Laura dishes in a solo ep. on her experience with jealousy, including a bonus conversation with author Christie Tate.
When was the last time you got real about jealousy or envy?
In this episode, Laura brings the heat, digging into how jealousy and envy have shown up in her life. She explores the ways they’re different and the ways we use them to blow ourselves up.
This is no trail of tears, though! We’ll take a look at what social psychologists and researchers have identified as the purpose of these emotions. And then we explore ways to help work through these feelings when they rise up and want to take charge of our lives.
If you’re a TMST Plus member, the members-only episode features a bonus conversation Laura had with her friend Christie Tate, the NY Times Bestselling author of Group, which was about her experience in group therapy. The two of them have spent a lot of time delving into these gross, uncomfortable feelings, and you can be a fly on the wall as they explore it.
SUPPORT: Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Become a TMST member today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free.
====
TMST is hosted by Laura McKowen, the bestselling author of We Are The Luckiest and founder of The Luckiest Club. Follow the show and Laura on Instagram.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Laura McKowen on Jealousy & Envy
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. All right. So today I am doing a solo episode that I've actually been working on for a couple of months. We are gonna talk about jealousy and envy. The purposes they serve and the way we blow ourselves up with them, it starts with this story that I'll tell you about in just a minute. But when this, this thing, this precipitating incident happened, it pushed me to ask, okay, do I want more of this kind of pain?
[00:00:35] Or am I gonna say enough and try something new? And I needed to try something new because these spirals that I would have these jealousy or envy spirals. They were intense and I wanted different. I didn't want to continue to feel that way. So I got digging into it and talking about it and reading about it and thinking about it.
[00:00:58] And this [00:01:00] episode is a culmination of some of the most helpful things that I found. So here's what's next. We are gonna dig into what jealousy is and how it differs from en. Because it turns out that distinction is important. We'll take a look at what some social psychologists and researchers have identified as the purpose of these things, because they do have a purpose.
[00:01:23] They're not here to just torture us and then I'm gonna outline one super helpful process that I came up with to help work with this energy. Before we get started, though, there's something important. I wanna call out. Identifying versus comparing. So you are gonna hear me share things about my life, about the areas where jealousy and envy hit me.
[00:01:47] And it might be areas that you don't have much experience or it's just not reflective of your life. So that's okay. The point is not to compare our specific [00:02:00] experiences, but instead to identify with the feelings and. Am I familiar with this feeling? Where does it show up in my life? So, okay. Identify, not compare.
[00:02:11] And then two quick things before I jump. first, if you're a TMS D plus member, I spent some time talking about all of this with my friend, Christy Tate. You may know her. She is the author of group, a New York times. Best seller about her experience in group therapy came out in 2020 Christy. And I have had so many conversations about jealousy and envy, and which is such a gift because there's very few people you can share these kinds of really gross.
[00:02:43] uncomfortable feelings with, you can hear the conversation that Christy and I had about this in the member. Only feed. And that takes me to number two. If you want to become a member and hear that conversation, you can make that happen. Um, while also financially supporting the [00:03:00] show for as little as $5 a month, uh, to keep this a very uncommercial kind of podcast add free.
[00:03:09] And to do that, you just have head over to TSD pod.com to make it happen. If you don't wanna do that. Totally fine. There's so much. Juice in this episode anyway, but I wanted to let you know it's there. All right, here we go.
[00:03:35] So here's the story. Uh, on the Saturday morning, couple months ago, I woke up, had coffee with my boyfriend, probably did the word all. talked to the cats. And then for no reason, I went down to the couch and went down this Instagram rabbit hole. There actually was a reason which I figured out later [00:04:00] and I'll get into that at the end.
[00:04:01] But you know, sometimes these Instagram rabbit holes or Facebook or whatever, TikTok, whatever your, your thing is, they're just pure zone. Dopamine hit type stuff. You know, mind numbing, just like pull the slot machine of the algorithm type of stuff you might land in cat video land. You might end up buying eucalyptus sheets that nobody needs, you may stumble on.
[00:04:26] I don't know, astrology for politicians. It doesn't matter. But then there's this kind of thing that I was doing, which is really sneaky because I don't always know what I'm up to until later. And it's really masochistic. I know it's going to hurt, upset, tweak me, but I do it anyway. I went and looked at a certain author's Instagram page and I won't name them because it's irrelevant.
