When You Envy Your Friend - How to Stop

A good way to fight something like envious and insecure feelings is to first understand what may be at the root of them.

First, you should ask if your friendship is generally a competitive one in which there's always an undercurrent of awareness of who "gets the most points" in any area in life. If it is it isn't the healthiest relationship. If that's the case, and you're generally only envious or insecure around this, one, person; that would tell you something.

If your friend is a perfectly nice person who is "just minding her business and doing better at something" then the envy problem is a bigger one.

You're right that envy and insecurity go together, and we often associate a person's insecurity with having low self-esteem. What I've noticed about people who are envious is that their insecurity is often not about their feeling bad about themselves, but about their having an ego that makes them need to be Number 1.

There are people who either always want/need to be Number 1, and there are people who, when faced with a friend who is Number 1 in a number of areas, would like to be Number 1 at least some of the time. Such people don't always even care only about positive things, like who is most attractive or who has a better job. People who envy because of a wish to be Number 1 sometimes will even resent it if the other person has bigger life problems and is Number 1 in the "life problems department".

When people are just used to always being Number 1 in everything but then meet someone who seems to put them in second place, that can be upsetting. On the other hand, when someone has lived life seldom (if ever) being Number 1 at anything, being close with someone who is can remind that person of her own inability to ever be Number 1.

Another way ego can play a role in envy is when a person has enjoyed a lot of attention and admiration all her life, has come to feel like Number 1, and then meets up with a friend who "knocks her off" the "Number 1 pedestal" she's been standing on through her childhood (usually without having any attention of doing that kind of thing and often being completely oblivious to the fact that the envious friend is "keeping a score card" at all).

Sometimes envy isn't about who is prettier, has a better job,or a better house; but who has confidence in the person she is. An average looking woman, who has grown up to like who she is based on valuing character over drop-dead looks may be completely confident in who she is. A drop-dead beautiful woman, who thinks that the most important thing in life is to be beautiful, may resent the confidence and happiness of the average looking woman; when she (the more beautiful woman) does not have the same kind of confidence. In a case like this, the person with envy and resentment isn't envying the average looking woman's appearance. She's envying the confidence "such a woman" would have and believing that "such a woman" has no right to such confidence. In other words, sometimes what people envy isn't the beauty, wealth, or brilliance, itself. It is the other person's happiness.

Whether or not the other person is happy is always a separate thing from how beautiful, wealthy, intelligent, or talented she is.

Then there is the "she's thinks she better than everyone" kind of thinking that envious people do. A perfectly nice person, who has her priorities in the right place and respects other people, may be particularly good looking, have a lot of money, be brilliant, be talented, etc. This perfectly nice person may just be living her life, caring about and valuing her friends, and generally minding her own business. The person with envy with first imagine how "superior" the other person "thinks she is" - and then will resent that other person over what she has imagined!

Sometimes someone will only envy what matters to him. He may not envy the particularly wealthy individual because he may not care about money. On the other hand, he may envy the individual who grew up with two, loving, parents because that's the thing he never had and always saw as important.

People who have been the victims of envy and resentment will tell you that living life essentially being "attacked" and resented through no fault of their own is a crummy thing. Some people will even try to hide what positive things they have in order to keep from being hated. Others will just be who they are and adjust to living under "assault".

Sometimes a person who is envious will actually delude herself into believing something that will make her feel better. Examples are believing that a brilliant person must "have emotional struggles" or believing that a wealthy person must be more evil than a poor person. Again, this allows the envious person to believe something negative about the "innocent party", while still resenting her for what is obviously superior. It's a double-punch type of thing to the innocent victim; and this type of thinking packs the further punch of refusing to see the victim for the positive things she, as a person, is. It makes her invisible, and it is a "very effective" way of making her "go away" (at least on a mental level).

Envious people sometimes believe that there is not room for everyone to be "Number 1 level". They think in an "either/or" way, and believe if their friend is brilliant or beautiful then they cannot also be. They often don't realize that the positive things a friend has is of no consequence to them. Whether a friend is beautiful or wealthy is only about the friend - not about anyone else. Whether we, ourselves, could use a beauty make-over or a better job, has nothing to do with anyone else either.

Sometimes people who are envied have worked hard to get or be what they have/are. Envious people sometimes view them as "lucky", but much of the time what someone has or is is more about what they have worked for. There are times, of course, when one person has lucked out in life and just ended up beautiful or brilliant or wealthy. My girlfriend used to say how her mother always told her, "There will always be someone who is prettier than you and someone not as pretty. There will always be someone smarter than you and someone not as smart. Whatever it is, there will always be someone with more and someone with less, so there's point in even paying attention to what other people have."

People who have to struggle with feeling envy sometimes believe it is something everyone has. It isn't. There are people who don't have an envious cell in their being. Maybe the biggest factor in not feeling envious of others is keeping in mind that life is not a competition. It isn't the high school prom, where only one person gets to be Prom Queen. It shouldn't be about who gets the most admiration and attention from people. That's for children who feel they don't get enough attention from parents.) It REALLY shouldn't be about who has the flattest stomach or best hair. That, too, is for children and adolescents.

In life, there really is no "score card". There is only journey, and no matter how many people we have in our lives, each of us must make our journey alone. Deciding to focus on the more important things in life is a great way to stop paying attention to who has a better job, better education, better car, or better abs.

The person who asks how to stop feeling envious and insecure is a decent person who doesn't like how bad envy makes him/her feel. Recognizing how destructive envy is is something not all people who have it do. Reminding oneself of what is truly important in life can go a long way in battling feelings of envy. Truly understanding the root of those feelings, though, may be the most effective way to stop them from arising.