THE’envy It is a universal emotion that we experience towards someone when we evaluate that its success highlights the inferiority of ours status or our defeat. It is often directed towards those who, through a performance similar to ours, gets a result that we want for us: therefore for successes that are within our reach. It generally includes constant anger and rumination, based on the threat to status.
There evolutionary function of advance It concerns the activation of the motivation to take and pursue behaviors oriented to improve its position in the social hierarchy, or to change the distribution matrix of available resources. However, it is frequently associated with states such as anxiety, depression, anger, shame and resentment. And it can generate deleterious behaviors for friendly, family and colleagues relationships, with the risk of damaging their social and working functioning.
In literature we find distinctions between Malign, benign, depressive or hostile envy. If benign envy is comparable to admiration and pushes to an improvement of ours performancethe malignant one decreases the motivation to improve. In the depressive one, the comparison with others makes us experience emotions such as sadness and demolition; In the hostile one, on the other hand, anger and hostility oriented in order to ruin the other and desire to failure, criticizing it, discrediting or diminishing the importance of the objective he achieved, are detected. An aspect of pleasure may also be present that derives from the failure of the people subject to envy.
THE’envy is therefore a universal emotionwhich is found in every social group. It cannot, and must not, therefore be eliminated. However, it is possible to work in order to reduce the dysfunctional effects it can produce. To this end, Leahy (2015) proposed a model of the emotional patterns that integrates cognitive, metacognitive techniques ofAcceptance and Commitment Therapy (Act) and of the Dialectical and behavior therapy (DBT), which helps patients make sense toenvyuniversalize its presence and to distinguish its productive and unproductive consequences.
To work in this sense to recognize that Enter envy It is the first necessary step: this in fact can already change its reactions following a success of others.
Envy is often associated with other emotions. For example, anger, sadness, shame, guilt, helplessness, anxiety, regret and despair. These can generate the adoption of dysfunctional frontal methods, such as rumination, complaints, search for reassurances, self -criticism, avoidance, up to suicidal ideation. For this reason it is necessary to validate the painful and disorienting emotions that accompany envy: and therefore accept that it is possible, and natural, experience them and give them space and meaning. It is also useful also to increase the awareness that theenvy It can also associate with emotions such as curiosity, appreciation, gratitude, satisfaction, admiration and excitement, which can promote the adoption of advantageous and functional behaviors.
It also becomes essential to work directly in order to reduce and modify i dysfunctional behaviors resulting from envy. It is therefore essential to identify strategies of coping dysfunctional such as, for example, complaining to others for the injustice suffered, adopt sabotage behaviors, diminish the object of envy, ruminated, avoid the envied person, withdraw socially, abuse alcohol and substances, implement self -elevation behaviors. It is important to acquire awareness that Enter envy And other emotional experiences does not necessarily be equivalent to adopting behaviors with coherent them: and therefore clearly distinguishing the emotions, or emotions, experienced by the behaviors that can achieve.
In fact, the latter are generally to cause problems and not the emotion itself. In addition to promoting the possibility of adopting advantageous behaviors, choose to act by not indulging envybut for example according to one’s values, it also influences the type and intensity of the other emotions we feel: accept, normalize and tolerate the presence of advance by adopting behaviors oriented to achieve objectives advantageous for us allows us to experience the possibility of choosing how to behave and this also increases the perception of mastery of ourselves and control over our actions.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques are useful in order to question dysfunctional beliefs about themselves, others, the world and the competition and the cognitive distortions that often associate with envy and which have significant repercussions in the adoption of dysfunctional behaviors. These techniques are also useful for modifying the errors that lead, for example, to focus attention in an erroneous way (for example on their failures) and select in memory consistent memories with their own failures and with the successes of others. And, again, to reduce the focus of attention to the behavior of the other which can derive from it and which often implies a drop in performance.
The Cognitive-behavioral strategies They also allow to increase the dedication to other sources of gratification that may be present in people’s lives, but which are devalued in their importance and hypained. And also to modify dysfunctional methods of self -evaluation and other people who are centered excessively on the comparison, exposing to experiment with lived experiences such as anxiety, frustration or contempt. Cognitive strategies are also useful in order to decrease the importance attributed to reaching certain standards of performance.
This trend, which is often detected in people who tend to experiment with envy Frequently and intensely, he leads to thinking about his life as a race, defined only by concepts such as competition, hierarchy and success. This makes vulnerable to unusual and fear of losing one’s own statusalso preventing you from enjoying the successes achieved and who have requested a huge emotional expenditure.
There cognitive-behavioral therapy for envy It also allows you to loosen the rigidity in the concepts of ‘success’ and ‘failure’, which are often defined on the basis of all or nothing: “either I get the best score of all or are a complete failure”. And to redefine the positive aspects of a possible failure in terms, for example, of opportunities to improve and motivation to guide one’s behavior in a functional way in that direction.
Finally, cognitive-behavioral and metacognitive techniques are useful in order to work on rumination, for example on the injustice suffered, which sinceenvy It can derive. Working on this also allows you to move the focus of attention in a productive way by identifying resources and strengths of the other which can then be defined, functionally, in terms of objectives to be achieved.
Loving the dysfunctional methods by integrating them with other more advantageous allows you to increase the quality of general life, to work productively oriented towards the result with a lower emotional expenditure and to be able to appreciate and draw satisfaction from the results we can achieve.
Bibliography:
Leahy, RL (2015). Emotional therapy scheme. New York: The Guilford Press. (Trad. It.: Emotional therapy scheme. Beliefs about emotions and emotional regulation strategies in metacognitive therapy. Florence: Eclipsi, 2016).
