How Comparison Interferes with Rest and Reinforces a Lack of Safety

I am content with my home, my clothes, my vacations, my decorations, my flower beds, my life! Until…I open up Instagram, Pinterest, or other social media apps. I find myself comparing all of the perfectly curated pictures of modern homes, seaside vacations, vibrant flowers, perfectly styled clothing, and more. Memes assure me that nothing is out of my grasp and that I deserve what my heart desires. A seed of discontentment starts to grow. It leaves me feeling unsettled, dissatisfied, and wishing for something different. My heart and spirit are not at rest. I am not at rest.
Can you relate?

The Cycle of Comparison and Its Impact on Rest

Now, perhaps more than any other time in history, we are inundated with reminders that we should have something different than what we have. Societal and cultural pressures create a mindset of constant comparison. All day long, images on our phones, computers, and television remind us of how much better life would be if we just had whatever our friends have, social media influencers are raving over, or whatever advertisements are convincing us that we need. A quick trip through Target will tell you that life will be greater if you just had what they are selling.
Discontentment begins brewing in our subconscious minds. This dissatisfaction causes our nervous system to move into a state of threat, activating the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. The mental and physical toll of comparing oneself to others includes heightened stress, disrupted sleep cycles, irritability, and anxiety.
Comparison keeps the mind and body in a state of "doing" rather than "being," interfering with true rest. Starting another DIY project, coordinating outfits for a family portrait or endlessly scrolling through destination pictures of your dream vacation seem productive, but actually increase cortisol in the body.

Comparison as a Threat to Inner Safety

When we compare ourselves to others—whether it’s their parenting, health, home, or energy—it can make us feel like we’re not enough. This isn’t just discouraging; it creates a deep sense of failure that feels like a threat. Our minds interpret falling short as a kind of danger, making us anxious that we’re not doing enough or that we’re somehow failing in ways that matter. Instead of feeling secure in the calling and path God has given us, we start believing the lie that we must measure up to someone else’s standard to be okay.
This feeling of being "behind" or "less than" isn’t just in our thoughts—it affects our bodies, too. When we perceive competition or criticize ourselves, our nervous system responds as if we are in danger. Again, cortisol and adrenaline flood our system, making us feel more anxious, irritable, and exhausted. Over time, this chronic stress can disrupt hormones, digestion, and sleep, keeping us stuck in a cycle of fatigue and overwhelm. The more we try to push through or "catch up," the more depleted we become, making it even harder to feel calm, clear-headed, and emotionally steady.
Comparison keeps us in a state of hyper-vigilance, always scanning for where we fall short. Instead of feeling safe and grounded, we become stuck in self-criticism, unable to rest in the truth that God created us uniquely and with purpose. When we accept the limitations and boundaries of our life, and believe that God is with us in it, we disrupt this cycle and allow our bodies and minds to relax.

Restoring Rest and Safety Through Naturopathic Approaches

The most important step in breaking the comparison cycle is to recognize the thoughts and choose to change them. It is easy to become numb to the constant influx of discontented thoughts, so recognition often takes prayer and intentionality. When I recognize that a wrong thought is wearing a deep groove in my brain, I like to write a Biblical truth on a notecard to combat the wrong thought and carry it with me for a few days until the new truth starts to replace the old thought. This adaptation in the brain is called neuroplasticity.
It can also be helpful to support your nervous system with adaptogenic herbs. Adaptogens help your body adapt to the stress you are experiencing and bring some physical relief. Here are three of my favorite adaptogens.

Ashwagandha is a well-known herb that supports the stress response and offers additional support for the thyroid and sleep. I don’t recommend Ashwagandha if you struggle with anxiety or during pregnancy, though.
Eleuthero helps the body adapt to stress, helps build stamina, and improves energy. It also supports immune health, provides antioxidants, and has anti-inflammatory properties.
Maca supports a healthy stress response, improves energy, reduces anxious feelings, and lifts the mood. It supports female hormones, improves libido (when taken for 12 weeks or more), and increases brain function.

You may also want to diffuse essential oils to help reduce the stress response and help your body move toward a state of greater calm. I like to diffuse citrus oils like wild orange or bergamot along with lavender or petitgrain.
I encourage you to honor your unique rhythms and circumstances you find yourself in. Embrace imperfection as a path toward peace. Recognize the freedom of “less is more”. In a world where the demands and expectations of our days can cause our bodies to constantly generate more stress hormones, choose to guard your heart against the lies of comparison. We can’t control every circumstance that contributes to our daily stress, but we can take an active stance against comparison so our bodies can experience rest in this small way.

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Why the News Is Wearing You Out (And It's Not Your Imagination)