[00:04:56] I know we all have these people or at least we have these feelings. There might be. [00:05:00] Certain specific people or just sort of a category of person, you know, women that look like this men that look like this, people who have achieved this type of success. So I'm gonna focus more on the feelings, not the specific person.
[00:05:15] Here's what happens. I land on this page, which I don't follow because of because of how it makes me feel. I land on this page and I feel this very predictable. Up rush of anxiety. My face gets hot. My chest tightens, my breath gets shorter. My mind starts racing and the recent post is, uh, of a podcast interview that she's done.
[00:05:42] And I don't wanna read the caption, but I read the caption, but I read it like really fast, cuz I'm trying to kind of look but not look and I'm feeling sicker and sicker by the second. And then I noticed, of course, how many people liked it, how many people commented and how many followers this person has.
[00:05:59] And it's [00:06:00] like one big engulfing swirl of just awful over the course of maybe two minutes, I'm transported to a totally different place, a bad place. And when this happened, it was at least the hundreds time I've done this with this one author and. I went to, you know, you, we wanna escape this feeling really fast and as women are, what we are trained to do is reputation, destruction.
[00:06:36] Right? We find a way to judge, bring down, talk shit, say something snarky about this person. It's what we're trained to do. And I didn't do that. I have done that in the past. Um, but I didn't do that this time. [00:07:00] I sent a text to my friend Christie, and I just said, this thing that happens, happened again. And I just wanna name it.
[00:07:15] That was the end of my text. And she just wrote back. Yep. You know, you're not alone. like I said, we've had many conversations about this as someone in recovery, I have learned to just name these things when they come up. So that's what I did on that day. A couple months ago on that Saturday. So this feeling.
[00:07:37] Is just, like I said, this hot burning feeling like I'm in some kind of free fall, something terrible is happening. It feels like anger and fear mixed together, but there's something else in there too. Like this feeling of injustice and resentment and annoyance, and I feel small and insignificant and kind of like, [00:08:00] what's the point?
[00:08:01] Like it brings me so low. Like what's the point of my work? What's the, like, I'm, I'm nothing. And then comes in the shame because this feeling feels petty and small and unevolved and like, why can't I just be happy? And I'm such a loser for feeling this and so on. So on top of the jealousy spiral, we'll call it jealous.
[00:08:33] even though I wouldn't, I didn't use that word and I, I never really knew I suspected, but I didn't really know if, what I had felt when I engaged with this person's work was jealousy or what, um, but. We'll call it jealousy. But on top of that, there's this shame spiral. And this is something I posted actually over the weekend before I recorded this on Instagram, asking for you to submit questions or [00:09:00] thoughts for me about jealousy.
[00:09:01] And first of all, I received so many, I don't know if I've ever received so many direct messages and comments and, um, question submissions from the story. as I did when talking about jealousy and that says a lot, uh, it says that we all, we are all experiencing this for one, but that this is like, this is something we need to talk about.
[00:09:27] And I, I know that that's why I'm doing this. So one of the things though that came through is the shame spiral attached to the. The jealousy itself, the fact that we feel shitty about feeling shitty , which is super unhelpful. Okay. So on this day after I sent my text, the text, my friend Christy, I decided to go for a run and just let it kind of burn through.[00:10:00]
[00:10:00] And on that run, I decided. I really wanted to get to like the bottom of this thing, or at least make sound ground on it, instead of just trying to stuff it down, hoping it doesn't come back knowing it's gonna come back because this is something that's just reoccurring and reoccurring and reoccurring, and clearly there's something in it.
[00:10:23] Right. So I decided I wanted to dig in. So, like I said, I started reading, researching thinking, talking about it, and that's how we've landed here. This is a huge topic. I, what I realized when I got into it is it's huge. There's layers and layers and so many scenarios and nuances. So I don't think this is the last time I'm gonna talk about it on the show.
[00:10:51] Plan to bring in some probably experts like therapists, clinicians, researchers, and so on. But [00:11:00] for this conversation, I'm going to first cover, like I said, what jealousy is and how it differs from NB. So that's where we're gonna go now. All right. I mostly looked into BNE Brown's work specifically in Atlas of the heart, but also Carla mcclar.
[00:11:18] Book the language of emotions I have had that book for quite a long time. I find it super helpful and I looked in a couple other sources as well, but those two I found were the most helpful. And in all the research that I did, there's this endless debate about the differences between jealousy and envy, but it does seem like there is a consensus.
[00:11:39] That one there's a difference. And. that they do something. They have different instructions for us. So bene provides these two definitions, which I think are the best envy occurs when we want something that another person has. [00:12:00] So envy occurs when we want something that another person has jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship.
