Understanding the Energy, Emotion, and Manifestation of Envy and Jealousy

My life, especially my work, always has a theme. Weekly it usually shifts. It is fascinating to me when I become aware of it, because it is not something I set. Literally it simply is brought up by client after client - until I also just become aware of the energy of it in my personal life. Synchronicity is everywhere, always. Even though I know this, study this, discuss this regularly, it still amazes me. Energy is so powerful. Let's examine the emotional energy of envy and jealousy and how to heal this mindset to manifest more abundance into your life.

A recent theme that has been reoccurring is the emotional experience of jealousy and envy. 

What was your instant reaction - just to those words? Did you cringe a little? Tense up? Roll your eyes? Did you want to hide? 

That’s just your nervous system letting you know that you probably have a little awareness work to do yourself around those emotional experiences. Language is powerful, it supports our identification of the energy, of the messages that we have had around emotional experiences, as well as physical experiences.

It is important to understand that no emotional experience is truly ‘bad’ - rather they may have negative frequencies. This doesn’t mean they are wrong to experience. It simply means that the frequency may be uncomfortable in our bodies because it is a frequency that is on the negative range as opposed to the positive range of vibrational experience. The energy of it is negative - the experience is not.

Envy is by definition the emotional experience of wanting what someone else has. It has gotten such a bad rap. Also often the identity of envy is ignored and jealousy is overused. But if you want what someone else has you are being envious, not jealous. However, they are often intertwined and felt together because you can both want what someone else has while fearing losing what you have (jealousy). Such as if your relationship seems to be breaking down and your best friend has an amazing, connected, supportive relationship.

Envy is when we see someone with something that we desire - whether it is success, beauty, love, abundance, ability - we feel a painful longing to have what they have. At times this can shift into a feeling attached to resentment because we do not believe we are able to have what they do. For us, it is out of reach, or seemingly so. 

We play the message of “They have what I want, I cannot have it.” It doesn’t really matter why or how we feel we cannot have what they have, the impact is desiring - without action of getting. It is a sensation of lack, the energy of scarcity, separation and ongoing comparison. The emotional experience of envy creates an unsafe threatening space around how you are viewing your own possibility, and your self. 

Behaviour in reacting to envy often turns to manipulation. A manipulative strategy in reaction to the threat we are feeling tends to show itself as the act to minimize, guilt trip, withholding support or giving backhanded compliments and fake praise - especially in a public way. Your behaviour is literally saying “I don’t want you to have what you have because it threatens how I see myself.” In retaliation the individual will act out, usually in a very strategic way that leaves the target of their envy experiencing confusion, hurt or even anger.

We definitely know that comparison doesn’t really get us to positive places. If you are experiencing (or doing) any of the envious emotion and behaviours it’s okay - just check in. Learn the energy - and learn to respond instead of react. 

If you are the target - just remember - it is their energy. Turn it into empathy, and sympathy, do not take it on as your own. More importantly you keep shining, you deserve what you have. I have been the target multiple times. Even an estranged family member leaving a horrible comment on my business page. Which now seems just ridiculous, especially given we share a last name and they also have a business so the reflection actually just goes right back to who they are, not who I am. It admittedly did hurt, pretty significantly at the time. However, it's so obvious that it is about their insecurities, under developed self-awareness and lack of positive self perception that now I just feel a great deal of pity. People who are live in constant states of anger or anxiety must be so exhausted. What an sad way to focus your energy.

Remember, you do not have to live in that energy. Everyone deserves to be happy. Even you.

Jealousy is the fear of losing something we already have to someone or something else. It is the anxious experience that what we have is not going to remain ours. Whether it is a relationship, affection, experience or an object - it is the attachment to something not being secure. It is that we, or what we have will be replaced because our ability to maintain and ‘keep’ it is not enough. 

We may even play the message that ‘we are not enough’ or that we do not deserve what we have. Or that we cannot ultimately trust that what we have is going to remain ours. It toys with our core belief of “what I have will be taken away.” This energy is of insecurity, it leads to possessiveness, and is heavy with fear of abandonment or loss. Often individuals will attempt to isolate what they are jealous of, as a means of protecting - keeping - it. The way we learn how to attach is significant with how secure we feel with what is ours.

