Adult envy is the result of inhibition of emotional development in childhood. Treatment for envy may take longer than dealing with other problems. An envious person is very reluctant to accept help, often denying that he needs it at all.

Trying to cope withenvyo a very long and complicated process, because the roots ofenvyare deep and go back to the distant past in our personal development . When the therapist makes efforts to improve the emotional state of the patient, the therapist begins to destroy what is helping him. Openly or implicitly resists treatment just when he feels that something might bring him relief.

When we are jealous, we want to have what someone else has - talent, partner, skills, etc. Jealousy usually motivates us to try to also possess its object or develop qualities that we envy others.Envyis a much more primitive feeling. When I envy my neighbor's car, I wish I had one like him. However, if I feel envious, I wish his car would break down, I feel the impulse to scratch it with a nail, I am glad when my neighbor has an accident. Sometimes envy manifests itself in the desire that no one else has what we have. This is often seen in children who do not allow others to play with their toys, even when they are not actually playing with them. Envy is a destructive feeling, it does not motivate you to do good deeds, but rather it pushes you to spoil what is valuable. There is a paradox in envy: when we see someone as something worth having, when we admire it and we want it, we feel a desire to destroy it! So this feeling can only appear in our thoughts, not in our actions.

Understanding the mechanisms of envy allows you to free yourself from it

The essence of envy lies in a situation in which someone gives us something really valuable and good, and the envious person does not want to recognize that it is good for them, finds faults, cannot accept, or even denies that I need it. Such an attitude in psychotherapy causes the patient to react paradoxically to treatments that bring relief to everyone else - he feels worse and worse! His envy makes him destroy the therapist's efforts, his deteriorating condition proves that"Good is bad." Ultimately, it takes longer to heal than other people. Fortunately, understanding all the mechanisms and symptoms of your own envy allows you to really break free and recover from it. This happens not only during psychotherapy, but also when we surround ourselves with good people and learn to value the fact that we have them around us.

Gratitude is the cure for envy.

Envy already appears in infancy

Envy is a primitive feeling, which means it comes into our emotional life very early on. At the beginning of life, a child's emotions are not very varied - little children feel only simple pleasure (e.g. when they are hugged, suckling their breast) and simple annoyance (e.g. when they are hungry and cry). One of the first feelings that emerges from this primitive bipolar emotional life is envy. How does it happend? Children up to 8 months of age do not yet have the concepts of time, constancy, cause and effect in their minds. That is why every event for a baby is "new". Consequently, the baby is unable to understand that the breast that feeds him is the one he misses when he is hungry. In his mind there is a separate image of a "good breast" that feeds and a "bad breast" that has milk, but does not want to give it. And that's when the baby starts to feel hatred and envy - he directs all his aggression, all bad feelings to that "bad breast", he hates it precisely because that breast has "good milk". Of course, there is no direct evidence that this is what is happening. in the minds of tiny children, however, many indirect clues confirm this belief.

Envy leads to the destruction of what is valuable in life

Over time, emotional development weakens a child's envy. This happens when the mind is mature enough to discover that the "good nursing breast" is the same that "does not come" when it is needed. Then, instead of envy, the child begins to feel sad (this takes place around 8 months of age). It can be said that envy begins to evolve and turns into a different, more mature feeling - just sadness, depression, and even the first feeling of guilt, and then other emotions. However, it also happens that at this stage emotional development is inhibited. Sadness and depression can be so strong and unpleasant that the psyche begins to defend itself against them and "returns" to envy. Then the evolution of emotions is stopped. It manifests itself very differently in adult life - e.g. difficulty in expressing admiration, respecting other people, difficulty in feeling the pleasure of being inamong the things and people we admire, the lack of authority, etc. In fact, the most dangerous thing is that contact with beautiful and good things or people arouses a desire to destroy them. If envy is strong, it can destroy our whole life, because we start unconsciously to destroy what is really valuable and good in our lives. As a result, marriages can fall apart, some people stop taking care of their he alth, and what is good for them is ruined. There is a deficiency in every good thing, and that's what envious people focus on.

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Psychology