[00:12:12] That we already have. I'll say those again, envy occurs when we want something that another person has jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have. So that's interesting because I don't know that I've what I've experienced is so much jealousy at all, but, but much more envy.
[00:12:41] Carla, McLaren research agrees with this, but the wording is slightly different on envy. And I really like it. So jealous. She says jealousy arises in response to perceived or real unfaithful or deceit in an intimate relationship. So it's always relational. This is jealousy. So it's about [00:13:00] threats to reproductive survival or value as a mate, according to.
[00:13:07] An envy arises in response to unfair distribution of resources or recognition. So it's about threats to your social position and connection to resources like money, food, privilege, protection, belonging, and status. That sounds very familiar.
[00:13:35] What I, well, a couple more things, both, uh, jealousy Enver envy contain a mixture of anger and fear and can sometimes include hatred, which is a whole other thing where we have to explore our shadow. Uh, and I'm not gonna get into that in this episode, but envy [00:14:00] involves two people where jealousy typically involves three.
[00:14:04] And V is between you and what another person has that you want. And jealousy is involves three people, because it's usually about a threat of this third person, um, taking, compromising the relationship, threatening, the, the relationship that you have could be a friend relationship, could even be a close work relationship or a sibling relationship.
[00:14:31] So. this made me think that oftentimes what I've called jealousy is envy. I don't, I don't experience the definition of jealousy defined this way very often. I certainly of course have, but that's not, I don't spend a lot of energy there. Um, but envy. Yes, for sure. So from here on out, I'm gonna use en the word envy to talk about what I'm experiencing, because that's what was coming up for me, jealousy.[00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Seems to be a very different conversation. And I will bring someone in to talk about that, cuz it's a whole thing, jealousy and romantic relationships, especially. So this is not gonna be about that. This is gonna be more about the envy. All right. So after sitting and thinking about this and working through this particular example myself as well, Others from my past, I came up with a process to actually work with this feeling, this energy, when it comes up and I've determined that there's sort of this fork where, when something like this comes up.
[00:15:45] We have to determine right away. The first question is, is this coming from a place of genuine longing, or a place of perceived lack? So is this longing [00:16:00] envy or lack envy? And I'll explain exactly what that means in a second, but the instruction for if it's longing, if it's pointing to something that we actually deeply want and long for.
[00:16:14] that's instructive in one way. And if it points toward this feeling of lack, perception of lack, that points somewhere else. So in my late twenties and early thirties, I could not read memoirs from other women or even blogs without feeling kind of insane. I did it, but it always hurt terribly. Like my friends and I would pass around blogs, which at the time there weren't that many, uh, one of them was Heather Armstrong.
[00:16:48] Some of you may know her or deuce. She went by deuce goes by deuce, I think still. And I would get this whenever a new post would come up. I would get this Raiki racey, achy [00:17:00] wild feeling, similar to what I described earlier. Although not so acute. it made me feel it hurt. Like there was these like daggers in my heart.
[00:17:10] And as I got older, it got worse because I wanted some part of that so badly. It was pointing to belonging. I didn't really know that at the time. I kind of knew it, but didn't know it, but my world was so far away from anything like that. That it didn't feel real. I wanted to write so badly though, and to write about my experiences specifically, and I wasn't doing that.
[00:17:42] And over time that longing got bigger and bigger and I felt more desperate and honestly depressed it. I've talked about this a lot in my book. Uh, it was just, you know, to know that you're not. fulfilling your [00:18:00] potential, that you're not doing the thing that you could be doing, or at least trying to do it.
[00:18:05] I don't know that there's anything more painful than that. Uh, I remember in 2013, So clearly someone sending me Glen and Doyle's blog, that was back when it was mama St. She was Glen and Melton Doyle. And I, I don't think I'd ever heard of her before. Uh, if I had, I hadn't really paid attention, but I went right to her bio after I read the blog posts and the bio, she, she shared just like point blank that she.
[00:18:37] A recovering addict and bulimic. She had three kids, she was married to Craig and it was like it read. It was maybe a paragraph. It was funny. Is this typical? She's, she's funny. And it was just like hit you over the head. Like, these are the things that are true about me. I'm a recovering addict and bulimic.
[00:18:54] I have three kids and this is who I am. And I had like a picture of her and I [00:19:00] thought, I want that. I want to do that. I didn't want to have her or her life per se, but I wanted to be doing the thing that she had just done, which is to be able to say, this is what I've been through. This is who I am. This is what I've experienced.
