Wise and Words and Bad Life Choices - Envy and Jealousy

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.” Brené Brown, Daring Greatly.

Back in 2015 in my first week of moving to London, I started a graduate program in audit, it was there I met one of my best friends. We were at one of the many after-work drinks each in separate conversations, when she overheard me mention to someone that I had just come out of a long-term relationship. She promptly turned around and grabbed me and exclaimed I have just come out of a long-term relationship. We quickly became best friends much like it is the case in Junior Infants in school; sitting beside one another in accounting class (the bane of life), stealing her stationery, and writing one another notes. Both of our Inner Childs met, shook hands, and decided we were going to firm friends. There was no going back from there.

Our stories were quite similar. Both of us had just come out of our only relationships we had experienced in life that had begun in school days. We also wanted the same ultimate end goal and held the belief that if it all worked out with the respective childhood sweetheart it was meant to be. We were soon inseparable from activities days at weekends, which involved running around London doing anything and everything. Always laughing and it soon became strange if we went a day without messaging or talking in some capacity. We entered single life together, making the same mistakes. Although at this time in life I definitely took them to a more extreme level. I was not one to dabble with only a toe dipped in, it was a go big and go home and regret it with subsequent mental torture at that stage in my life. One which I gladly own now for all it taught me.

Then it all changed. Aligned for our friendship to date, our stories took two separate paths. She found her way back to her childhood sweetheart (and still today they are without a doubt my favourite couple). I found myself lost, and the more lost I became the more a conditioned wound of abandonment grew. As it is with most new relationships, they spent more time together, and talking to each other every day stopped being the norm. I was both over the moon for her and grieving for myself, which is where the envy began to fester. Fester is a great word.

Rather than becoming curious about it. I bottled it and shoved it down. As with everything that is bottled down, it festered. Great word. I did not focus on the wound that was there, I did not focus on the fact that I was operating from a place of scarcity of she has something I do not have. Richard Smith has published Envy Theory and Research, a comprehensive study of the theoretical and empirical work on Envy. He views envy as both a disconnect from one’s own possessions as well as a resentment of those who appear to have what we want. Essentially it builds a scarcity mindset. Constantly looking at what others have and questioning why I could not have it too. Without becoming curious about the emotion, it continued to show up, and I made my choices based on that mindset. I will not go into them in this blog post, but she was one of the few people that came forth at the time and questioned my choices. But I was driven by shame and I ignored her and our friendship for a while was not what it once was. While we initially were no longer aligned due to having the exact same story, where we became unaligned which was more detrimental was by having two different mindsets. I lived in a lack mindset, she lived in an abundant mindset. Do not worry it is a happy ending, she is never getting rid of me.

Jealousy and envy are similar emotions but vary slightly in psychology. Jealousy usually involves a third party as a rival, while envy envisions someone else as having what you want (PsyschologyToday). There has been a wider breadth of research that focuses on jealousy within relationships versus envy in the collective society. It is in my opinion that the female collective is one area where we need to look most. There is intergenerational trauma abundant when we look at how females were always positioned for years to see acquiring a husband as a scarcity of competition. Then when we eventually moved into the workforce, the same thing occurred females poised against one another as there was only a certain number of jobs for high-powered roles. The beauty and fashion industry use this in their marketing campaigns. ‘Successful women choose X brand’. The categorisation of two types of women against each other, how could jealousy not develop? Evolutionary psychologists refer to this competition as the process of natural selection. We may be unaware of it, but we are competing for limited resources as natural selection and our biological evolution focuses our genetics on reproduction and hierarchy status (S.E. Hill and D.M. Buss, 2008).

Envy still shows up in my life but from different angles now. Such is the journey; we might heal one area, but it can then present itself somewhere else. Mine now shows up in other women who have chosen to move into the psychology realm. Daniella Moyles is someone who I equally admire and is a role model of mine, but at times I will openly admit that it can take the ego/shadow form of envy. One such time was with her book Jump. In March I had begun to collect and piece together ‘Wise Words and Bad Life Choices’ blog posts and chapter ideas and she released Jump. My shadow saw this as ‘she’s so ahead of me’, ‘she can achieve these things due to her established following’. The difference now is though I question it. I shine that bright light on the feeling that arises, and I break it down. Also, I would read Jump, it is truly a fantastic book particularly if you are an Irish girl in your 20s/30s.

The women that I admire that my shadow might pop and say hello in terms of envy have helped me reframe my mindset to that of abundance. They are not those who have something that I do not have. Instead, they strengthen my subconscious belief that it is possible to receive what I want. Society, the media, consumerism is all poised at showing you what you do not have in the hope for you to consume to fill the void of validation. Align, find your values, what actually matters to you? Where does the envy come from, question it? Is this something I want or am I being conditioned to feel scarce by not having it? If it aligns then change the mindset allow those who have achieved what you want to achieve to be your impetus for improvement. We can be simultaneously happy for our best friends who go into new relationships and grieve what once was, that is okay. But allow their relationships to help us grow towards the love that we want. We can put out a similar offering to the world that others have, we are all inherently different, so it is never going to be the exact same. There is a shadow with all light. The sun rising causes shadows to fall across the land. The moon on the sea. Both come hand in hand, however, the more we deny the shadow the more it grows.

Shine that light directly on the shame and it will reduce. Be vulnerable with yourself and others of where it comes from. It is there the shame will not survive and instead, it can become something beautiful. Brené Brown is right in Daring Greatly in saying that in order to dare and achieve what you want you have to be willing to look shame in the eyes and conquer it with vulnerability.

On a final happy note. In writing this it made me ponder, that I met my friend when we both were thinking, it is meant to be if it all works out in the end with the childhood loves. My initial focus did not work out. The thing I am most proud and happy about, however, is that we made it through to the other side, and I know that we are meant to be friends no matter how often we see/speak to each other. In fact, in the last two years, we have only seen each other twice, and each time it is like no time has passed at all, which is one of the truest measures of friendship. This comes from knowing that I have love and abundance, no matter what others might have that I have not achieved as of yet.

References

Brené Brown, Daring greatly: how the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. New York, MY: Gotham Books, 2021.

Daniella Moyles, JUMP: a journey from lost to found. GILL Books, 2020.

Hill, S. E., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The Evolutionary Psychology of Envy. Envy, 60–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327953.003.0004

Smith, R. (2008). Envy: Theory and Research (Series in Affective Sc5ience) (Illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/jealousy