When Someone Elses begrdugery becomes a problem

When Someone Else’s Success Gets Under Our Skin

The Psychology of Envy, Comparison and Begrudgery

Written by Maura Carey, MIACP
Integrative Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor & Doctoral Researcher
Founder & Clinical Director, Cherry Blossom Therapy

Have you ever heard good news about someone you know and, almost before you have had time to think, felt something uncomfortable stir inside you? Perhaps they got the promotion, bought a house, built their business, completed a qualification, received recognition, found a partner, became more confident, or seemed to be moving forward at a time when you felt you were standing still.

You may genuinely like this person, and still find that their good news lands somewhere in you that you would rather it did not. You congratulate them, and part of you may genuinely be delighted for them, but another feeling is lurking in the sidelines, that feeling can be much harder to admit to ourselves, never mind to anyone else. Why them? Why not me? How did they manage that? Are things really going as well as they seem? Maybe they are getting a little carried away with themselves, Sure they only got that, because they know someone…

Most of us would probably prefer not to recognise ourselves in that paragraph because envy is not an emotion we are particularly comfortable owning. We can admit to other difficult feelings for example anxiety, hurt, anger, disappointment or feeling overwhelmed far more easier than we can say, Someone else doing well has made me feel something uncomfortable about myself. Yet envy is a very human emotion, and pretending that we never experience it does little to help us understand what happens when admiration turns into you comparing yourself to the other person, when comparison begins to hurt, that hurt becomes directed towards the person whose life has brought something uncomfortable within your own self.

In Ireland, the term begrudgery is well versed. It is woven so naturally into everyday language that we can use it without thinking deeply about what might be underneath it. We talk about people getting notions, becoming too big for their boots, forgetting where they came from or thinking they are better than everyone else. Sometimes those observations may be entirely justified, because becoming successful does not mean somebody suddenly becomes immune from arrogance, poor behaviour or legitimate criticism, but at other times our reaction to another person doing well can tell us something much more complicated about ourselves and our relationship with success, confidence, visibility and belonging.

I am less interested in deciding who is a begrudger and who is being begrudged, because human relationships are rarely that simple. What interests me much more is what may be happening inside both people, inside the person who discovers that somebody else’s success is bothering them more than they expected, and inside the person who begins to notice that doing well, becoming more confident or simply becoming more visible seems to change the way certain people respond to them. In this article I am not interested in the blaming of people behaving in certain ways, I really am interested in opening up a conversation about begrudgery, as a topic that could be useful for you to think about, to reflect on, or to send on to someone else who might find it beneficial.

We often call this jealousy, but there are differences worth understanding without making them unnecessarily complicated. Envy usually happens when another person has something we value or want ourselves. Jealousy is more often about being frightened of losing something we already have, for example a relationship, connection or position that matters to us. Resentment can be different again because there is often a feeling of unfairness attached to it, perhaps I believe you did not deserve what you received, or perhaps I believe I worked equally hard and wonder why the opportunity came to you rather than me.

Even envy can take us in different directions. Sometimes another person’s success can sting and still motivate us. We might think, I would love to do something like that, and eventually use the uncomfortable feeling to examine what we want for ourselves. At other times, however, the feeling goes in a different direction and rather than wanting to raise ourselves up, we begin, consciously or unconsciously, to bring the other person down.

That is much closer to what I think we often mean by begrudgery.

Their achievement becomes smaller when we talk about it. Their motives are questioned. Their success is explained away as good luck, the connections they have or being in the right place at the right time. Something negative about them is introduced almost as a counterweight to whatever positive thing has just been said. Sometimes we may even find ourselves waiting for evidence that everything is not going quite as well as it appears.

None of this means that feeling envy makes somebody nasty, bitter or a bad person. We can care deeply about another human being and envy them at the same time, because people are capable of experiencing more than one emotion towards the same person and all at the same time. A friend can genuinely want another friend to succeed while feeling the sting of watching him or her achieve something themselves had wanted. A sibling can be enormously proud of a brother or sister while internally wondering why life seems to have unfolded differently for them. A colleague can respect somebody’s professional achievement while suddenly becoming much more aware of their own disappointment.