[00:19:21] And to talk about it in a open, honest, public way. And I specifically. Knew that I wanted to talk about being sober. I, I was just at the beginning of my journey. I knew I was gonna have to get sober. It would be like another year, but I, I had that this intense feeling of wants, and it wasn't about her. It was about the thing she was doing and the way she was doing it.
[00:19:51] And I would, I would have that same feeling when I would go to any author readings that same racey. Just like heart [00:20:00] pounding feeling. So I'll contrast that with say something else. So, so that was a longing type of envy longing envy. Now I'll contrast that with something else that I had a had lifelong feelings about, and most, most people do most women, other women's bodies.
[00:20:26] I always wanted to have a different body than I did. Not always, but definitely from being, you know, like the time I was like 13 on, I wanted to be smaller. Of course I wanted to have a small waist because I'm built kind of straight. I wanted to be like less thick and athletic, small, smaller shoulder, smaller, everything smaller.
[00:20:48] Right. That's the name of the game. And I would obsess over and this was in. Nineties, when it was like peak, you know, late eighties, 90 into the [00:21:00] nineties, through the nineties peak like sort of Cape MOS, super thin and B and I would obsess over other women's bodies. Throughout high school college all through my twenties.
[00:21:15] Sure. That if I just had this certain kind of body that was not my body, every single other thing in my life would fall into place. Everything would be easy. I would never feel pain. I would never feel insecure. I would feel better. I would feel not just better. I would glide through life. Nothing would touch me.
[00:21:37] I would have no problems, nothing would hurt. And I focused. Inordinate amounts of attention and energy on trying to change my body. So I would obsess over then, then when I was in my twenties and thirties, I would, so I had a, I've talked [00:22:00] about this before. I had a, a really bad eating disorder. At the end of high school, I did lose a ton of weight.
[00:22:05] I got down to weight that was just totally inappropriate for my body. And then I kind of ricocheted and went in the other direction. Binging gained all this weight back and then some in college. And from that point on, I would obsess over getting back to this period of my life in high school, in very early college, where I had this eating disorder and weighed a horribly inappropriate weight for my body and which is so wild because I was numb and completely miserable and afraid all that.
[00:22:33] I didn't enjoy any aspect of it. It wa it didn't deliver on all those things that I thought it would, but I still so deep was the fantasy, and this is very much cultural, as we know. So deep was the fantasy of having a thin body and what that would mean for me, that. it was, it took up so much of my precious attention and energy and time.
[00:22:58] But then later in [00:23:00] life, like mid thirties, no, when I had my daughter early thirties, my, when my addiction started to get really bad with alcohol, I did get small. I lost an atrocious amount of weight after my daughter was born because of postpartum and, and because the drinking really picked up and so.
[00:23:18] Great. I was smaller, but I was in, that was the most painful period of my life. I was even darker than my high school days when I had the eating disorder. And so what I would have called envy here in both of these cases about the authors and about smaller bodies, it sort of feels the same. that has the same feeling tones in our body.
[00:23:47] We obsess, we get depressed, we feel constricted and tight. And if you, if you don't sit with it or it took actually a good amount of sitting with it [00:24:00] to figure out what the difference was. And again, the author and envy was pointing me towards this honest, longing. I wanted that specifically. I truly wanted to be a writer and it hurt because it was in me and I wasn't doing it.
[00:24:16] And I, I don't think this isn't scientific. I don't know if there's any research to back this up, but my experience is, I don't think you can genuinely desire something and I'm not talking about. desiring the feelings that you think something is gonna give you the fantasy of that thing. I'm talking about genuine desire for something.
[00:24:38] I don't think you can genuinely desire something that's not in you in some way. Um, so this was like a soul level awing. I didn't want to be like this particular writer or that writer. I wanted to write myself, but the smaller body that was pointing to other things. Uh, and I need to say it like, there's nothing wrong [00:25:00] with wanting to feel a certain way about your body at all, but that, wasn't what this was about when this was about the, the lack type of envy.
[00:25:11] And when we have the lack type of envy, the equation goes, something like this. If I have X, I will be Y if I have X, I will feel Y. so it's always, if I have this, I will get that. So in the case of the smaller body, if I have a smaller body, I will be loved. If I have a smaller body, I will get affection. If I have a smaller body, I will never feel ashamed of myself.
