Something I have learned from years of spiritual counseling, women’s groups, and retreats is how much people struggle with envy and don’t even know it. In fact, I’m an Enneagram 4 and our primary vice is envy, which I was never conscious of until I got into my 40’s! In fact, for most of my life I couldn’t relate at all to the idea of envy, but that was because it was relegated to my shadow. When I began taking shadow work seriously, I got to know envy.

Do you know how sneaky envy is? Including in spiritual circles? Often what we chalk up to “not resonating” with someone or “not being aligned” with someone, is actually just unconscious envy.

Envy can look like:

  • Self-righteous thoughts about what others are doing and saying
  • Negative judgements about others, especially when they are experiencing success or abundance
  • Having expectations that are unreasonable, short-sighted, ill-informed, misplaced or unfair and experiencing disappointment as a result
  • A jaded feeling about not wanting to celebrate others
  • Manipulation of others’ emotions
  • Feeling that the attention that others are getting is unwarranted or undeserved
  • Experiencing even a hint of quiet pleasure when others fail or experience setbacks
  • Constantly comparing yourself to “them” and “they” in your mind
  • Difficulty using empathy and being proactive regarding genuine connection and participation in something larger than ourselves
  • Always trying to one-up the successes that another has
  • Avoiding situations where the subject of our envy might be present
  • A sense of “compare and despair” that puts you in a constant state of longing
  • “Complimenting” others with under-handed insults
  • Rallying others not to like the person that you don’t like
  • Copying and imitating others
  • Internalizing and personalizing otherwise neutral behaviors of the other and perceiving injustice where there isn’t any
  • Cringing at their happy milestones
  • Struggling with humility and our understanding that we, too, have frailties and can be aggressive, grandiose, and believe we are more powerful, knowledgeable and competent than we actually are

Of course, in and of themselves, many of these behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and reactions aren’t necessarily the effects of envy. They can be attributed to many aspects of lower consciousness and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. But grouped together, we can see envy at work.

How does envy develop? Envy is about feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, longing, and resentment that usually originate from unmet needs and relationship chaos with caregivers and key people in our childhood and early adulthood. These feelings can lead to chronic bitterness and skewed perception. Envy is a wanting behavior, born of unfulfilled desires, dreams, and goals and dissatisfaction with a main area or various areas of one’s life. It’s an expression of the experience of not-enoughness. Its covert message is I want something that I think I don’t have access to myself. I want something I can’t currently find within me. I want something I don’t see fully enough of in my own life. People who struggle with envy typically start struggling in childhood and become masterful at hiding their envy in an attempt to achieve belonging.

Envy is also associated with a disproportionate sense of justice and punishment, and the need to control. In other words, this quote- author unknown: “The envious person creates a bomb out of another person’s single, slightest mistake.” The pathology here is an unconscious, mental orientation: If I can control everything outside of myself, perhaps I can fool myself into believing I am really okay. But if I can’t control everything outside of myself, justice and punishment towards the other are the next best coping tactics for my inner discomfort. So, envy is a bedfellow to cruel intolerance (even in the form of quiet/silent persecution of the other) and projections of wrongdoing into benign situations, usually accompanied by pretty convincing rationalizations. The irony is that the envious person typically keeps steep standards for others while contradicting them themselves.

Envy typically hides in plain sight, more from our own awareness than anyone else’s.  Because it usually has the energy of hostility, it’s a felt energy even before it’s expressed in words or action. But the intensity of the feeling is experienced most by the one who is envious, not by the target of one’s envy. It acts as a boomerang! Therefore, the cost to one’s already low self-esteem is high, as envy acts as another hit to the already injured psyche of the envious.