The feeling itself is not necessarily the problem. What becomes much more important is what we do with it.

Human beings naturally compare themselves with other people. We look around to work out how we are doing, even when we do not consciously realise that we are doing it. We notice where people of a similar age are in their careers, what friends are earning, whether other people are buying houses, having children, travelling, progressing professionally, retiring, building businesses or doing things that we once imagined we would do ourselves. Stop for a minute, think about this, can you geninuienly hand on heart say that you have never felt this way? If you were being true to yourself, and as uncomfortable as it is to admit (even to yourself), notice how it felt for you when you compared yourself to someone else, notice your feeling, your thoughts, what you did, or said or didn’t say, notice what happens in your own body when you compare. And, by the way, this is not about shaming you, and more about bringing something perhaps to your conscious awareness.

Some of those comparisons to others can inspire us, but can also touch very vulnerable places, particularly when the person doing well feels similar to us. Someone extremely wealthy whom we have never met may have very little emotional impact on us, whereas the person who sat beside us at school, grew up in the same town, trained in the same profession, started a business at around the same time or once appeared to be at exactly the same stage of life can affect us very differently.

Their success can suddenly make possibility feel very close, but also far away….

It is no longer something achieved by a distant person living a completely different life. Someone who feels like one of us has done it, and their achievement can become a question about your own life. What happened to the things I wanted? Did I make the wrong choices? Why did I not take that opportunity? Could I have done more? Have I wasted time? Am I falling behind? Am I a failure?

Sometimes there is sadness underneath those questions, and sometimes there is regret. There may even be grief for opportunities that passed us by, circumstances that genuinely made life more difficult, or versions of ourselves that we once imagined becoming. If another person unexpectedly brings us into contact with all of that, it can be much easier to focus on them than to sit with what their success has awakened in us.

This is one of the places where begrudgery begins to make more sense.

If your achievement leaves me feeling inadequate, I have choices, although I may not consciously realise I am making them. I can become curious about why your success has affected me so strongly, or I can change the story I tell myself about your achievement. Perhaps you were lucky. Perhaps you knew the right people. Perhaps what you achieved is not actually that impressive. Perhaps you have become obsessed with yourself. Perhaps you think you are better than everybody else.

If I can make what you have achieved seem smaller, the gap between us can feel smaller too.

That can temporarily make me feel better.

This is why envy does not always look like envy. Very few people consciously think, Your success has made me question myself, so I need to make your achievement less important. We are rarely that clear about what is happening inside us while it is happening. Instead, we can become genuinely convinced that the problem lies entirely with the other person. They have changed, they are showing off, they are full of themselves, they were handed everything, they have forgotten where they came from.

Sometimes those things may actually be true, which is why we should never dismiss every criticism as jealousy or begrudgery. Sometimes people do change when they become successful, and sometimes other people are trying to tell them something important. But there are also times when the strength of our reaction deserves curiosity. Would this behaviour bother me quite as much if this person were not doing so well? What exactly about their success irritates me? What does their life seem to say about mine?

There is often something even more vulnerable underneath envy, the feeling that somehow we are not enough.

Another person’s success can become attached to that feeling very quickly. Their promotion becomes a reminder that I have not progressed. Their financial security reminds me of my struggle. Their qualification brings me back to the education I did not complete. Their happy relationship touches my loneliness. Their confidence highlights my self-doubt. Their willingness to take a chance reminds me of something I wanted to do but was too frightened to try.

Their achievement has not actually said any of those things about me, but emotionally it can begin to feel as though it has.

