Wanting What Everyone Else Wants

We rarely want things in a vacuum.

We want what others want.

The philosopher René Girard called this mimetic desire.

We copy each other's desires constantly.

Social media turns this into a machine.

Everyone performs a version of wanting.

The vacation. The body. The relationship. The outfit.

The career that looks effortless online.

We compare our insides to their outsides.

Of course we feel like we are losing.

In my sessions, this shows up often.

Patients describe a vague, persistent dissatisfaction.

Not sadness exactly. More like restlessness.

“I have a good life,” they say.

“So why do I feel behind?”

Mimetic culture manufactures that feeling on purpose.

It is not a personal failure.

It is a design feature of comparison culture.

Understanding this can be genuinely freeing.

Your desires are not fully your own.

Many were borrowed, absorbed, or copied.

That does not make them meaningless.

But it means we can examine them.

We can ask: is this mine?

Or did I inherit this want?

In therapy, we slow that question down.

We separate authentic longing from borrowed longing.

That work is slow, and worth it.

Existential psychotherapy takes this seriously.

It asks what you truly value.

Not what your feed tells you to value.

Group therapy helps here too.

In a room, comparison softens.

You see real struggles, not highlight reels.

That honesty is its own relief.

You are allowed to want your own life.

Not someone else's, filtered and curated.

That is the work I care about.