“Envy shoots at others and wounds itself.” – English Proverb

Envy has powerful, pervasive effects on our lives, keeping us from true connection and a sense of our own enoughness. It also corrodes interpersonal relationships and shows up most in same sex/gender dynamics. Envy is typically a dyad, meaning that it involves two people, where one wants what they perceive that the other has. It most frequently involves people we have something in common with or share common experiences or aspirations with. In particular, what I have witnessed most prevalently, is that women who struggle in their relationships with other women (often from unhealed mother wounds) suffer from self-sabotaging envy and unconsciously use it to push other women away to mitigate the experience of feeling threatened or confused. But envy also occurs across genders and with anyone whom we feel is showing up in ways that are difficult for us to.

Because envy is harmful to our own self-esteem, it drains us of precious life-force energy that could be used towards personal growth, healing, and authentic leadership. When we try to pull one person down by withdrawing support or quietly sabotaging them, we hurt the whole community, but who we hurt the most is ourselves.

Do you want to be free of your own patterns with envy?

“He who envies others does not have peace of mind.” – Buddha

In order to heal from patterns of envy, we first have to name and identify that what we’re experiencing is, in fact, ENVY. Then we can begin to heal and invite more positive perspectives in our lives. It requires brave self-honesty and meditative inquiry into what is below our surface level behaviors and reactions.

We also have to be willing to explore an unpleasant set of overwhelming emotions and character flaws through shadow work or other forms of conscious healing. And we need to examine and question the narratives we tell ourselves about the targets of our envy.

It’s also essential to look at our relationship with gratitude around the experiences, relationships, qualities, and things we DO have access to. In fact, gratitude for your own blessings is one of the primary antidotes to envy, but only accompanied by personal introspection on how we get trapped in envy in the first place. Do you have a gratitude practice in place to honor what is going well, what gifts you do have access to, and how life is supporting you towards your highest good?

“Envy is the art of counting another fellow’s blessings instead of your own.” – Harold Coffin

Lastly, we must bring grace to our own humanity and the humanity of others. There is no such thing as perfection. Every single person has vulnerabilities and limitations, as well as gifts and strengths. Are we in touch with what is generous, helpful, beautiful, empowering, gracious, innocent, wise, and giving about any person who stands in front of us, including the one looking back at us in the mirror?

Questions for Self-Inquiry:

  • What did I learn about this feeling growing up?
  • How do I experience it in my body?
  • How do I behave when I am hijacked by my own envy?
  • What does unchecked envy cost me in my life?
  • How many of my relationships might be suffering from the common denominator of my unhealed envy?
  • What would I rather experience that envy might be blocking (i.e. falsely protecting) me from?
  • Who would I be without envy running my life?
  • What wisdom is envy offering me about my own self-esteem and the areas of healing that I still need to work with?
  • What do I need to forgive myself for regarding my patterns of envy?
  • How has being the target of envy hurt me in my past and present?
  • What gifts, capabilities, dreams, goals, and longings do I need to take responsibility for in my life so that I can be free of the cycle of envy and grow into true confidence? (When you know you are great, you have no reason to hate!)

What if all the offerings that people share are here for your enjoyment, encouragement and inspiration, not to feed the hungry, super-ego-monster of your envy?

And what if you getting to actually experience that enjoyment, encouragement and inspiration depends on you looking inward, not outward, so you can dismantle the parts of your personality that have controlled you for so long – such as anger, jealousy, envy, vindictiveness, superiority, and inferiority? (A question posed by Spiritual Teacher, Gary Zukav)

It was Oprah who plainly said, “You can’t be friends with someone who wants your life.” It’s true! You can’t create connection with people who look at you as competition when you look at them as a friend. Our job is to create a life and self that we each want to live in, and only the most authentic expression of that is sustainable. Our other job is to make friends with life – that includes ourselves, people, and our higher power. This requires us to get close to our judgmental, critical natures and see where mercy is the medicine. Improving self-awareness instead of simmering in unresolved expectations and desires gives us all a clearer purpose and reconnects us with the inherent goodness that exists in each other, as each other. Learning to give ourselves and others grace is an essential step towards growth and freedom from the cycle of being green with envy.