There is another part of this that we do not often talk about, perhaps because it can be uncomfortable to admit. Sometimes when we have been comparing ourselves with another person, particularly someone whose life appears to be going very well, we can experience a strange sense of satisfaction or relief when something goes wrong for them. We may hear that the business is struggling, the promotion did not work out, the relationship was not as happy as it appeared, an opportunity fell through, or something they were very confident about did not succeed, and somewhere inside us there can be a small response that says, Well, maybe everything isn’t as perfect as it looked.

I think it is important to talk about this without immediately turning it into evidence that somebody is a bad person, because sometimes that sense of relief is less about wanting another person to suffer and more about what their setback does to the comparison we have been making. If I have spent months looking at somebody else’s life and feeling that they are moving ahead while I am standing still, discovering that they also struggle can bring relief. The distance I had created between their life and mine suddenly feels smaller, and for a moment I may feel better about where I am.

It can go further than relief, and this is where we need to be honest with ourselves. Sometimes people do enjoy seeing somebody they envy being brought down a peg or two. We can see it in conversations when somebody’s success is being discussed and another person quickly introduces something negative about them, almost as though the positive information needs to be balanced out. We see it when a person’s failure attracts considerably more interest than their achievement did, or when people who had relatively little to say while someone was succeeding suddenly have a great deal to say when that person experiences difficulty.

There can be something reassuring in discovering that the person we had placed above ourselves is fallible after all.

The difficulty begins when we need another person’s difficulties in order to feel better about ourselves. If their success makes me feel smaller and their failure makes me feel bigger, then my sense of worth has become tied to what is happening in somebody else’s life. Their rise feels like my loss and their fall feels like my gain, even though neither has actually changed my circumstances. And I want to say that sentence again, because I honestly feel that this is hugely important…. If their success makes me feel smaller, and their failure makes me feel bigger, then my sense of worth has become tied to what is happening in someone else life.

Perhaps the more useful question is not simply, Why am I pleased that something went wrong for them? but, What was I feeling about myself while things were going well for them? Maybe I felt left behind, overlooked or unsuccessful. Maybe their confidence touched my insecurity, their relationship triggered my loneliness, their financial security triggered my fear, or their willingness to take a chance reminded me of something I wanted to do but never did.

When we ask that question, the uncomfortable feeling can become information about ourselves rather than ammunition against somebody else.

Family relationships can make all of this even more complicated because comparison often begins long before adulthood. Brothers and sisters can grow up in the same house and still occupy very different places within the family. One becomes known as the clever one, another the difficult one, the successful one, the quiet one, the responsible one, the one everybody worries about or the one who always seems to cope.

Nobody necessarily decides that these roles will exist, yet families can hold onto them for years. When somebody begins stepping outside the position they have traditionally occupied, everyone around them has to adjust. The sibling that nobody expected to achieve anything becomes the highly successful one, of the sibling who always needed help becomes independent. The one who kept everybody happy begins saying no. The family member who hardly ever speaks begins expressing opinions and becoming more confident.

Sometimes what looks like resistance to somebody’s growth is actually the discomfort created when a familiar relationship changes.

Sibling relationships can carry particularly complicated mixtures of love, loyalty, competition and comparison because siblings often share enough of the same history for differences in their adult lives to feel especially meaningful. Why was she encouraged when I was not? Why does everyone seem proud of him? Why was I expected to cope while somebody else received help? Why am I still treated as though I am the one who never got things right?

An argument taking place between two adults may therefore contain feelings that are much older than the argument itself. A brother or sister’s achievement can unexpectedly bring us back to childhood experiences of being compared, overlooked, favoured, criticised or misunderstood, even when neither person fully realises that this is what is happening.

Our early relationships can also shape how comfortable we become with our own success. A child who is encouraged to explore, speak, make mistakes, have opinions and celebrate achievements while remaining secure in their relationships can gradually learn that becoming more of themselves does not mean losing the people they love. Another child may learn something very different. Wha if attention on them brought criticism, or doing well created competition. Maybe a parent needed emotional care themselves, or perhaps the child became very skilled at reading the room and learned that being easy, helpful, quiet or undemanding kept things calmer.

