Chronic Illness and Envy

Source: Katie Willard Virant

I typically write about gratitude during the month of November. For Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving this month, it’s a great time to count our blessings. But what happens when gratitude is hard to find? What happens when we can’t get past the resentment we feel about the limitations imposed by our illness? What happens when we envy the people around us who enjoy robust physical health?

Envy is “an unpleasant, often painful emotion characterized by feelings of inferiority, hostility, and resentment produced by an awareness of another person or group of persons who enjoy a desired possession (Smith & Kim, 2007).” We’ve all felt it — that dark, internal snarl in which another’s good fortune or advantage feels terrible. Envy has a way of hijacking our brains. When we feel it with respect to physical health, we may ruminate about all the ways our illness shortchanges us. We may resent people whose lives we perceive as fuller due to their good health. Envy can cause us to withdraw from others, as our resentment of them turns to anger. It also can cause us to feel immense shame at our own hostility (Smith & Kim, 2007). Envy, then, is an emotion that leads to disconnection from others and from ourselves. In coping with envy, we want to find a find a way back into connection. I offer some pointers below.

Acknowledge the pain you are feeling.

Envy is a human emotion. If you feel envious, you are not a monster; you are a human. In most cultures, envy is considered a shameful sin (Smith & Kim, 2007). It’s neither shameful nor a sin. It’s just a feeling. We often run from powerful feelings because we are afraid of the damage they will do. It’s important to remember that feelings don’t cause damage; actions do.

Analyze the feeling.

Feelings are informative. We can learn a lot about ourselves when we stop running from them and try to understand them. Approach your feeling of envy with a non-judgmental curiosity. What are you noticing in your body? What thoughts do you have? What causes an exacerbation of the envy? Is there anything that causes it to recede? If there is a particular person who sparks your envy, what is it about her that causes you pain?

What is behind the envy?

When we analyze our envy, we may find that it’s masking other feelings. As we peel the mask away, we may be struck by grief. Healthy people have something that we want and do not have. Our lives are limited by illness. There are many losses, and it’s not fair. These are realities that must be acknowledged and grieved. Sometimes envy is a way of clinging to grievance in order to side-step grief.

Envy also can disguise a profound wish to be seen and acknowledged. When we find ourselves envying family members and friends their good health, perhaps it is not that we wish they were ill along with us. Rather, it’s that we wish they would see how difficult it is to carry the weight of illness. We see them with their health and we are all too aware that we are differently situated. If they gloss over this — if they do not see the immense privilege they have — they fail to see our reality. What so many of us long for is validation of this reality. If a family member or friend is not seeing or acknowledging this part of your experience, perhaps you can discuss this with them and ask for what you need.

What do we really envy?

Is it health that we envy, or the well-being it facilitates? Many of us long for the freedom we imagine health would provide us — freedom from pain, from uncertainty, from limited energy, from isolation. What if we could untangle the idea of freedom from health? What if we could work to create a life that feels expansive and generous and free even within the confines of our illness? This is not to diminish our very real losses. But it is to suggest that the happiness we may envy is possible, even as people who live with chronic illness.

Clinicians who work with chronic illness stress the importance of adaptability (Leder, 2018; McCormick & Cushman, 2019). We may not be able to run a marathon, but can we enjoy the wind on our face as we sit in our backyard? We may land in the hospital more than we would prefer, but can we pass the time in ways that are meaningful and pleasurable — perhaps reading or listening to music or crafting? Again, adaptability - blooming where we’re planted — doesn’t mean ignoring or minimizing our grief. It is a real loss to watch instead of run the marathon; it can be depressing and frightening to be in the hospital. But envy lessens when we feel that joy and satisfaction are part of our lives — even with chronic illness.

What if nothing helps?

If nothing helps, it’s time to seek help. Psychotherapy can provide a place to address your envy — to understand it, process it, learn from it, and work through it. Feeling envy doesn’t mean that you are a bad person; it means that you are hurting and deserving of care.

How do you work with envy in your chronic illness journey?