you have a different kind of rage, let me know. Leave me a comment, message me. I'd love to chat with you. If you enjoyed this episode, I do ask you to share it, to talk about it, because I am growing by word of mouth. I am not on social media. I am not a marketing, just all that overwhelms me. But I want to be able to share this. And with your help, I can. And I thank you so much. If you do share and if you do talk about it, that really warms my heart and just fills my cup. In the next episode, we're going to talk about the rage of not being believed, the specific fury of telling your truth and having a question dismissed or ignored. Until then, take the gentlest possible care of your awakened heart. And the next time comparison rage hits, let yourself feel it fully. The grief and the rage. Both are true, both matter, and both are pointing you somewhere to where you want to be. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.