Those ways of coping can make perfect sense for a child, but they do not necessarily disappear when that child becomes an adult. This brings us to the other person in the relationship the person who begins to feel that they are being begrudged.

Repeatedly experiencing criticism, withdrawal, subtle digs or changed relationships at precisely the point when we become more visible can begin to change how we feel about success itself. We may start editing good news before sharing it, playing down achievements as soon as we mention them, explaining how difficult everything actually is so nobody thinks things have become too easy, or attributing years of work entirely to luck because saying, I worked incredibly hard for this and I am proud of myself, somehow this feels too exposed.

Eventually we can begin managing other people’s anticipated feelings about our lives before those feelings have even been expressed. We might notice ourselves sharing different versions of our lives with different people, maybe with one friend we can say that something wonderful has happened and enjoy the moment, but with another, we instinctively reduce it before we have even finished the sentence. We add the problems, explain the sacrifices or immediately move the conversation away from ourselves because we have learned, consciously or unconsciously, that our good news is not always safe everywhere. For example I got promoted, ah but you know, no one else was going for it. I was able to get new furniture for the garden, but sure look it was on sale….

At that point the issue is no longer simply success. It is belonging, for someone who learned earlier in life to remain agreeable, useful, accommodating or highly aware of everybody else’s emotions, becoming visible can carry an unexpected cost. The adult may genuinely want to grow, achieve and take up more space in the world, while somewhere underneath that ambition sits an older learning, relationships feel safest when everybody around me is comfortable. And if I show my success and that makes someone else uncomfortable, then I would rather keep it to myself.

When our growth seems to disturb that comfort, a very difficult conflict can emerge, I want to become more of who I am, but I am frightened that becoming that person might cost me my place with the people I love. This is why telling somebody simply to stop caring what people think is rarely ever helpful. Human beings care about belonging, we care about our families, friendships and communities, and rejection can hurt deeply. For someone who has experienced difficult or unpredictable relationships earlier in life, criticism or exclusion can feel particularly powerful, even when they know logically that they have done nothing wrong.

The task is not to become a person who cares about nobody’s opinion, but it is to become more able to recognise which relationships can grow with us and which relationships appear to require us to remain small in order to keep them comfortable. There is something very familiar about this in an Irish context. We value humility, humour and people who do not take themselves too seriously, and there is much that is healthy about that, but alongside it we also have a language that can warn people against becoming too visible: getting notions, who does she think she is?, don’t forget where you came from, getting too big for your boots.

Sometimes these comments are affectionate and harmless. At other times they carry a different message, succeed, perhaps, but do not make the people around you feel that you have become different.

That creates an interesting tension between growth and belonging, we want people to do well, but sometimes we are more comfortable with their success when it does not change the balance of the relationship. A person can be encouraged to become more confident until their confidence means they begin saying no. They can be encouraged to build something until it becomes successful enough to attract attention. They can be encouraged to believe in themselves until they begin speaking as though they actually do.

This can be particularly complicated, when we receive very mixed messages about confidence and visibility, be ambitious, but do not appear overly ambitious, show your confidence, but remain likeable. Know your worth, but do not talk about yourself too much. Lead, but make sure everybody remains comfortable with you. Promote your work, but do not look as though you are showing off.
For people who have already learned to keep other people comfortable, these messages can make visibility particularly difficult. We may soften our achievements, qualify our authority, apologise before giving an opinion or feel uncomfortable speaking confidently about something we genuinely know a great deal about.