All emotional experiences provide us with learning through messages. 

Envy gives us a lesson in what we desire. It provides us a safe space to align with our desires on a deeper level. We can develop intense self awareness through analyzing our unclaimed potential by beginning to believe we deserve what we desire. It allows us to heal false belief systems around worthiness, availability and self-permission to get what we want. 

If your experiencing envy you may have thoughts such as “Why can’t I have that too?” or “They don’t deserve that.” or even “Must be nice…”. Sometimes you may have or give them sarcastic comments such as “Wow, another vacation? Must be tough.” or perhaps thoughts or comments to other people that suggest the individual probably had help, faked what they did to get what they have, or did not ‘earn’ it. 

My youngest daughter over the past year continuously would say “But not me…” in relation to anything her sister owned, did or was receiving. It was obvious that she was feeling envious of what her sister had, and no amount of redirection would work. One day after she said it I picked her up, and gave her a hug. I told her that she was loved as much as her sister, that we would have many experiences her sister wouldn’t have because they were very different, with a lot of years between them and that nothing would ever take away the love we had for her. No matter what her sister had, did or would do. I wasn’t sure if it would work - usually as a parent this is a consistent guessing game - but she has not used that phrase of ‘but not me right mom?’ since.

If you have a lot of envy you may even avoid the person because being around them is triggering to you. Physically at times envy can feel like a tightness or heaviness in the chest, a lump in the throat, a tension in the jaw or clenching feeling, sinking in the stomach, or even restlessness throughout the body under the skin. Underneath envy lies the feeling of longing, fear of not measuring up to be enough, grief around what hasn’t been allowed, or received and a disconnection to your own sense of worth. 

If you cannot find happiness and gratitude for others' celebrations, it has nothing to do with them, it is all about who you believe you are and the messages you have received in what you deserve to have. Read that again. When you are not happy for someone succeeding - it is about YOU, not them.

Jealousy on the other hand teaches us that we have conditions on our self-worth. Jealousy provides us space to examine our attachment style, our attachment history and messaging around how we attach or what we attach to. It allows us to examine where we get external validation, and brings out the past wounds that created our fear of loss. Jealousy invites our exploration of inner safety, self-trust and the ability we have to anchor into abundance, gratitude and aligning to allowing as opposed to a focus on lack.

When you are feeling jealousy, and fearing that you may lose what you have to another, the thoughts that are dominant are more about not getting the attention focused on you. They may be “They are not paying attention to me”, “What if I’m not good enough”, “They may leave me”, “I’m being replaced”, “They aren’t putting me as their priority.”, “How can they do that when I…”.

You may begin to speak in a way that reveals the anxiety of losing the relationship, object, or attachment. You may say things such as “Why aren’t you…”, “Who are you talking to”, “You used to spend time with me.” or even more controlling words and actions that create conflict in order to support a reaction that is emotionally charged to ‘show’ you that the other individual cares enough. Often those ultimatums of ending a relationship with one person in order to prove that you are a priority are based in jealousy. 

Somatically with jealousy you may experience a fluttery or tight chest, gut sensations and even nausea, tingling or heat in your body and perhaps even trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze in the form of crying or shutting down. You may even have an urge to monitor, control or receive reassurance - usually in not very healthy ways. Jealousy is the fear of abandonment, and loss. 

Jealousy develops through insecurity, anxious attachment styles, low self-worth, past trauma or betrayal that is reactivated with the deep desire for secure love and belonging. It is the desire for connection while fearing or experiencing disconnection.

I spent most of my early childhood the object of a siblings envy. It took much of my adult healing to understand that it was not that there was something wrong with me at all. I wasn’t doing anything wrong - in fact I was being abused by an adult most of the time I was also being hurt by my siblings envy. It was about how they were taught attachment and security probably as early as their infancy. The torment given to me in my childhood wasn’t at all about me being ‘not enough’ it was about them not receiving enough. We need to understand that when our children are having intense conflict as children, based on envy or jealousy, that they just need to understand what they are feeling, and given a better message related to being, having and deserving ‘enough’.

These emotions interplay within the Universal Principles. Both envy and jealousy can block some energy, or shift what energy is present in the mind, body, and environment.  

