Other People’s Income and Your Self-Worth

Author: The Narcis editorial team · updated: August 2026

Clinical review: a practising psychotherapist

Your salary does not change when someone you know buys an apartment, yet your sense of “enough” can change instantly. Research on relative income shows that people evaluate money not only absolutely but compared with others and with their own past.

What is driving this

This does not mean money is unimportant; low income genuinely limits safety and choice. Therapy becomes useful when comparison turns into automatic self-humiliation. A mature financial position needs a personal definition of enough, otherwise an external scoreboard will always find someone with more.

How it shows up day to day

Your income has not changed, but a friend posts photos of a new apartment and suddenly your salary feels small. Comparison works instantly because money carries not only purchasing power but status. The trap is that the scale keeps updating: once one level is reached, a new benchmark appears nearby.

Where popular explanations oversimplify

Not every uncomfortable emotion needs to be eliminated. Anxiety before negotiation or a major career move may be proportionate to the risk. The question is whether it supports preparation or makes action impossible. Here, that distinction matters more than trying to remove all discomfort.

Comparison is useful only when you know what you are using it for

Someone else’s income can be a useful market reference and a terrible measure of personal success. We rarely see the full context: starting capital, debt, work hours, risk, family support, health, and luck. Social media also displays spending far better than net worth. It helps to keep two scoreboards. The external one answers practical questions: am I underpaid, what is the market rate, what income is realistic in this field? The internal one defines enough: an emergency reserve, housing, time freedom, helping family, the ability to leave a bad job. Therapy becomes relevant when another person’s number automatically becomes self-humiliation. Then the question is not merely how to stop being jealous, but why money has become the primary language of status and whose respect is being pursued through it.

What the work can look like in therapy

When a person already knows the technique but cannot apply it for years, therapy looks less for another tip and more for the repeated point of collapse. What happens immediately before action? Which thought, emotion, or relational expectation makes the step feel dangerous? Behavioral tools — calendars, budgets, deadlines, negotiation plans — often become more useful after that.

A practical frame without self-diagnosis

Separate the external task from the internal pattern. 1) What fact in this topic can be tested with numbers, market data, or a concrete outcome? 2) What repeats regardless of circumstances — shame, avoidance, a need to prove worth, fear of rejection? 3) What does the current strategy cost in money, time, sleep, or relationships? 4) What small experiment could produce new data within seven days? If the problem changes when the facts change, work on the external reality. If the facts change and the same inner script remains, that is strong material for therapy.

Books and sources

• Clark, Frijters & Shields — Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility

• Morgan Housel — The Psychology of Money

More on this topic

This article is for information only and is not a substitute for an individual consultation with a specialist.