[00:25:43] If I have a smaller body, I won't be scared. If I have a smaller body, I'll be confident. If I have a smaller body, I'll be powerful. and on and on. If I have a smaller body, I will be [00:26:00] safe. Once I went into this, went down that list and I wrote all these out by the way. And once I got to this, if I have a smaller body, I'll be safe.
[00:26:14] That was the big light bulb for me. This is almost always what it comes down to when I have these feelings. I want to be safe and guarded from pain, failure, judgment discomfort. I wanna be safe. And this lack kind of envy, I'm gonna go keep going into this. But the, this lack kind of envy is always, always a lie.
[00:26:51] It's always a lie, a lie in the sense that it's coming from a place [00:27:00] within us, that, that, that is develops. It arises from a genuine need or desire, but the story we have about what this thing. Would bring us that it would bring those things to us that part's a lie. And it's also a lie based on the fact that it, it comes from these, this perceived sense of lack and scarcity.
[00:27:28] So if we made these two different paths or types of envy into equations, they would look like this. The equation for longing envy is I want that's the equation I want. I want X, this is helpful. It's useful. It's instructive. We kind of know what to do with it. I mean, we may not know how to get from a to B, but we just being able to say, [00:28:00] yes, this is something I genuinely long for.
[00:28:02] And I want it is really helpful. It might come with all kinds of things like, oh, that scares me and there's this and there's that. Okay, fine. But it's pretty straightforward. the equation for lack envy though, is like I said, if I have this, I will get that. And that alone is not helpful on its own. Like I said, it's always a lie and we always have to examine it further.
[00:28:31] sometimes of course, both things could be true. There could be a situation where there's a piece of something that is, that, that speaks to a genuine longing in you. And then there's all kinds of other stuff in this sort of cloud of envy that. Speaks to a, a lack this place, this, these sort of lies. So you gotta pull those apart.
[00:28:55] But when we, when you figure out that you're stuck in lack envy, [00:29:00] I've outlined these ways to work through it. I do this on paper. I find that when you pull something, when you start to put something on paper, it pulls it out of this head space that I live in all the time and brings it into the body and more of the heart emotional space.
[00:29:18] Okay. The first thing is to ju don't judge yourself, that whole shame spiral. We really, really demonize envy and jealousy and, and we shouldn't, they're there for a reason. It's one of the most common feelings in the world. I mean, It's there. We can't get rid of it completely. We never will. And it's not a small person feeling or a less than person thing to feel.
[00:29:44] It's just human. It's totally human. So as best as you can try to just not judge yourself and have some compassion for what's there. Second, write out two lists. So I [00:30:00] mentioned that in the research I found. both jealousy and envy were dealing just with envy, but they include anger and fear. So they are not in the research that I found.
[00:30:12] Anyway, they. Um, specific feelings themselves. They are more experiences that include a lot of different elements. And two of those elements are anger and fear. So you're gonna create two lists and you have to be totally honest and just kind of as low and gross and small as you need to be burn it or shred it afterwards.
[00:30:36] It's important that you don't try to make your sound yourself, sound spiritual and enlightened when you do this, like. Say the thing that's there, it takes a lot of the power of it away. All right. So I will use my own about this experience with this particular author. This makes me angry because. [00:31:00] she's sucking up all the oxygen in the room.
[00:31:02] She's hogging all the attention. I've worked so hard and nobody is listening. Everything she does is blockbuster level success. And it doesn't make sense to me. It makes me angry because people worship everywhere. She says, and it's exhausting and annoying. It makes me angry because, oh, this is, this is a really good one.
[00:31:20] She's not even that talented. and that's not true. It's , it's like, that is just my way of trying to feel better. But I wrote this stuff down, cuz it's actually what comes up. So that is my angry list. And there's, there's more, I'm just giving you a taste. Then you go to the fear list and it goes like this.
[00:31:48] This makes me afraid that. one. Nobody will listen to me. There's not enough for me. My work doesn't matter. I'm insignificant. [00:32:00] I'm not talented. The world isn't fair. I'm not special. And there's more, but that gives you a taste. Okay. The fear, the anger list is there to. To get all that stuff out. And even as you write those, some of these, those things down, you can look at it and instantly recognize it as untrue.
[00:32:26] Um, but, but you gotta write it down. You gotta say it so much. I think of the pain that we experience with this envi and, and jealousy is that we stuff it down and that's why it turns into shame. So. okay. Then the back to the, the fearless. So with each fear that you write down, turn the fear statement into a want.