By Rachel Rauch • September 8, 2026

Do you ever feel like life is moving faster than you can keep up with? I do. So I went digging into the history of how news actually traveled, and it turns out I wasn't imagining things. Life really has sped up. Let me walk you through it, because it explains more about your body than you'd think. In 1776, news moved at the speed of a horse or a ship, and sometimes slower than the war it was reporting on. The Treaty of Ghent was signed in December 1814, but it took six weeks to cross the Atlantic. Andrew Jackson fought the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the war it belonged to had already ended. The telegraph closed that gap. The Associated Press started in 1846, when five New York papers pooled money for a courier-and-telegraph relay to beat each other on Mexican-American War news. By the 1870s, the AP wire was the backbone of newspapers coast to coast. When the first working transatlantic cable went in in 1866, European news reached city readers by the next morning. Rural readers, stuck waiting on the mail train, stayed weeks behind. Radio and television took over in the 20th century, still riding on the AP wire underneath. Overseas footage could reach American living rooms the same day. Cable news pushed that down to real time — by September 11, 2001, people watched history happen live instead of waiting for the evening broadcast. Today the lag is seconds, and the source is usually a stranger's phone, not a newsroom. Wire services and reporters still do the actual digging, but social platforms and algorithmic feeds decide what you see first, and they usually beat professional verification to the punch. Speed isn't the problem anymore. Knowing what's true before you share it is. Here's what that means closer to home. A woman in 1776 spent her day on what was in front of her: feeding her family, supporting the war effort locally, running her house. Her stress was real, but she wasn't carrying Africa's wars or Asia's famines on top of it, because by the time that news arrived, it was already over. Even through World War II, women served their cause by investing in their own community. Worldwide events they couldn't touch were, for the most part, not part of their daily awareness. And when they were, it came through black-and-white photos and print — sterile, one step removed. Even the six o’clock news felt at a distance most nights. Social media changed that. Now a plea to save trafficked children and a plea to save dying coral reefs show up back to back in the same scroll. We watch villages in Africa pillaged by rebels, children starving as civil wars tear countries apart, cities flattened by earthquakes and wildfires — all shot on the phones of people living through it in real time. Every influencer has a cause, and plenty of them want you to feel something urgent enough to act, whether that's guilt, outrage, or a call to fix something four thousand miles away. I'm not minimizing what any generation before us dealt with. I'm giving you context for what makes ours different. When women in earlier generations felt worried, they could point that adrenaline at something in front of them and actually do something about it. Now, every time we watch a crisis unfold somewhere we have no power to change, our body still releases the same stress hormones it always has — as if we were about to step into that crisis ourselves. Except we can't. Your body doesn't know the difference between a threat in your kitchen and a threat on your screen. It reacts the same way either time. And it's not just the news — it's the constant hum of social media running in the background of your day, quietly keeping your body braced for something it will never actually need to respond to. That's a real cost. It pulls from the same reserves your body needs for the stress you can't avoid. If you're anxious most of the time, short-tempered in a way you don't like, sleeping poorly, or dealing with digestive issues that won't resolve, social media and the news cycle may be part of what's driving it. Try a sabbatical — no social media, no podcasts, no news, even for a few days. Let your brain settle. Let your attention come back to what's actually in front of you, and notice whether your body feels different. When you're ready to bring news back in, I'd point you to The Pour Over. It's non-partisan, comes with Scripture and prayer built in, and delivers everything in short pieces — enough to stay informed without getting pulled into the emotional undertow of events you have no way to change.

Nothing Is Certain Except Death, Taxes, and How Your Body Handles Uncertainty

By Rachel Rauch • August 25, 2026

You've probably heard the line, "Nothing is certain except death and taxes." It's usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote it to the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy — expressing his own anxiety about not hearing from Le Roy for over a year during the chaos of the French Revolution. Every era has its uncertainty. But is it just me, or does the world feel more uncertain lately? Maybe it's the upcoming midterm elections. Maybe it's the unrest in the Middle East. Maybe contagious viruses just feel more ominous since COVID. And then the news serves up one terrible headline after another that I wasn't even thinking about until I read it. Maybe current events barely register for you, but you still struggle to feel safe because of something that happened to you, or to someone you love. It's hard to feel certain about anything after what you've been through. If that's you, I am truly sorry, and I lament with you in that! Here's what's actually happening in your body: uncertainty triggers the same stress response as a real physical threat. You have a small gland in your brain called the amygdala, and it interprets ambiguity the same way it interprets danger. Your body responds accordingly — racing heart, shallow breathing, sweating, blood rushing to your limbs. At the same time, the amygdala suppresses your prefrontal cortex, which slows your thinking and makes it harder to make decisions or regulate your emotions. Live in that state long enough, and it becomes an allostatic load on your body: chronically elevated cortisol, a suppressed immune system, more inflammation, reduced digestive capacity, and hormones out of balance. You might also notice more anxiety, more fatigue, and everyday tasks feeling like more than you can carry. I wish we could avoid uncertainty. I think you do too. We are finite people held in the hands of an infinite God. Some days I catch myself thinking that if my life had no uncertainty, I'd be less stressed. Deep down, though, I know that's not true. No uncertainty would mean I'd know everything — including every scary thing headed my way — and that would stress me out more, not less. So if uncertainty isn't going anywhere, how do we keep it from wrecking our bodies? Limit your knowledge. I know that sounds backward. We have the whole internet in our pockets, and we can watch the news unfold in real time. But most of what we're consuming is about things we can't control or influence. That turns knowledge into a burden. Cut back on the things you have no say in, and focus on what's local and within your reach. Cut your social media scroll. Comparison breeds "what if" thinking and discontentment. And the algorithms are tracking every half-second pause in your scroll, then feeding you more of exactly what stirs up your uncertainty. Build a budget and stick to it. A budget lets you plan for what you need and prepare for the unexpected. It slows the kind of spending that feeds on uncertainty. Cut back on caffeine and other stimulants. They stack extra stress hormones on top of what your body is already producing, keeping you stuck in an activated, wound-up state. Write down reminders of God's faithfulness — put them where you'll see them. When Moses handed leadership over to Joshua, right before Joshua had to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, Moses gave him this: "It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." — Deuteronomy 31:8 (ESV) Joshua was afraid. Moses didn't hand him a plan — he reminded him who was going ahead of him. We can hold onto that same reminder. Ask if there's a deeper root to your uncertainty. Is there a past event, or a pattern, feeding what you feel now? That can be a loaded question, and it's often easier to sort through with a counselor or therapist who can help you connect what happened then to what you're carrying now. Uncertainty isn't going away. But we don't have to just absorb it. We can be strategic about how we handle it, and about lightening the stress load it puts on our bodies.