Envy v Jealousy
Castle in the Mud
March 23, 2023
jealousy
March 24, 2023Key Difference Between Jealousy and Envy
Envy requires two parties, like you and that neighbor, when you want her new car and you wish you were the one riding around with the top down. You feel envy when you want something someone else has:
Tall and lean, he is wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes, a dark blazer and red tie with hair every sports anchor would envy. (Chicago Tribune)
“There be many, Judith,” said he, “who might envy you your health and good spirits.” (William Black)
Jealousy requires three parties, like you, your neighbor, and your husband, when not only do you wish you had that cool car, but you’re worried your husband is going to ride off into the sunset in it without you. Jealousy is exciting because it shows up in lovers’ triangles and Shakespeare’s plays:
n Shakespeare, Othello is doomed by jealousy, Lear by pride. (Slate)
The peasant, mad with jealousy, ended by driving an awl into his chest. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
On the other hand, envious cannot take the place of jealous without changing the meaning of the sentence.
For example, he is a jealous boyfriend does not mean the same thing as saying he is an envious boyfriend.
What you have to remember to use these words precisely is this: envy (the shorter word) requires two parties. It means you want what someone else has. Jealousy (the longer word) requires three parties and means you feel threatened or suspicious that someone might take what you already have.
If you want your friends or colleagues to be envious of your flawless writing, try using LanguageTool as your writing assistant.
This multilingual text editor will make sure your text is error-free by checking for spelling and grammar mistakes and suggesting typographic improvements.
And yet envy and jealousy are not the same emotions. Envy, as unpleasant as it can be, usually doesn’t contain a sense of betrayal and resultant outrage, for example. Jealousy need not contain an acute sense of inferiority (if the rival is not enviable)
Why Understanding Envy vs Jealousy Matters
Knowing whether sensation you’re experiencing is envy vs jealousy, helps to direct the attention toward the core feeling and source of tension that is generating the anxiety.
Envy arises from a longing for something you don’t have and jealousy arises from fearing a loss of something you believe you possess or should possess. In both cases something we care about is at risk, coupled with an absence of control.
The thought process goes something like this: “I feel attracted to that thing I want but don’t have or to that person I want to be like but am not. I don’t know how to get what I want and even if I did, I don’t believe I could get it.”
This results in feeling like we have no control and thus creates anxiety.
In order to solve anxiety’s discomfort and use it as a tool, we have to focus on what is in our control and what is practical, rather than what we WISH were the case.
Focusing on things out of our control always escalates anxiety because we can’t do anything productive with the energy.
How Taking Control Helps Reduce Anxiety Generated By Envy vs Jealousy?
When dealing with envy vs jealousy, both states of mind involve focusing on something out there, something outside ourselves. This something in and of itself does not cause a problem. It is the way we are relating to it – our state of mind regarding that something – that is causing the discomfort (envy/jealousy).
When we are in a state of mind of envy, we are focused on something we do not have. And since it is something other than ourselves, we do not have control over it. As we established earlier, that is the cause of the anxiety.
If we were to employ the “can-control mindset” we would shift our attention to what is within our control. For example:
- We can control where we put our attention.
- We can control whether we choose to follow negative or positive thoughts.
- We can control whether we allow ourselves to feel our emotions.
- We can control whether we succumb to irritability and temper tantrums or choose the words we say to ourselves and others
From a can-control mindset, envy could be addressed by shifting focus from that thing/person/situation that triggers the feeling of not “being” who we want to be to imagining what it would feel like to be who we want to be.
You cannot control things outside yourself: people choose to end relationships, things break, opportunities come and go. Pinning your wellbeing beyond your control will thus always always be a set up for anxiety.
If you briefly focus on what feeling the illusion of “having” any one of those things brings up in you, you might notice feelings of security, contentment, happiness, excitement, love, etc. Once you identify the feeling you want to have, you can then detangle the feeling from those things, by focusing on the feeling in your body.
What you will notice is that those things aren’t actually causing those feelings. You can have the feeling without that thing/person/experience being there. You can begin cultivating the feeling inside regardless of whether or not you have specific things, relationships or experiences. You can take control of how you think about your needs.
This works best if you have already done the anxiety reduction process. It gives you a felt experience of knowing that you can turn “negative” feelings into “positive” feelings.
Take the intensity of longing, shift it away from “not being who you want to be” and direct it toward what you would be doing if you were who you wanted to be.
From there you can take the feeling of being who you want to be and create a clear vision of what you can do to get there. An action plan like this delivers a sense of control over your ability to achieve what you want, which overrides the initial anxiety over not already being it or not already having it.
Control Envy vs Jealousy By Loosening Anxiety’s Grip
As stated earlier, the anxiety generated by envy or jealousy is built on a perceived threat to something we care about. When we feel threatened, we usually feel both fear and anger and that fear and anger can end up fueling some pretty irrational thoughts.
It is a subtle mindset shift from irrational thoughts to more rational ones. From I can’t handle it to I do not want to handle it, but I can and I will. This is just another example of stepping into a can-control mindset.
By employing a can-control mindset, we control our attention to reduce the anxiety no matter what the cause. Knowing whether your feelings are related to envy vs jealousy does not change the strategy for reducing the anxiety that stems from it. Knowing the difference simply allows you to hone in on what exactly is making you feel unsteady, so you can redirect your thinking. Remember, with envy it is “not being” and with jealousy it is “not having” what you think you need.