[00:32:52] In other words, this is shining lights, lights, a light on things that you want and need. [00:33:00] So for example, my first one was nobody will listen to me. I want to be heard.
[00:33:09] Another thing was, there's not enough for me. I want to have enough. I fear that my work doesn't matter. I want for my work it's to matter. There's a fear that I'm insignificant. I want to be significant. And the question here is there's always this to who, to whom I want my work to matter to whom I want to be significant to whom.
[00:33:45] Okay. Another one I'm not talented. I want to be seen as talented again by whom and, and the keyword there is seen. I have this need for valid. another [00:34:00] one, the world isn't fair. I want to have the world be fair back to that whole safety thing. Um, and then the last one that I, that I gave you, this fear that I'm not special and I want to be special.
[00:34:20] Do I want to be special to everyone? no. If I look at the root of where that comes from, it's very easy to see. I wanna be special. It's a total little girl in me. I wanna be special to my parents. This has nothing to do with this author. It has nothing to do with anybody. I've just painted all of this onto a person.
[00:34:53] and in, and of itself just writing this list is like, it's, it's hard to look at, but it's [00:35:00] like, oh, I see okay. I can work with some of these things now. That's not the end of it. Sorry. We're gonna go back to that equation. So just to recap, the first part is don't judge. Second part is write these two lists, anger and fear.
[00:35:19] Third part complete. Sentence. If I had X, I would get, Y you have to name the X specifically. So a lot of times when, at least for me, I don't know what it is that I'm feeling this swirl about. It's like, well, this just, this whole general situation. The whole general thing about this per this author. And, and I ha you have to get specific about it.
[00:35:52] So you gotta name the X cuz it starts to get really interesting when you do. Okay. So [00:36:00] if I had the first X I named, if I had 3 million followers, which is a made up number, I would be worthy. . If I had 3 million followers, I would be protected from insecurity. If I had 3 million followers, I would be superior.
[00:36:25] Yikes. If I had 3 million followers, I would be insulated from judgment meant if I
[00:36:35] had 3 million followers, I would be validated. that's a big one. And if I had 3 million followers here it is, I would be safe.
[00:36:49] I'm gonna use another X in the equation. If I had multiple New York times bestselling books, all the same Y apply. In this case. [00:37:00] If I had multiple New York times bestselling wor books, I would be worthy. I would be protected. I would be superior. I would be insulated from judgment. I would be validated. I would be safe.
[00:37:15] This is, so this was so helpful to see because the bottom line thing that I want is to be safe. I want to be safe. Free from feelings of pain and judgment and discomfort. I want to be everyone's number one. I wanna be liked by all. I want to be safe. And of course, what I see when I get, when I write this out and really drill down is I want something that is impossible.
[00:37:54] I want to be free of my humanity.[00:38:00]
[00:38:00] I want to be like, I want something that's not possible. And when I look at, when I really look at the X's 3 million followers, multiple new, New York times bestselling books, do I really think that those things are going to equate to that? Of course not. I can really feel that it's not just knowledge where you go.
[00:38:23] Okay. Yeah, I know. I should feel this way. I should feel that way. It's like, No that wouldn't get me there and I'll get more into that. So I wanted to use an example. That's not specific to writing, cuz I know that applies to a small percentage of people. When I asked you this, uh, when I asked you about jealousy on Instagram, so many people got back to me and said, there.
[00:38:47] envious of people who can drink. Normally I totally get that. I used to feel that way. So I'm gonna use that. So I'm gonna do the, if I had X, I would get Y equation for this. [00:39:00] Here we go. If I could drink, normally I would be accepted. If I could drink. Normally I could have an escape from my feelings. If I could drink normal, normally I would be comfortable.
[00:39:14] If I could drink, normally I wouldn't be lonely. If I could drink, normally I wouldn't be judged if I could drink. Normally I would be fun if I could drink. Normally I would be included if I could drink. Normally I wouldn't be ashamed if I could drink. Normally I would be loved now. I felt every single one of those.
[00:39:43] And. One of the things that helped me, I wrote about this a lot in my book was to not try to pretend that I didn't feel those things to feel them, allow them to be felt with, you know, [00:40:00] before I would ju jump right into examining them and telling myself it wasn't true. And da, da, da, because of the reasons like I, that I said that we sort of vilify these feelings, that they feel small and stupid and immature.
[00:40:12] But if I could just let myself feel these things, it, that helped. And then if you look at each of these statements and really examine, if it sounds true, okay. Would being able, let's talk about this very literally would being able to put a few ounces of a certain type of liquid into your body a few times a week, actually deliver.
