Welcome to IVF This episode 60- Jealousy and Envy

Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. I hope you’re all doing so well. 

I’m so excited to talk with you guys today. 

The topic of jealousy and envy come up goodness, so often. With my clients, with me, its so prevalent in the FB groups, I mean every single person in the world has felt jealous or envious of someone in their lives. 

So, I love that we’re going to dive into it today. 

First, I wanted to share a bit of listener love, again, this week. 

And I’m really excited about these two because I have actually had the pleasure of talking to both of these lovely individuals, before. I mean, listener love is always amazing to get but it’s particularly lovely when I have met that person and there’s this connection that we have and it’s just so wonderful. Makes me feel all squishy inside and that’s one of my favorite things to feel. So here we go:

The first one is titled:

Feel so supported and heard!!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

When I listen to Emily I feel like she hears and truly understands what the infertility journey it like. Not many people understand the anguish and pain that is felt but she does and it’s nice to hear someone that understands and can support my feelings!!! ❤️❤️❤️

RoxanneCarbajal via Apple Podcasts · United States of America · 01/03/22

And the second one is from someone who actually uses Spotify but she emailed me her review for me to share and I love it so much. I also know that she is about to start an upcoming cycle shortly, so if we could all say a quick prayer, light a candle, send positive vibes, whatever you’re into send it her way, that would be great. 

"Emily and The IVF This podcast has saved me. I struggled with my first round of IVF and felt alone and afraid of my feelings. Once I began listening, I couldn't stop. I look forward to hearing her advice, wisdom, solutions, and calming voice every Monday. I wish I'd started listening sooner. " 

Amanda Pettit

OK, so let’s get back to jealousy and envy. 

So to start with, let’s define jealousy vs envy- because it’s really important to know what we’re talking about. Jealousy is when you fear that someone else is going to take away something you already have. And to me, jealousy feels like anxiety. It's like, I have this thing and someone might take it away from me, and now I'm anxious about what the threats are. 

Envy is when you want something someone else has. So with jealousy it's like you have it, but you're worried it might get taken away from you. Envy, you don't have it, someone else has it, or some people in a general sense have it and you want it. And to me, I had to really think back like, what does envy feel like. 

I think envy feels more like sadness. Like, envy to me has this sinking feeling whereas jealousy is anxious like I have this thing and I don't want it taken away. 

So I love looking at the distinction bc that’s not often how we view it. I think more often than not, we label envy as jealousy. But it’s not jealousy. When we’re talking about infertility and IVf and we think about pregnancy announcements and birth announcement it’s not really that we’re jealous, bc it’s not like we already have that and we’re afraid it’s going to be taken away form us. It’s more like we’re envious. We envy what someone else has because we long for that thing ourselves. We want it so badly and we don’t have it so we feel sad. Sometimes that sadness can morph into anger- because anger feels more powerful than sadness. But at the heart of it, it is really envy. 

The second things that I want to address is this belief that most of us have about jealousy and envy that it is bad. Like a negative emotion to experience, some of us make it mean that we’re bad people. 

Now, you know that is not what this podcast is about and you know that’s not what I am about.

So, let’s level-set the expectation from jump.

Jealousy and envy are not BAD things. They are emotions. The moment we place a moral judgement on our emotions, the moment we open the door for shame to just waltz in a start shitting on everything. There is no “bad” emotion. And I know that this flies in the face of how we understand jealousy and envy, I mean even from Judeo-Christian roots we are taught that “coveting” is a sin. I get that. I was raised with that belief too. However, we are going to set aside the more philosophical, spiritual, and religious discussion to talk about it in a bit more practical terms. 

Now, jealousy and envy aren’t particularly productive emotions. They are kind of like overwhelm. You don’t really have to do anything. You just kind of sit and spin and ruminate and create more jealousy and envy. Now, that might serve you for that moment but overall it’s not like the most helpful or productive emotion you can experience. That is VERY different from it being bad or wrong. Ok?

As we all know jealousy and envy can come up in pretty much any area of our lives. Because we are creatures of comparison, elements of jealousy and envy will probably always be a thing that we experience. 

Now, why do we compare ourselves- it’s actually an evolutionary survival mechanism. 