Redirecting attention to what we CAN control is how we cultivate what we actually need. Feelings follow from the attention and actions we choose. Feelings of envy and jealousy are usually traps and distractions away from the choices we have. To solve the anxiety these powerful feelings generate, we start by refocusing on what is within our control.
G.I.T.C
Professional jealousy, tortured artist blues, Spinal Tap-ish excess and other clichés abound, but nobody seems to notice. (The Guardian)
You can feel envy about something you don’t have but want, but you feel jealousy over something you already have but are afraid of losing, like that husband who’s always hanging out next door
Many people interchange the words envy and jealousy without causing much confusion. You can say Joshua is envious or Joshua is jealous, and your audience will most likely understand the message you’re trying to convey.
However, these two words have different meanings.
Read on if you want to use these words precisely, and make your friends envious that you know the difference.
Envy is the longing to have what someone else has, whether it be attributes or possessions. Envy requires only two parties—you and someone else. For example, you may envy another student because they got a good grade on the exam, but you didn’t.
One problem is an unfortunate semantic ambiguity with the word “jealousy” (but NOT with the word “envy”). If you ask people to describe a situation in which they felt jealous, they are as likely to describe an experience of envy (e.g., “I wished I had my friend’s good looks”) as of jealousy (e.g., “my girlfriend danced with an attractive guy”).
Naturally, this creates a sense that jealousy and envy are very similar—even though they are actually quite different.
Therefore, when someone says, “I’m feeling jealous,” you don’t know whether he or she is experiencing an envy situation or a jealousy situation—unless more context is provided (e.g., “I felt jealous when I saw my girlfriend dancing with the attractive guy”).
The second problem is that envy and jealousy often travel together. What kind of rival to your partner’s affections is likely to create jealousy? It is the rival with characteristics that you are likely to envy—that is, the attractive rival.
This means that when you are feeling jealous, you are often feeling envious as well.
Envy and Jealousy Confuse Our Sense of Control
There are different ways we can look at control. For our purposes here, let’s look at actual vs perceived control. Actual control can further be broken down into the brain’s capacity to control and the mental gymnastics of control.
When we talk about the brain’s control function located in the pre-frontal cortex, we are referring to executive control, defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “the ability to carry out goal-directed behavior using complex mental processes and cognitive abilities (such as working memory and impulse inhibition).”
The mental gymnastics of control is more a manipulation of focus referred to as mindset control.
So not only is it actual control of what you are thinking but it is also a perception of control – a way of believing we are in control simply by where we focus our attention – rather than a biological function of the brain.
We propose that individuals can attain perceived control simply by reflecting on what one can control versus what one cannot. We call the mindset activated by reflecting on what one can control a “can-control mindset” and the mindset activated by reflecting on what one cannot control a “can’t-control mindset”.
We propose that adopting a can-control mindset will produce positive effects on well-being, health, and job performance, whereas a can’t-control mindset will diminish these outcomes.
When you shift your attention to yourself, you reclaim control.
You can bring that feeling back to the present moment and focus attention on ways you already are who you want to be. Once we are feeling better about who we are right now, we can capitalize on that sense of well being and focus on one next step that would bring us even more into the feeling of being who we want to be.
When we reclaim control, that thing out there that we were feeling badly about has faded into the background and then the focus is entirely on what is within our control – ourselves.
When we are in the state of mind of jealousy, our attention focuses on something that has been “taken” from us or is in danger of being taken.
This feeling is predicated on the idea that we possess that thing and that our good feelings are built on having that thing/person/experience in our lives. Believing our well being is dependent upon possession of those things is of course part of the problem. Seldom do possessions actually make us happy. But this is also a problem because we so seldom can control these things.
Harnessing Energy From Envy vs Jealousy To Get What You Want
When you use a can-control mindset to manage your experience of envy or jealousy, you open yourself to a super power – the power to harness the energy of “negative” feelings for your own advantage.
It is natural to want to resist bad feeling emotions. But when you begin shifting the way you relate to envy and jealousy and turn toward those feelings instead, there is a wellspring of energy at your fingertips.
Just like with the can-control mindset, we choose where we put our attention. In this case, it is toward the energy of envy or jealousy.
With envy, believing that you are not being who you should or could be creates an intense longing to be different. With jealousy, believing that you can not have what you really want, creates an intense feeling of lacking what you need. Both emotions are based on false self-assumptions that can be changed…
Rather than turning away from the longing and lack, try stepping into it just enough to harness its energy.
Anger is often the result of pain fueled by the fear that if it continues we won’t be able to handle it. In anger, the anxiety is about doubting our ability to handle what is to come.
It follows then that with envy and jealousy there is an element of anger ignited by the fear that you will not be able to handle the pain of “not being” or “not having” and fearing whether the unfulfilled wanting will ever be alleviated.
Anxiety then kicks in and escalates your discomfort when you allow yourself to think that you can’t tolerate what’s happening. The more you focus on how intolerable the situation is, the more agitated and upset you become.
The solution here is to stop the downward spiral of anxiety compounded by the fear of the anxiety never ending. We do this by disentangle our fears of anxiety from the anxiety itself. Sometimes, simply recognizing that anxiety isn’t itself harmful is enough to dial it down to where it can be useful.