Consider the Law of Vibration and how everything is in a constant state of motion. With envy or jealousy your energy is moving at a lower frequency. Not intensity - but denser vibration. This means that through these vibrational emotions your energy will repel and resist the positive things, connections and alignment that you need and want. 

In order to shift this you will need to understand the feeling, release what is being resisted and reframe into what it is you need to align with.

With the Universal Principle of Polarity we build on the awareness of everything having an opposite. We can understand that the opposite of jealousy is appreciation. Security in what you have. With the emotional experience of envy we can focus on the opposite being a sense of abundance and gratitude, both for others having what they deserve, and the possibility that we can as well.

If you consider the Law of Correspondence then you can understand that what is within is also without. Meaning, whatever you are triggered by externally reflects what is unhealed internally. This can lead to healing. 

Most of the Universal Principles can be brought up here. For instance if you focus on wanting what others have, and believing they are not deserving of what they do get - than you are focusing on yourself not being worthy and you will in turn, get less. You avoid yourself, you avoid your own gratitude and abundance. Others who are on higher vibrational frequencies of gratitude, joy, acceptance and understanding will see your comments, as what they are. About you, not them. They will not engage with your insecurities or offensive languaging. Instead, they will simply focus on themselves. Take that as a clear sign - it is about you.

The question is always the same - how do I shift?? The answer is always the same - you build your awareness, you acknowledge what is happening, you feel it somatically and curiously and then you shift.

Let’s look at envy and jealousy in particular. Here are the basic steps:

1. Acknowledge the emotional experience through awareness. Name the emotion. Have no shame in this, it is afterall, only an emotion. Relax any judgement with statements such as: “I feel envy right now.” or perhaps “I am feeling jealousy.” You experience empowerment through the identification of the emotion rather than the denial and avoidance of it.
2. Build this awareness through understanding the experience somatically. Meaning, locate the feeling in your body, ask yourself where is this emotion? What does it actually feel like? Describe it. Does it have a temperature, is it tight or loose, is it a tingling, a heaviness, a prickling sensation? Even questions such as: does it have a shape, texture, colour - can support understanding and awareness of the emotional experience.
3. Be curious and not critical or judgemental of the experience. Move through it with breathwork, journaling, mindfulness, practice reflective questioning of this experience. Ask yourself what it reveals about what your desires are. Ask yourself when you first experienced the body sensations, what age were you, what was it directed at, how did others respond to you with this emotion, what messaging did the experience give you? What was the worst memory that surfaces of this emotion? Where were you, what age were you? What do those two parts of you require? How have you protected yourself with this emotion? What does it need?
4. Reframe, rewire, and reset from the emotional experience.  Consider what it could become, and how can you heal from this experience?

In Manifestation Therapy®, you might shift envy into inspiration and jealousy into appreciation. Meaning, if you are envious of what another has you begin to inspire your own ability to gain what you want. If you are feeling jealous of losing what you have you can shift into appreciation of what you have and a sense of secure worth.

From envy into empowered desire you can shift into thoughts of “If they have it, I can have it too.” Or even just “I am happy for them, and I am excited for my own success coming.” With jealousy, you can focus on yourself, rather than what another has or may take from you. “I am worthy and whole, nothing meant for me can be taken from me.” and possibly focusing on security rather than anxiety. “I attract and maintain secure connections that are meant for me and healthy.”

To inspire abundance and alignment to what you desire, focus on what it is you hope for, affirm your worthiness. To anchor security and self trust to attachment, focus on self-love and practice internal safety and value based choices.

Notice the theme here? You focus on SELF not on the other. Not on what another person has, or is taking from you, or is doing. You focus on what you have, what you can do, what you are worthy of, and you find expansion in that, as opposed to wanting to minimize, remove, or disconnect what another person has, is doing, or is connecting with.

So for a quick recap think of these affirmations - after you process through the emotion for:

Envy: “Their success is evidence of what is possible for me.” and “I am allowed to want more - and I trust it is on the way.”

Jealousy: “I am enough exactly as I am, I am secure in my own body, mind and experience.” and “I trust what is mine cannot be taken from me.”

Shine, win, succeed. Be your best potential. You deserve all of it and more.

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