Though we probably wouldn’t like to admit it, most of us have felt envious at one time or another.
Smiling and congratulating a colleague when they have achieved a promotion or been given a pay rise, while seething on the inside that it’s them and not you, is not a particularly worthy feeling, but many of us have experienced it.
We often attach the misnomer of jealousy to this emotion. Although similar, envy and jealousy are actually quite distinct.
Jealousy is all about feeling something we have, usually a special relationship, is threatened in some way by another person. Envy, on the other hand, is more about wanting to possess an attribute or a material object that someone else has. Their meaning may often get mixed up in most people’s minds, but what is certain is that both emotions can cause untold pain and damage in the relationships we have with others.
It could be said that envy in small doses can actually be quite motivating. If another has what you want it can actually spur you on to achieve more in the spirit of healthy competition.
However, when envy gets out of hand, and takes a more malicious turn, it can cause untold unhappiness and anxiety to both the envied and the envious. This can instigate difficult relationships at work or more commonly issues between siblings, which can disrupt family life not only when children are young, but also in the long-term if not dealt with effectively by parents.
The process of feeling envious actually can prove to be very exhausting. The sense that nothing is ever good enough in your life and that you always seem to fail to match up to others is likely to be more about how you perceive yourself than about how you are perceived. Low self-esteem and negative thoughts can eat away at you so that you end up fulfilling the prophecy that you visualise for yourself.
These feelings often begin in the very early years, especially when new siblings arrive on the scene. They can spring from the sense that a child has to begin to share the affections of a parent and it’s important that parents recognise the signs and act to teach children how to deal with it.
From the age of about 18 months to 2 years, children begin to develop an awareness of self and this brings with it a gamut of feelings for them to deal with before they have the complex language skills to express themselves clearly.
Dealing with it
Helping children to begin to understand what they’re feeling by explicitly labeling envy, anger and selfishness and opening up a dialogue about it throughout childhood will help them to process and deal with these complicated feelings more effectively.
Explaining why they feel envious and angry that someone else has something they haven’t is the kind of emotional coaching that is going to help them develop the self-esteem they need to become happy and contented adults. This is because they will have the skills to work through issues as opposed to simply repeating destructive patterns of behaviour.
Dealing with extreme envy in adulthood can require professional help, but if you know you suffer from it, there are things you can do to change your outlook on things. It’s easy to get into a habit of focusing on all of the things you feel are inadequate in your life when you begin to compare it with other people’s.
Actively focusing in on what have as opposed to what you want and recognising the many positives about yourself can lead to a greater sense of satisfaction with life. Taking steps to boost your self-confidence by doing something you enjoy and you’re good at will also help you to tap into those positive feelings of success which make you feel good about yourself.
Putting away that measuring stick you use to compare yourself with others can be liberating in itself. The only person you should compare yourself to is the person you were before and the person you want to become. All other comparisons are erroneous.
The likelihood is those who you envy will have worries and issues of their own that you probably don’t see or even consider to exist. The truth is we are all human and we all have our own fallibilities, just don’t let envy be one of them, because when left to fester “envy eats nothing but its own heart”.
About the writer
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Russell Hemmings is a renowned cognitive |
