“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown
Envy is such an overpowering and overwhelming feeling, often something hidden, or masked by a smiley face, or fuelled into rage and resentment. I’ve experienced all of these emotions in my life, and as I neared my fortieth birthday, I felt that I could not go on. I was crippled by the “envy story” stuck on repeat mode inside my mind.
As I watched friends and family swoop by me in terms of outer achievements and success, the envy door took me to places within that I’d not expected.
Envy began to feel like this creepy character, always waiting to erode my self-esteem and to crush those around me through criticism and put-downs.
What I discovered was that life will give us more and more reasons to be envious until it teaches us the power of deep surrender to what is. It can show us that sometimes what appears rosy on the outside is not always the case.
My envy had begun in primary school when my best girlfriends made new friends and I was left on the sidelines.
I lacked social confidence; I was quiet and quite shy, and my envy grew as most of my friends signed up for the school show, got boyfriends and I didn’t.
Envy continued into my adult life because I had tried to avoid it and managed to stuff it down with food and distractions, but it found new reasons for me to be envious. This time it was not friendships, but appearance and achievements.
It brought me to a crucial stage in my life where almost everyone I knew was getting every single thing I had ever wanted.
My bucket list was empty while everyone else’s was overflowing, with nice houses, greater financial prosperity, lots of vacations overseas, and so on.
At one point it felt like life was having one big cosmic joke on me as I looked into my purse and saw nothing there, while people on social networks were complaining they could not afford a new smartphone.
And so it continued until it amplified.
This experience gave me no choice but to do the one thing I had been avoiding all along—surrender to what is.
In 2013 I began a practice of mindfulness, after what felt like a long time of failing to positive-think my way into a better life.
Through mindfulness I saw how great this envious feeling was within me. I could no longer avoid it, ignore it, or smother it with over-working or over-eating. I knew this emotion had a great gift for me and now was the time for me to find out what it was.
As life showed me other people’s higher levels of outer achievements, I realized that I could no longer keep re-playing my failure story. It wasn’t possible that I was here to fail forever.
I noticed that I couldn’t fight envy by amassing greater riches than my neighbors. Envy wouldn’t go away if I got my teeth straightened, lost weight, met someone new, or became top in my chosen career.
There would always be more that my ego wanted. There would always be somebody who had straighter teeth, who was slimmer, who was higher up the professional ladder than me.
If an envy story is playing, it will always seep into our way of viewing the world until we meet it at the front door and welcome it in.
Recently, I attended my younger sister’s wedding. She’s twenty-five, in her ideal job, now married to the love of her life, and they are about to buy their first home.
Together, they are financially abundant and she is socially confident. Because of this, my comparison junkie reared its ugly head, with loud flashing lights and alarm bells. My sister, through no fault of her own, was a red flag to my envy bull.
As a single woman, in my late thirties, renting my tiny flat and currently living on a tight budget, the wedding threw up so much envy.
It was pelting me like tomatoes and rotten eggs at a criminal in the medieval stocks, but this time I knew how to handle what was coming up in me. I welcomed it all in.
Being more of a social introvert, I watched as more gregarious characters interacted at the wedding, as extroverts mingled easily and took to the dance floor during the evening, and I felt this whoosh of envy plough through me, starting at my solar plexus and rushing up through my heart and becoming lodged in my throat.
The envy wanted to scream, “Give me a break!” I breathed slowly, and gently said inwardly “Welcome envy, welcome.”
This did not take the envy away. It’s not a fast-food approach to personal growth; it’s a mindful acceptance of what is and an act of self-kindness to the hurt, sad child within who remembers times before when she didn’t feel good enough.
And by welcoming envy, I left the wedding soothed—not upbeat, not calm, not even happy, but a bit more at peace, and I was okay with this. This was a new experience for me, and I was grateful that envy had something to teach me.
Envy can pervade our identity, close our hearts to loved ones, and prevent us from experiencing meaningful relationships.
It can also be a gift, but not until we are willing to unwrap this gift can we see it for what it really is—a journey inward to the place where a more compassionate understanding can be revealed.
To bring relief from the pain of envy, you need to accept it, not resist or suppress it. It may feel scary to embrace this feeling, but it can help tremendously to acknowledge it and tell yourself, “I’m feeling envious at the moment, and that’s okay.”
You can then use your envy as a driving force toward achieving your goals or passions in life, but make sure they are your goals.
Sometimes in the heat of envy we can get lost in the achievements and outer reality of others and believe that we need to be like them to be popular, confident, likeable, and so much more.
Make sure you do a check-in with your own values. Are your goals based on your true inner passions, wants, and needs? Or are you pursuing something because you have compared your life with another’s and are feeling inferior?
About Kelly Martin
Kelly Martin is the author of When Everyone Shines But You, a mental health blogger, podcaster "Kelly Martin Speaks" and radio producer of the new mental health and music station Peace Within Radio. Kelly is on a mission to help those suffering with depression, anxiety, and PTSD feel good enough exactly as they are. Visit her on Facebook / Twitter.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Beautifully stated….exactly what I needed to hear.
Actually, what you are talking about is not jealousy–it’s envy 🙂
Thanks for pointing that out, Delayne. I’ve edited the post to reflect this!
This was lovely. I especially liked “this is not a fast food approach to personal growth”. This resonated with me as I usually want the fast food approach and have to often remind myself that echos of years and years of pain can’t be healed overnight. Thank you for sharing your story. Its good to hear an experience similar to mine x x
“Envy can pervade our identity, close our hearts to loved ones, and prevent us from experiencing meaningful relationships. It can also be a gift, but not until we are willing to unwrap this gift can we see it for what it really is—a journey inward to the place
where a more compassionate understanding can be revealed.” Thank you for that REMINDER & sharing your story…
Thank you Helen. Yes it was a ride through the fire of constant attempts at trying the fast food approach for many years that made me realise it generally doesn’t work and this helped me go easier on myself and my own process.
