Why People Sometimes Compete With You When You Never Intended to Compete With Them

Anyone who has been even slightly interested in healing childhood trauma has probably heard that you shouldn’t compare children to other children or hold someone up as an example for them.

It is considered quite unethical.

It lowers self-esteem and pushes children into competition.

Some people think there is nothing wrong with it.

I haven’t seen a single person for whom it actually helped.

So many children grow up to be adults who still remember with pain how they were compared to someone else as children.

But today I want to show you the other side of the story.

As a child, I was the child everyone was constantly holding up as an example.

And believe me, that can be even worse.

Because a child doesn’t choose to become an example.

They become one because adults decide to make them one.

But the child is the one who pays the price.

. . .

Recently, I was rereading a fragment from my book Empath Diaries, and suddenly realized that the main character turned out to be much more like me than I had thought.

I didn’t write the character entirely based on myself.

But this particular passage describes very accurately what I felt whenever I had to stand in front of the class again and teachers showed me to all the other children as if I were the Mona Lisa in a museum.

And all I wanted was to disappear into the floor.

Because usually, the other children didn’t start trying to be like me.

They started hating me.

They didn’t understand that I didn’t want to be better than them.

I wasn’t doing anything special.

I didn’t spend hours with my books.

I didn’t memorize everything.

I didn’t try to win teachers over.

Things simply came easily to me.

All I had to do was listen to the teacher in class, and at home I wouldn’t even open the book.

I tried to explain this, but no one believed me.

Because no one else could simply do the same.

People told me how gifted I was, how talented I was, how well I drew, how well I studied.

And I genuinely didn’t understand why this had to become a competition.

I didn’t want to compete with anyone.

I didn’t see the other children as competitors at all.

I wanted to be friends.

I was simply living my life.

I simply liked drawing, reading, solving math problems in ways that weren’t always by the rules, proving mathematical identities in my own way.

I would even come up with my own formulas and experience something close to creative ecstasy while doing it.

But the other children often didn’t share my excitement, because the teachers praised me for it.

They reacted in different ways.

One of my classmates kept saying that she drew better because she went to art school.

One day, the teacher got tired of hearing it and told her that it wasn’t true.

After that, my classmate threw my markers into the trash.

Adults don’t always understand the consequences of their actions.

I don’t know what caused me to develop an avoidant attachment style.

But as an adult, I leave as soon as I sense competition or red flags in a relationship.

It’s difficult when people compare you to someone else.

But being made an example isn’t easier.

Especially when you never chose it.

I wrote about this in my book Empath Diaries:

“From my earliest childhood, I constantly felt like someone was competing with me,

even though I never wanted that.

I simply wanted to be friends with people.

But somehow, it always ended the same way:

first there were small, almost unnoticeable remarks,

as if they were made in passing.

Then there were more and more of them.

Over time, making remarks about me became a habit for people.

And eventually, I was accused of competing with them,

even though the thought had never even crossed my mind.

My mother did the same thing.

At some point, I simply came to the conclusion that it was easier for me to be alone.

Maybe there was something wrong with me, I thought.”

. . .

It is a very strange feeling to discover that you are a participant in a competition you never agreed to enter.

And maybe at some point I simply decided:

It’s easier for me to be alone.

If friendship turns into comparison again,

if closeness turns into a fight for a place,

if someone needs to prove that they are not worse than you —

why should I participate in any of it?

Maybe I simply have different values.

I believe that any relationship involves two equal people.

I never wanted to be better than someone else.

Quite the opposite.

I have always loved supporting people.

I would rather point out someone’s strengths than their flaws.

There is something good in every person.

I never wanted to be above anyone.

I never wanted to be chosen instead of someone else.

I simply wanted to do what I love.

. . .

When I was on my twin flame journey, I found myself in a situation where people wanted to pull me into a competition.

I didn’t understand it immediately, because no one told me what was happening.

I simply felt that something had changed.

Nothing was explained to me, so I decided to find out what exactly had changed.

When I discovered the truth, I left.

I never stay in situations where I have to compete for something or someone.

In those moments, I become that little girl again — the one teachers used to show to the whole class like the most beautiful painting in a museum.

And all I want to do is disappear into the floor, not prove my worth.

People used narratives against me that were built on assumptions about me that had never existed in me in the first place.

For a while, I tried to explain that I wasn’t like that.

But it didn’t last long.

Then people started trying to provoke an emotional reaction from me so they could get a response and keep the conflict going.

It is still happening.

But I haven’t participated in it for a long time.

Because thanks to this situation, the little girl who was held up as an example in front of the class in every school she attended finally understood that she was not guilty of anything.

She cannot be responsible for other people’s actions.

We don’t always receive attention because we wanted it.

. . .

If you look at my real life, it actually looks a lot like this.

I haven’t spoken to these people for a very long time.

But the experience will stay with me forever.

An experience that might help someone else.

For some reason, people always seem to understand those who are compared to someone else.

But no one ever thinks about how it feels to be turned into a target against your will —

like a red flag being waved in front of a bull.

Why does no one think that perhaps they never wanted any of this?

It is very important to understand that someone else’s interpretation of your behavior does not turn into your intention.

And this is probably one of the strangest things I only understood years later:

Sometimes a person can appoint you as their competitor even when you don’t consider them your competitor at all.

They create the hierarchy themselves.

They decide who is above and who is below.

They start comparing.

And then they start seeing competition even where there was never any.

And the most interesting part is that if you don’t operate within that system of coordinates,

you don’t always even understand what is happening.

You think:

“Why are we even competing?

I’m not competing.”

While the other person has already been living inside that game for a long time.

. . .

Maybe this is one of the reasons I learned to distance myself from people so early.

Not because I don’t need people.

And not because I think I am better than others.

But because I know very well what it looks like when a relationship stops being a relationship and turns into a competition.

I have never liked it.

Because I never wanted to play games in relationships.

I simply wanted to be friends.

For me, any relationship is first and foremost about sincerity.

About being able to share everything with each other and support each other through everything.

I don’t want to win against people.

I want to create.

I want to write.

I want to draw.

I want to do my work better than I did it yesterday.

For me, there is only one competition — with the version of myself I was yesterday.

At some point, I really did decide to become better.

Not so that someone would regret underestimating me.

Not so that someone would see what they had lost.

Not so that I could prove something to someone.

I decided to become better for myself.

Because I was curious to see who I could become if I went all the way.

Because I had someone worth going all the way for.

I have my daughter, whom I adore.

She became the prototype for the little Angel in my book Empath Diaries.

And I dedicated these lines to her:

“You are still so small that you can only be seen through a microscope.

But you have already done what no one else could.

Because of you, I want to live.”

. . .

Maybe it is precisely because of what happened during my twin flame journey that it has become so easy for me now to prove nothing to anyone.

I genuinely don’t care anymore what people think about me.

Who thinks I am better.

Who thinks I am worse.

Who has invented yet another explanation for my actions.

Who keeps comparing.

Because I am no longer inside that system.

And if someone still wants to compete with me — that is their competition.

I didn’t sign up for it.

I might even accidentally see that it is still going on.

Look at it.