We are, at our most basic forms, tribal beings. 

One of the most important parts of being in a tribe is conformity. Staying within the social structure and norms of the tribe. If you strayed outside of those norms and that structure, it was much more likely that we would be cast out. Being cast out of your tribe was certain death. 

So we use and have always used comparison as a way to ensure we were following along with that social structure and norms. 

Now, this poses more difficulty now because we do not experience the same external physical threats that we did hundreds and thousands of years ago. We’re much more autonomous than we were during the evolution of our species- but try to talk reason to our primitive brain and well, this is where we are. This is not a reasoning thing. This isn’t a logic thing. This is a built-in survival mechanism. Similar to how your body naturally flinches when you hear a loud noise- whether you want it to or not. It just is. 

So the comparison game, comes out in our careers, out bodies, our social status, and, for us, in our family planning journey. 

Now, full disclosure, because I always want to remind you guys that I don’t have all of this stuff figured out and I’m still working on it.  I experienced envy just a couple of weeks ago. And my friends, it was STRONG. 

Now, by all accounts, we have had tremendous success with our family. Yes, we have experienced a total of 9 years of infertility but we have our less than 1% chance of a spontaneous pregnancy, we’ve had 2 successful transfers out of 3. We’re very lucky. And we’ve worked very hard. 

BUT, I saw a pregnancy announcement from a couple that we are friends with. We’re not super close to them but my husband and that husband were very close during a time and we still keep in touch and see each other when we can. This lovely couple, and that’s not sarcasm, they really are lovely people. They have had a family planning journey that I think most of us imagine or expect. 

They decided they would start trying for their first, went off BC for a bit, got pregnant, had the baby and then a year or so went by and rinsed and repeated the process. Well, the BF post they announced that they are expecting their third baby. So the rinse and repeat worked another time. 

And I felt this VERY strong twinge- ok not a twinge, it was that insides twisting, rage-filled moment of jealousy. Like I’m pretty sure I felt my face get flushed and everything. 

Now, because I try so very hard to work on myself first because that’s what a good coach does- we work on ourselves so that we can better understand and help our people. I did what I tell you all to do and I sat there and felt my feeling of jealousy. 

Now, this was after all manner of drama that my brain was offering. I’m sure I was swearing and throwing all kinds of resistance fits but eventually I settled in and let it be ok that I was feeling envy. That I wasn’t a terrible person for being envious. 

Once I was able to let that emotion pass through me, I sat and I really thought about WHY I was envious. Honestly, we (our family and their family) are on a very similar path- we’re both expecting our third child- so I told myself there wasn’t any “reason” to be jealous. 

And then again, I stopped, reminded myself there was no need for judgment- which is what I was doing by telling myself that I needed to justify this “terrible” feeling- I didn’t and you don’t.

But what I realized after I sat with the feeling for a bit and then spent some time journaling was two things:

1. When I was in the throes of the feeling, I was doing A LOT of rumination on all the other ways they were “ahead” of us. Like In my view, both of them come from a more affluent background than my husband and I. and a few other things that I was using when I was in this like toddler, foot stomping phase of the emotion and I remember saying to myself “well, everything is so easy for them”

2. When I told myself, “everything is so easy for them” that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t envious of what they had, more of the ease at which it appeared that they acquired it. 

Now, this is not the universal experience of envy, I’m offering a sneak peak into a really specific example for me. But I think this aspect of ease vs difficulty comes up a lot with infertility. And you can even take a wide-angle and zoom out. If you’ve ever watched someone lose weight and you wanted to lose weight and you feel like you’re stuck in the day-to-day struggle and they are just out there living their best lives well, then it looks “easy” what they’re doing. 

SM and the media in general perpetuate this, particularly with weight loss with BS headlines like “Here are the three simple things you need to do to accelerate your weight loss.”

There are so many ways that this idea of ease permeates our culture and so, because of how our brains work, if something is easy for someone (or most likely appears easy for someone) and we experience the opposite then we’re doing something wrong. 

This idea that this other person has it “better” than you, or that they are winning and you’re losing, that they are “happier” because of what they have. 