[00:40:41] Acceptance comfort, connectedness, fun inclusion, not being ashamed, being loved and giving you an escape from your feelings. I can tell you knowing far more people who drink than don't. [00:41:00] The answer is no alcohol can never deliver these things to you. Never just like 3 million followers on Instagram or multiple new New York times, best selling books cannot deliver those things to you.
[00:41:16] It's truly wherever you go. There you are. Nobody is free from the work required to . We're required to find some level of acceptance, comfort, connectedness, joy. Feeling a part of not feeling ashamed and so on in themselves, no one is free from that. So the question is then how can you cultivate those things in your life?
[00:41:53] Let me just go back to that for one second. You've applied this fantasy to people who can quote unquote [00:42:00] drink, normally thinking that it's delivering all those things to them. It's not. they still have to do all that, those same things. They just so happen to be able to put a few ounces of a certain type of liquid into their body without some like major consequence, that's it.
[00:42:17] But they don't get all those things that you think would come from alcohol from alcohol they don't get that because they can quote unquote drink. Normally they don't. They have, they still have those things. Because everyone has to do this work and they're looking at something else and going, if only I could do that, I would get those things.
[00:42:44] Right. So the question is, of course, how can you cultivate those things in your own life, your inner life and in your, in your outer life? So what I did is in my example, I wrote down. [00:43:00] W the things that I thought, you know, I would get, if I was had 3 million followers in multiple New York times bestselling whatevers, uh, I would be worthy.
[00:43:11] So I had to look at proof in my life already that I'm worthy. And where does this worthiness come from? I have a lot of proof worthy. I don't, I, this one is weird. the worthy thing I think is like the bottom, like the sort of ground floor that we all bump up against. But I dunno that I actually know what it means.
[00:43:36] It's so it's such a weird thing. Like I can say it and I, and yet I don't know exactly how to talk to it. Like, I guess it's am I worthy of being loved? Am I worthy of being accepted just on the fact that I exist.
[00:43:53] okay. I, I would be protected from insecurity is another one. So I [00:44:00] had to look at like, am I really, really insecure? Where am I secure in my life? And what, what am I actually really good at? And the truth is there's, there are some things there, like there's, there's a good amount there that I can be really proud of.
[00:44:17] And that I know that I'm good at. I'm not good at lots of other things, but I, there are places where I have a lot of confidence and security. And if you find that you don't okay, so we need to cultivate that. Even if you look for the smallest amounts of proof that that's there for you it's. It will ground you in reality, this other stuff is total fantasy.
[00:44:44] It's a belief in the lack I would be superior was another one and I had to go, do I even really want that? No. What? That actually points to his safety. So back to the whole safety thing, [00:45:00] um, I would be insulated from judgment and failure. Hot. That's never true. I know that no more followers you get the less true that becomes.
[00:45:13] There's more people looking. It's never true. Again, this one points to safety, almost all of these point to safety. Again, it's what I want. I wanna be free of my humanity. I want to not feel pain or judgment or fear. I wanna be safe from all of that. okay. So in this way, we can pull apart our, the story we have about this person that we're envious of, or this situation outside of ourselves, and actually ground it in our own needs and wants what we crave and what in the process of doing this, it just straight up kills some of these ideas that we have when we examine 'em because we can just see just outright how silly our story is and the reality.
[00:45:58] I would be willing to say [00:46:00] that 95% of the time, whatever we imagine life is like for that other person, whatever we've attached to their situation, it's a projection. It's not their reality. I'm not saying that. This should, I'm not saying you have to hope that this person's actually miserable. What I'm saying is that they're not getting the feelings you imagine they're getting from the circumstances.
[00:46:28] If you're getting them, if they're getting them safety, love, worthiness, all of that. It's because they've done that work internally. It's got nothing to do with the circumstances. So there's a, I have a, a little anecdotal proof of this, which. interesting. Some of you may know Holly Whitaker. Um, she and I did home podcasts together from 2015 to 18.
[00:46:55] She's one of the people that, um, I would say is closest, has been [00:47:00] closest to me in my life and such a huge, huge part of my path. And, uh, she wrote quit like a woman and we, um, talked recently. And we were talking about, we, we hadn't talked for a while and we talked recently and reconnected about the past, like couple of years.