Social media has added another layer to all of this because we now see other people’s achievements constantly. We see the new house, business milestone, qualification, engagement, holiday, award, promotion, transformation or celebration, often without seeing the debt, fear, uncertainty, failed attempts, sacrifices, arguments, ordinary days or years of work that sit around those moments. We can end up comparing the full, unedited experience of our own life with selected moments from somebody else’s. At the same time, being visible has increasingly become part of working life. People who run businesses, teach, write, create, advocate or work publicly often need to talk about what they do. If you never tell anyone about your work, people may never know it exists, but if you talk about it regularly, somebody may decide you are showing off. For someone who repeatedly experiences negative responses to visibility, the result can eventually be silence. Good news is shared only with certain people. Achievements are are not shared, pride can then become embarrassment. I worked very hard for thi becomes I was lucky. Opportunities may even be avoided because the emotional cost of being seen has begun to outweigh the pleasure of progressing.What looks like a lack of confidence may sometimes have a relational history somewhere along the way, being less visible felt safer. There is, however, something equally important that the person who feels begrudged needs to consider. Once we have genuinely experienced people responding negatively to our progress, we can become very alert to it, and eventually we may begin seeing it even where it does not exist. An unclear comment sounds like a dig, disagreement feels like jealousy, and genuine feedback can be interpreted as somebody trying to bring us down.

The belief that people cannot handle my success can protect us from looking at ourselves just as effectively as the belief that she only succeeded because she was lucky protects the person experiencing envy. Success does not make us incapable of becoming arrogant, losing perspective or hurting people. Sometimes another person is uncomfortable with our success sometimes they are telling us something we genuinely need to hear. Being able to consider both possibilities without immediately becoming defensive is important. Perhaps curiosity is the most useful response on either side. If somebody else’s success repeatedly gets under my skin, I can ask myself what exactly is being triggered. Is there something in their life that I genuinely want? Am I grieving an opportunity I lost? Am I disappointed with where I am? Am I angry because life genuinely has not been fair to me? Do I regret choices I made? Am I frightened that I have left something too late? Is this person actually behaving badly, or would the same behaviour bother me quite as much if they were not doing something I wish I could do myself?

These are difficult questions, but they bring the focus back to our own lives.

For the person who feels begrudged, the questions are different. Am I making myself smaller because I am afraid of making other people uncomfortable? Am I hiding behind humility? Have I become so alert to other people’s reactions that I now interpret ordinary disagreement as envy? Has success changed me in ways I need to consider? Can I be proud of what I have achieved without needing that achievement to make me better than somebody else? Can I hear genuine criticism without allowing it to erase what I know about myself?

Perhaps begrudgery is much more interesting as a window into something deeply human, on one side can sit the fear that another person’s progress says something painful about our own worth, choices or place in the world, while on the other can sit the fear that becoming more visible, successful or fully ourselves might threaten our connection with the people around us. Between those two positions are envy, comparison, shame, pride, ambition, resentment, belonging and the very human desire both to matter and to remain connected.

We do not need to pretend that we never experience envy, because envy can tell us where desire, dissatisfaction, regret or even grief lives. The important question is what we do with what it tells us. We can use another person’s achievement as evidence that we are failing, or we can become curious about why their life has affected us so deeply and what that might tell us about our own. And also, we do not need to make ourselves smaller simply because our growth creates discomfort elsewhere. We can remain humble without hiding. We can celebrate another person without diminishing ourselves, and we can celebrate ourselves without diminishing another person. Somebody else doing well does not automatically mean that we are doing badly, just as our own success does not make us more valuable than the person standing beside us.

Perhaps the challenge is not to become immune to comparison or indifferent to what other people think, because neither is particularly realistic. It is to become curious enough about our own reactions that we no longer need somebody else to become smaller in order for us to feel bigger, and secure enough in ourselves that we no longer need to become smaller in order to remain loved.

And maybe that old warning about becoming too big for your boots deserves another interpretation, sometimes people do outgrow roles, relationships and versions of themselves that once fitted them, and that growth can be uncomfortable both for the person changing and for those watching it happen. The task is not to become bigger than anybody else, nor to remain smaller for their comfort, but to become increasingly able to stand in our own lives without requiring another person to shrink beside us, What do you think?