How to Overcome Jealousy and Envy in Relationships

God’s grace saves us. We are free to enjoy new lives in Him. His Word instructs us to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. God’s Word teaches us to “live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to [him]” (Titus 2:11-12).

However, there exists an evil that can infiltrate our lives. Marketing research has even turned to this emotion as a tool to entice our worldly nature to react. This emotion is a sin called envy.

Many people interchange the words envy and jealousy. According to New Oxford American Dictionary, envy can be defined as a desire to have a quality, possession, or other desirable attribute belonging to someone else. They define jealousy as feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages.

By recognizing envy’s toxicity in your life, you have a better opportunity to expose it through honest confession. When you get open about envy or jealousy, it takes away the shame or fear that the enemy may be using to keep you emotionally paralyzed.

At times, envy and jealousy can cover up deeper issues like deep insecurity, low self-esteem, or the fear of abandonment. By getting in touch with envy in your life, you can also start to identify thought patterns or emotional triggers. When you overcome envy, you are keeping your true self connected to how God sees you and not giving in to who you think you should be.

Social media has become a new trigger for envy and jealousy. We are being bombarded by others’ lives in a way that isn’t natural. It seems everyone is comfortable with posting about every detail of their lives, even things that were once private, like body pics.

Through social media, people can easily create an impression that everything about them is great by what others can only see on the outside. But at the same time, on the inside they might be in the midst of their own turmoil.

We need to somehow filter what we’re watching on social media and advertisements. It’s important to guard our hearts and what we expose ourselves to. What we watch will affect what we think. Our thoughts will affect how we feel, and our feelings will affect our behaviors and what we do.

Often those “perfect” Facebook or Instagram posts fuel the comparison trap. For some it can be comparing yourself or what you have or don’t have to others around you.

A new term called “Facebook envy” is becoming popular to describe how you can develop jealousy of others based on the posts you read. Another common phrase is the “Fear of Missing Out,” or FOMO. Again, this is when you are getting triggered that somehow your life isn’t enough, or you’re not enough, or you’re somehow missing out on something others are engaged in. Envy can then lead you you travel places or make purchases that you haven’t budgeted for, and this can create another source of stress.

How to Overcome Jealousy and Envy

When we admit to ourselves that we have envy in our life, we can start to heal from the materialism and worldly standards of success around us. Satan uses envy as a tool against us. The enemy’s tactic is to come “kill, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10). How much more damage can he cause when he gets us to do this to ourselves.

In James 3:16, it reads, “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice.” The Scriptures are warning us of the perils that envy can cause. Not only does it take away our gratitude, it can cause disordered relationships. The spectrum can go from not being happy for other’s blessings, to creating depression, anxiety, and debt all in the name of keeping up with others.

A popular biblical example is found in the book of Genesis. Joseph’s brothers were so envious of the attention their father gave Joseph, that they plotted to kill him. Instead, they decided to sell him as a slave to traveling merchants headed to another country.

Why is envy important to expose and get open about? How can therapy help in this area? One of the most meaningful purposes of therapy can be coined in the phrase, “What is revealed can be healed.” Getting real about envy can help you uncover its source and the hidden toxicity it can have over your life.

Recently, I was working with a middle-aged woman who was describing some situations of envy in her life. As we did some work together, we were able to pinpoint some of her envy’s origins connected to sibling rivalry, and the persistent nagging feeling she endured in childhood that somehow she had to compete with her siblings for their mother’s affection.

There was a wave of relief she felt that she could finally make peace with the fact that she no longer needed to feel she was in competition with her peers. Whether her co-workers, her acquaintances at church, the other moms in her children’s circle, my client became aware of how her envy got triggered.

Through therapy she was also able to realize she was raised by a mother who was not emotionally available, and it wasn’t that any more vying for her mother’s attention would have granted her more approval or an emotional connection. This new realization helped her to heal some broken relationships with her siblings that envy was destroying.

God truly wants us to find our identity in him. We can gain our value and confidence from our creator because we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14a).

If you find yourself struggling with the black hole of Facebook envy or comparing your self-worth to what you see in others, have courage to reveal your struggle. The truth will set you free (John 8:32), and help you overcome envy. My prayer is that you will find peace that you are valuable and loved, just the way you are, and can be set free from the comparison trap of envy.