HEALTH PLUSEnvy colours perceptions, clouds judgment and can cause untold distress
ENVY IS deadly. It eats into the soul of those who suffer from it and causes needless hurt to the innocent recipients of its monster's green-eyed gaze.
Envy colours perceptions, clouds judgment and distorts interpretations of what is happening, with damaging and often delusional beliefs. This jealous behaviour saps the energy of all around and in the workplace it can cause untold distress.
Envy ignores the evidence that is presented to repudiate its delusions. For while envious people are preoccupied with the activities, achievements and aspirations of those who are the object of their envy, the recipients are astounded that their existence could cause so much angst in others.
Envy has its origin in inadequacy. The person who is envied often represents all that the jealous person secretly aspires to be and knows that he or she can never achieve. The envious person usually admires covertly, rejects publicly, and resents deeply, the envied person's appearance, circumstances, skill, ability, relationships, possessions, achievements, recognition or success.
This is what makes envy dangerous: that it is in denial of its own existence, that it pretends that it does not care about those things it cares about most and that it projects its own immature emotions onto the envied person, ascribing to the other that which belongs to itself alone.
Envy always justifies itself by castigating the object of its spite. Rational reasons are found for its irrationality. Its approach towards those it envies is three-pronged: attack their credibility, the validity of their achievements or the integrity of their motives.
Envy can be relentless because it is a chronic condition. It shifts from one target to the next. It believes that those who do not agree, condone and subscribe to it are enemies. It leaves many casualties in its wake.
It causes children to have to change school, young people to become distressed and adults to leave the workplace, with companies often losing creative, competent and caring staff to the envy of emotionally inadequate but already established employees.
Those who cannot share power often feel the need to disempower colleagues, and in corporate terms, there are critical times when this can occur.
For example, envy in the workplace often arises when someone new arrives into it. This may evoke suspicion, hypervigilance, monitoring of the actions of the new person, fear of being supplanted and apprehension about losing power, most often expressed in bullying in the hope that the new arrival will either have their will eroded or depart.
Envy is the origin of bullying in all its nefarious manifestations.
While jealousy and envy are terms that are often used interchangeably, a distinction is usually drawn between them in psychological literature. Envy is more concerned with what a person does not have and wants to possess, whereas jealousy arises from fear of loss, particularly of romantic relationship. Envy originates in comparison, jealousy in passion. Envy is dispossession, jealousy is possessiveness.
As an emotional repertoire and response pattern, envy begins early in life if children are not taught to handle failure, to rejoice in the achievements of other children, to recognise that what one person accomplishes is advantageous to everyone and that promoting a culture of warmth, affirmation, congratulation and approbation generates more success for everyone and more happiness for all in life.
Children who are made feel inadequate because of what a sister, brother, cousin, friend, classmate or peer achieves, often turn those distressing emotions inward upon themselves in depression, in poor self-esteem and even self-harm, or they may project those feelings outward, and begin a life-long pattern of suffering from jealousy that taints their lives and the lives of those around them.
For children are particularly susceptible to jealousy because of their dependence on parental attention and approbation. Sibling rivalry derives from such fear and the need to be equally important in parental eyes.
The origin of Freud's Oedipus Complex lies in the anxious imagined rivalry between father and son for the attention of the mother while the expression "daddy's girl" arises from a daughter's deep- seated wish for a share of paternal time and respect.
Brothers and sisters love each other but they also want to know that they are loved by their parents, unconditionally, valued equally and that their place in the family does not depend upon external success.
Those of envious disposition have been there since time began. Why else does envy find itself among the Seven Deadly Sins?
For envy is a deadly disease, and parents who can teach their children to congratulate and to enjoy everyone's success without feeling inadequate in themselves, gift them with an important approach to life.
Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the UCD Student Counselling Services