[00:47:21] And in some sharing, we, we both said to each other, I've been so envious of you and watching you imagining, like it has felt so unfair. And so like this hot. Jealousy or envy that you were winning, you were, you were winning. We've always started pitted each other against one another and that's fine. It was just the way that it went.
[00:47:50] There's lots underneath there. Maybe once someday her and I will talk about it, but it's because we started out together. We both bought published books at the same time. We were both talking about the same topic [00:48:00] and we compared each other. to I compared her to me and me to her and all of that. And she did the same.
[00:48:09] And so it was always like this, this, I perceived that she was winning to me by every outside measure she was winning. She. Has a bigger following her book hit the New York times best seller list it was on. Um, and just like that the sex sex and the city follow up, it hit all these major, you know, huge publications.
[00:48:34] It, Chrissy Tegan picked it up on and on and on all these outside measures. And I didn't know what was going on in her internal world, cuz we weren't talking at that time. But. I was very envious, angry, resentful, all those things that I felt like. she won. She was winning [00:49:00] like fine. You, you, you win. You could have it.
[00:49:02] And this, I spent a lot of energy there turns out she felt the same things and was very much baffled that I felt that. And I was similarly baffled that she felt that way because in my mind, it's just so obvious. Like you won, what are you talking about? And in her mind, she feels the same way. What do you mean you win?
[00:49:26] This, having that conversation, we can't always have that conversation with people that we feel envious about, but sometimes we can and we, we shouldn't do it in order to see if they feel the same way, cuz they may not feel the same way, but the, the cathartic quality of that conversation, I cannot even begin to express because it's just all this energy all this time, all this.
[00:49:55] Oh, so much was spent in that [00:50:00] space and it didn't need to, I was imagining something that wasn't true in her experience and she was imagining the same in mind. All right. I'm about to wrap this up. Just a couple more points. So second to last.
[00:50:23] Get curious about the pattern. So I mentioned at the very beginning of the show that when I went down this Instagram rabbit hole and looked at this author's Instagram, knowing it would hurt me, I was totally sabotaging. I was facing, um, the end of having to turn in the manuscript for this book, feeling all kinds of self doubt.
[00:50:47] I was late turning it in. It was this weird twisty way of incapacitating myself and emotionally cutting. That's what it was. I was emotionally cutting [00:51:00] and this is helpful to know. It's like, I've done this when I feel really good, which is interesting. And I've done it when I feel really bad. If these people.
[00:51:15] or situations are something that you can avoid then do avoid them. So first be curious about the pattern. You might be surprised when this comes up and if these things are something you can avoid, you should avoid them. We're not meant to have this much input. And this is mostly has to do with social media.
[00:51:33] I don't know that I experienced this type of envy in my day to day life. It's always about social media and social media is so destructive that way. I've unfollowed. I've actually unfollowed so many people just because it's not healthy for me. It has no reflection on them or, or their work, but I felt like I had to follow them or I should follow them.
[00:51:53] And, and that it, it was not an alignment with me and it didn't do me any [00:52:00] favors. And so I have stopped doing that. And. It feels really, it feels kind. That's what it feels like. It feels kind to me to do that because look at the end of the day, my God, the amount of time I've spent in this place has cost me so much.
[00:52:20] And we just don't have that kind of time. We don't have that kind of time. the last thing I wanna leave you with is talk about it. Talk about this. Let's talk about it more and more and more. I know for being in recovery, nothing has helped more than having conversations with other people who have been going, who go through the same thing I do.
[00:52:42] This is another one of those areas that feels very taboo and Shammy, and it doesn't need to be if, if you listen to this sort of bonus section Christy, and I. About about this. And I left that conversation feeling so much better just having had it, it breaks up that tension. It [00:53:00] breaks up that hard block of darkness that we, that we hold in our bodies every time we shove this down and, and try to push it away and pretend like it's not happening.
[00:53:12] And so on, like we say, in recovery, open your mouth to save your ass, open your mouth. Talk about N. Talk about jealousy. I so hope this was helpful. It was a lot. I realized, um, you can always listen again, and I do wanna keep having this conversation. We're gonna look for some people to bring in, to talk, especially about the jealousy piece of it.
[00:53:34] Let us know what you think. I'm so curious. You can always head over to my Instagrams, where I post the episodes. You can shoot us a message on our website, TMS tpo.com. Let us know what you think. And please, please, please. If you enjoy the show, subscribe, hit that subscribe button. It helps and give us a review on [00:54:00] apple podcasts.
[00:54:01] Thank you. Be back in your ears soon.