Someone who is envious of you may also try to mimic your behavior and imitate every single thing you do. They could go as far as copying hairstyles, dressing, walking, and talking the same way you do. Even if you find it flattering at first, sooner or later, it will start to get really irritating.
Envious people tend to feel hostile, resentful, angry and irritable. Such individuals are also less likely to feel grateful about their positive traits and their circumstances. Envy is also related to depression, anxiety, the development of prejudice, and personal unhappiness.
“Avoiding you and not wanting to spend time together can be a sign of jealousy,” McBain says. Seeing you creates difficult and negative feelings for them, so they're attempting to deal by dashing in the other direction, rather than taking it out on you.
transitive verb. If you envy someone, you wish that you had the same things or qualities that they have. I don't envy the young ones who've become TV superstars and know no other world. Synonyms: be jealous (of), resent, begrudge, be envious (of) More Synonyms of envy.
Envy is often rooted in low self-esteem – sometimes from very early unmet childhood needs where the person feels inherently not good enough. An envious person may frequently 'compare and despair' and find themselves wanting.
Self-Worth and Happiness Erodes
Envy is another term for being unhappy. This is when envy can take over your mind. It becomes a powerful virus that kills our confidence and self-worth. Additionally, envy means you're stuck in a rut and must dig yourself out of it.
Jealousy might also kick-start the body's stress response. Enter an overflow of stress hormones, spiked blood pressure, and an increased heart rate.
Benign Envy and Malicious Envy
Van de Ven et al. (2009) proposed that there are two distinct experiences of envy, one of which is benign and the other is malicious, and that benign envy and malicious envy lead to different behavioral expressions.
If ignoring the envious voices is not an option, then address the issue. Just reach out to these people and let them know what they are doing is not right. However, be prepared in case they don't acknowledge your feelings. Just let them know, then let it go.
Envy is only toxic when a person is unable to feel empathy, love, generosity or even just kindness to the other. Sometimes an envious person can be friendly to others but only direct viciousness towards the one person who triggers extremes of that feeling.
The initial stage of jealousy and envy involves an individual having a desire for what another person has. When this feeling is not controlled or tended to, it develops into disdain or scorn for the other person simply because they remind the individual of what they are lacking.
In a weird way, jealousy can be used as a “red flag” to “encourage you to do a little self-exploration.” That is, if you can acknowledge it before it becomes toxic to your relationship. Degges-White says, "Simply put, jealousy is motivated by fear.
Unhealthy jealous behavior happens when we indulge that feeling and act impulsively from a place of suspicion and insecurity. When insecurity in our relationships run rampant, jealousy can rapidly grow into paranoia and obsession and threaten to destroy the very relationship we're most afraid to lose.
Which personality traits going along with being “the jealous type?” A study published in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that there are people who are high in neuroticism, low in agreeableness, and low in openness are more likely to be jealous in their romantic relationships.
People with high levels of envy are more concerned about self-deficiency and other people's possessions and are more likely to experience negative experiences such as inferiority and dejection as a result [4-8,20]. These feelings may subsequently lead to depression [12].
Although many people consider “envy” and “jealousy” synonymous, they actually have distinct meanings. Envy is “the painful feeling of wanting what someone else has, like attributes or possessions.” If you're jealous, you feel “threatened, protective, or fearful of losing one's position or situation to someone else.”
⚡ Quick summary. Jealousy and envy both involve a feeling of desire for what another person has, but jealousy is usually thought to be more negative—it often involves resentment toward the other person. Envy is also a negative feeling—like a mix of admiration and discontent—but the word doesn't usually imply hostility.
According to the DSM-IV, none of the personality disorders, except the narcissistic personality, is formally associated with envy. Nevertheless, this "deadly sin" is so omnipresent in human relationships that it cannot be restricted only to the narcissistic personalities.