So when we're envious, we think that if we had what someone else has, we would be happier. And it does relate to self-confidence a little in the sense that often, the reason we want the thing is that we predict then we could think that we're good enough. So enviousness can be intense, I don't think it's as - it doesn't feel as out of control as jealousy does, in my experience. But it can be like - it can totally relate to self-confidence in that way and it can be very preoccupying for sure.

One of the most important things that I learned during our infertility journey was that I didn’t end up being any happier on the other side of motherhood. Because life is always 50/50. 

All of the things I thought about myself because of infertility: not good enough, not smart enough, not worthy then just morphed into all the ways that I thougt about myself as a mom. Getting the thing I wanted did not solve all my problems and made me feel inherently worthy and lovable. 

But that’s the cycle we ALL get caught in. When I lose weight, when I get this new job, when I get this house, when we finish renovating this house, when we get pregnant, when we have this baby, when the baby gets a bit older. 

You see, it’s never about the thing we think it is. And when you think about it, of course. There are thin, rich, married, with kids, that are successful people all over the place who are so damn miserable. If you know any of them, you will know that. But our brains tell us that if we just had what they had, we'd be happy. Even though there's so much evidence to the contrary all around us 

So I was thinking about how I really try to keep perspective when I am feeling envious of anyone: a thinner bodies person, a more successful person, a wealthier person, a person with whom getting pregnant seemed to only require them to fold underwear once- I have to zoom out and remind myself “all people have pain.” All people suffer. Life is always 50/50. 

And you know, that's a very like, it's a Buddhist meditation, it also kind of fits with the whole Jewish approach to things, so sometimes I teach it as even Beyoncé gets cheated on. The point is - a little more pop culture. But the point is that nothing in the world will protect you from negative emotion or make you happy forever. Nothing. 

But that's what envy is. We think, "If I had that thing, then I wouldn't feel bad." Negative emotion is a part of life, and both positive and negative emotion are caused by your thoughts. It's whether or not you have a baby, it’s not your job, it's not your partner, it's not your money, it's not your complexion, it's not your friends, it's not your style. 

Nothing you covet that someone else has, nothing you feel envious about creates their feelings or will create your feelings. You only want it because you think it will make you happy, but happiness is available to you now. And the deepest irony of this whole thing is that the only reason you're unhappy is that you are thinking you need the thing. 

There's nothing wrong with not having a baby and not having a baby doesn’t actually cause negative feelings- if it did then it would be a universal experience for all women without children, and it’s not. What causes negative feelings is thinking, "I should have a baby, if I had a baby I'd be happy." So we cause the dissatisfaction with that thought and then we're like, well, the only way to solve this problem is to have that baby. 

The reason you feel bad is your thought that you need that thing to feel good. If you didn't have the thought that you needed that thing, you wouldn't have a problem. If you stopped thinking you needed the thing you were envious of, then you wouldn’t be dissatisfied. There'd be nothing to cure, there would be no problem. You wouldn't want the thing. 

Now notice I said “needed”- I didn’t say “wanted”. Those are two different, vastly different things. My economist husband still tried to remind me of the difference whenever I mention looking on Amazon about something- but I choose to not believe him. 

But it’s true. The anguish comes when we tell ourselves we “need to”, “have to” or “should have” a baby or a pregnancy. There is pain in wanting something and not getting it- but not quite the anguish. We don’t need the anguish. This journey is already hard. 

So when you find yourself, feeling that familiar pull of envy, remind yourself “all people have pain”. There’s no need for comparison. We don’t need to compare and despair. It’s abut perspective. It’s also not about forcing gratitude. You don’t need to remind yourself, Everyone has pain but I am grateful for…” 

I mean of course you can, but you don’t have to force it. You’re just looking for a way to break that envy cycle that feels so terrible. 

There’s no magic switch that gets flipped or pill you can take to fix everything- we’re just looking for less pain. Less suffering. More compassion. More compassion for you and the other humans in this world. You might not always be able to access compassion, that’s ok. No one bats 1,000, nor are they expected to. 

Ask yourself, how can I love on me right now? How can I take care of me? How can I love me? I promise you, you answer those questions, and you will never go wrong. 

Ok, that is what I have for you today, my friends. 

Have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon.