The Comparison Trap
The Comparison Trap

Doc Jacques: Your Addiction Lifeguard

Dr Jacques de Broekert talks about how comparing yourself to others in recovery can fuel shame, arrogance or despair and quietly sabotage progress. He encourages focusing on personal growth, using your own yesterday as the only measure that really counts.

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26:36•6 May 2026

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The Comparison Trap: Why Your Only Rival in Recovery Is Yesterday’s You

Episode Overview

Comparing yourself to others in recovery, whether "up" or "down", can quietly derail progress by feeding arrogance or despair.
These comparison habits are often rooted in childhood trauma and shame, later intensified by addiction.
Recovery is not a competition; the only meaningful measure is whether you’re doing better than you were yesterday.
Families who compare their addicted loved one to someone else’s recovery often trigger shame, a powerful relapse risk.
Step work and meetings are intended as tools for self-examination and community, not as a scoreboard against other people’s journeys.

“"Recovery is not a competition. It's the most personal thing you'll ever do… the only measuring stick that matters is are you doing better than you were yesterday."”

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? In this episode of Doc Jacques: Your Addiction Lifeguard, Dr Jacques de Broekert takes aim at a quiet saboteur of recovery: the comparison trap. Speaking as both a clinician and someone who has lived through family addiction, he unpacks how sizing yourself up against others in meetings, treatment, or at home can quietly wreck progress that had every chance to work.

Whether it's "at least I'm not that bad" or "I'll never be that good", he shows how both attitudes are fuelled by trauma and shame rather than truth. Doc Jacques explains social comparison theory in plain language, then links it to addiction: the brain learns in childhood to measure its worth against others, and addiction later turns that habit into a weapon.

You’ll hear how people minimise their problems by focusing on the “worst” person in the room, or give up before they start because someone else has 10 or 20 years’ sobriety.

As he puts it, "recovery is not a competition… the only measuring stick that matters is are you doing better than you were yesterday." Using vivid lifeguard stories and swimming lessons as metaphors, he shows how a simple change in perspective can shift terror into willingness, and how step work is designed to pull focus back to your own character, not anyone else’s.

He also speaks directly to families who compare their loved one to someone else’s “perfect recovery”, and explains why that kind of pressure lands as shame and can trigger relapse. The tone is honest, practical and gently humorous, aimed at people in recovery, those thinking about it, and their families.

If comparison has ever made you feel "not bad enough" or "too far gone", this is a timely reminder to stay in your own lane and just beat yesterday’s version of you. So who are you really racing against today?

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