Great to hear, glad it helped.
Hi Jeevan/Mirthu/Gupt, you’re welcome.
Yes, I second that, thank you for pointing it out, like most people I had felt the word jealousy matched my feelings but on further investigation I realise, yes it is envy.
I guess the main reason why we struggle with envy is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel… We’ve all been there!
I also believe that we can either suppress envy, by pressing it down-down-down till it contaminates us inside out (ultimately changing nothing in our lives for the better). Or we might as well use it as a motivational force that indicates on those areas and things in our lives that need our attention to make some adjustments and major changes.
So I would take a better look at the meaning of envy… What does it mean? What does it want you to switch your attention to?
Great post, Kelly 🙂 Really enjoyed reading it! xo
you know the biggest thing is that you accepted your envy nature. You accepted that the culprit is you yourself, not the other women. Women usually have hard time accepting their jealousy.
Hi Vid, I could not agree more, as women we seem to have a learnt comparison junkie that brings up so many feelings of envy and jealousy. I am grateful to have gone through the fire of envy and it has given me a great gift.
Thanks LesyaLi, oh it’s so intense in our society isn’t it, Comparing our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel? It’s such a relief when you begin to make peace with the feeling of envy and start to use it as a motivational force.
I love your questions, thanks for sharing.
Great post! Love the 2 questions at the end, brilliant! 🙂
Really insightful post.
thanks Talya, glad you enjoyed it.
I have been struggling with envy for quite a while myself; my husband and I lost almost everything when the economy tanked in 2008, and we are still recovering. Meanwhile, my sister and brother-in-law were flourishing personally and professionally, building their dream house, buying new cars, taking exotic vacations, etc. I vividly remember one day when my envy boiled over; I had to call my sister for help when our water heater broke down and I didn’t have the money to get it repaired, much less replaced. She rolled up in her expensive new SUV and graciously said she would pay for the repair, and even buy a new one for us if necessary, and instead of being grateful, I was mean and snapped at her. She has been very generous to us in other ways during that awful time, and continues to be, and all I did was resent her for it. Every time she made a generous gesture toward us, all I could think is how unfair it was that she had so much, while we had worked so hard and had so little to show for it. I now realize that envy was clouding my vision and have been trying to be more self-aware and practice self-compassion, but I still have a long way to go. I needed to read this; thank you so much for your insight.
Hi PaganHeart, it can feel really tough when those especially close to us appear to be thriving when we feel we are not, life has some impressive ways of bringing us back to compassion and sometimes it can take a long route through envy until we begin to see that envy really hurts us, more than them. For me opening my heart to my sister also is an ongoing process. And for me its all about accepting, ‘I may not accept or love her in the way I want to right now because of envy, but I want to, and this is a good start’. And as you have learned, self-compassion for your own journey through envy is a big key. Thanks for sharing your experience, it’s always good to hear others are going through a similar awakening.
Thanks you , seriosly thank you.
you made me realize that i full of envy about my friends and thing they do, and you make me think about what i want and what i want that.I know its the first step to be a better persona so because of that thank you
You’re very welcome.
What I hate most about envy is how draining it is. I can’t get rid of it, but I also can’t work around it. I am not envious of other people like me, of people I know on social networks etc.
Thank you for your eye-opening article, Kelly. What I took away from it was that I need to be more accepting and compassionate towards myself.
I am envious of really privileged people, celebrities who get praise and love just for leaving the house, whose kids are automatically called cute because of who they are born to, who make oceans of money just by showing up in places, or by letting themselves get dolled up…
And the worst part is I never get a break. Every day, there is a new batch of reminders to be envious of the woman with the tall blond husband and perfect children, who is also a model and a fitness diva after 3 kids; of the celebrity couple who look gorgeous but are also really in love and have time for fun because they can afford nannies.
Usually articles on overcoming envy are going the “think of what you have that the person you envy does not” and that kills me, because my answer is always “Nothing!”. I am in my 30s, recovering from an eating disorder, dealing with daily, crippling depression… I wrote and self published several books but no one gives a damn. I guess they don’t give out awards just for surviving.
There are only 2 things about my life that I love, and those are my cat and the fact that we are both healthy. The rest, I would trade off in a heartbeat. I would give up 4 of the 5 foreign languages I speak for a flawless body (I could go on like this forever).
Bottom line is, Kelly, your article is the first I read on the topic of envy that doesn’t make me feel completely dysfunctional and like there is something dead wrong with me. I admit I am always terribly cruel to myself and I am NOT my own best friend. But in order to become that, I should start seeing things about myself that are worth liking, and there is nothing. I feel as though, if there had been anything special about me, it would have revealed itself by now. Once I turned 30 I became invisible or a joke to others.
I am also on a no-tabloid diet, because I find those fuel envy in a very intentional way and I don’t need that sort of gasoline poured on my fire. But I am still envious of everyone else, even of those who seem better at dealing with how crap life is for average working class people.
Really helpful, thank you for this Ms.Kelly
Thank you Kelly, for a powerful piece. Do I have your permission to re-blog it? When I reblog, I do not cut the piece in half so readers can finish on your site, although I understand the reasoning for that too. This is because many people won’t make that extra click and will miss the rest of your post. I generally write a brief introduction with links and encourage people to come to your site to learn more from you or to respond directly to you in comments. Thanks. hugs, gerry <3 #WUVIP