Episode 208: When Envy Strikes: Unveiling the Raw Emotions Behind Others' Successes

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Transcript

Have you found yourself looking at your friend’s vacation pictures and feel something uncomfortable happening inside of you?

You try to ignore it at first. Maybe you try to ignore it and start thinking good thoughts like… that looked like a lot of fun for them. Or maybe you marvel at how beautiful the ocean looks with the sun shining on it at just that perfect angle. 

Maybe it isn’t a picture maybe it’s a video. Everyone frolicking in the sand. Eating ice cream on the sidewalk and you try to tell yourself that the ice cream rolling down the 2 year old’s check is cute.

But the rest of the day you are irritate. Maybe short tempered and just all around having a bad day. 

Or maybe you don’t make it to the day before you start to feel bad for yourself. Maybe now you’re crying with sadness and rage all mixed together along with that feeling down deep in the pit of your stomach that makes you hold your breath, sob. You feel like you’re going to internally combust as you watch your friend smile and wave at the person behind the camera. She gives an air kiss or peace fingers and you want to yell and throw your phone out the window. 

Maybe it wasn’t a vacation. Did the friend your daughter made in chemo just ring her bell? Did your sister in law just announce that she is cancer free? 

You could possibly have been happy for them, excited even. But as you smile and watch that video over and over again the smile might stay but the rest of your face contorts to this weird half angry half sad half indignant look. Making you look like the main character of a horror movie. Tears rolling down your face more each time you hear the ding of that freaking bell. Everyone clapping for them. Celebrations for the phase of their life. Everyone talking about the new found freedom that have. 

If someone gives you the news or you finally say yes to meeting up with that friend who took that beautiful vacation you try to set your face with a pleasant smile. You ask questions so as not to have to talk because your words would come out strained and choked by the emotion you're trying to hold back. You try to be happy and excited but it all feels fake and you hope they don’t see through this show you’re giving. The energy required to “fool” them all worthy of an academy award. Best supporting actress in a drama. 

Later you get home or finally put your phone down and the madness of the emotions overcomes you and you finally say…

This Isn’t Fucking Fair!!!

You ruminate for a while about how unfair their good fortune is for you. Maybe it’s just for a couple of hours. Maybe it’s longer. It lingers. You try to stay off of social media so you don’t see any more pictures of their fun or good news. You try to isolate yourself from the people who want to talk about it. Refusing to answer calls or texts from the ones you know want to say “did you hear?” Did you see their posts? Isn’t it wonderful?

They really deserve it.

That’s what breaks you. Because if only the people that deserve it are the ones that get these highs in life what does that say about you?

The more you rage inside the harder it gets to celebrate with people who mean something to you. You wait until the last minute to RSVP to the Cancer free party. You hold off as much as you can from seeing the friend who had the vacation. 

You know you want to be happy for them but you can’t. So you start to question why you should be happy for them. Which leads you to break when you realize…

You’re envious…

Now you already know that sharing caregiving feelings is difficult to do. You don’t think you can share how you’re feeling with anyone. It’s hard to confide in someone because you think no one will understand why and how your feeling this way and  they will judge you. You think people can’t support a person who can actually say knowing they are cancer free really makes me feel like shit. 

But you still feel it and start to wonder what’s wrong with you. 

Why am I making this about me? 

How can I be happy for someone and envious of them at the same time?

So you go on hiding how you feel which you realize makes things worse. It gets harder not to counter a conversation of the person who is free of cancer with how your wife will most likely die from hers. 

You can’t respond to your friend showing you her vacation pictures and telling you about how great it was with how you and your family won’t be able to ever take a vacation like that because you can’t even pay for your parent’s memory care facility. 

People won’t understand you say. 

Or they will refuse to admit they’ve felt the same. 

You continue holding it in and over time it might subside. It marinates like a piece of meat down deep in your gut. Weighing you down. Making it hard for you to breathe. 

Their wins make your losses more evident.

It increases how lonely you feel because you just want someone on your side. Someone to say… that’s good for them but I know things are crappy things are and how hard it has to be to see their happiness. 

You want someone to side up to you at that party and whisper “It’s wonderful they don’t have cancer. Celebrate now and then I’ll come by later and we can rage in how bad things feel for you right now.”

You want someone to see you and support you no matter how shitty the things you say are because… all of your emotions are valid.

I know how this feels. 

I know how much it hurts. 

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t make you a bad person to feel this. 

We all have to deal with our emotions when we see someone has something we’d like to have. A lot of times it brings to light a need you didn’t know you had. Maybe you don’t want to have that vacation until you see someone else have it. Or you didn’t notice how badly you’d like your loved one to be cured until someone else was. 

Mostly we want to be free. We want to be able to live that carefree life we think those people are living right now. 

I can spend hours telling you that it’s all an illusion but why dismiss how we all feel when we see someone else’s life looks wonderful, even if it’s from the outside. 

If their lives… real or not, bring to light the things we’d desperately do almost anything to have. If their pictures show a moment in time we know deep in our gut that we’d really want to live. 

That is real. Those emotions are real. The envy is real and shows you what you don’t have and what you might not ever be able to have. 

That’s a tough pill to swallow. 

You know “happily ever after” is just as elusive as that vacation can be. 

Don’t feel bad when this envy shows up but also don’t let it consume you. 

Give yourself permission to feel. If you can’t talk to someone about it consider writing about it. Or speak it into a recorder on your phone and chose to keep or delete it when you’re done. 

When the words stay in your mind they hold power over your emotions. As soon as they leave either by saying or writing them it allows you to let go, process and then move on. 

Other people’s wins can hurt. Not a lot of people will understand the amount of energy it takes for you  to be genuinely happy for them. 

But it isn’t wrong for you to feel this way. 

You’re not alone in this….

Thank you for listening.