How to handle intense jealousy?

[OnceMore]

How do you handle it when the feelings of jealousy are so powerful?

In my particular case, I am immensely jealous of my younger brother. He is younger than me by three years. I'm 23 and he is 20. But he has literally everything I would ever want in my life. 

He has a gorgeous girlfriend. He's extraverted. He's naturally confident. He has tons and tons of friends, and a lot of them are really close friends from childhood. He was born with superior genetics: he is a good looking guy and really fit, and so the girls really like him instantly and the guys respect him instantly. And just the other day, he got accepted on to a job through some program, that most people would need a college degree for. The program is specifically for people that did not go to college. But it is for a major and huge and well paying company in the financial industry. He will now get paid a lot. 

He has never had to struggle for anything. I swear. I know this, because I've lived with him and have been in his life everyday for over twenty years. The guy gets everything so easily, and never ever works. He has never worked at a job. He always got shitty grades at high school. He lied so much on his CV to get his new job. He got other people to do the online tests you have to do to get the job. He has never read a book. He doesn't do personal development or whatever. He spends most of his time on YouTube and Instagram and Snapchat and all of that. He has no skills. He doesn't do any of this shit. Yet he has literally everything, and just so easily! He never had to grind and use grit to get through a difficult life problem. He never had to toil away hours and hours at a desk doing programming or working on art or working on mathematical problems or anything. Nothing difficult. Nothing that will make him go to his edge. And yet he's just gotten everything handled already. 

How is this possible?! 

How is it possible that somebody who hasn't worked hard at anything can have it all, at the age of 20?

Right now I am jealous. More than that, I am resentful for him having it so goddamn easy. And before you say that maybe he didn't have it easy: you're just gonna have to trust me on this. I am bitter at life for providing him with luck. 

I honestly feel that I'm just going to cut contact with him. I can't keep being around him, knowing that here is a guy who is my younger brother that has everything that I want, but has done no work to acquire it. 

I am in a 'damn the world' sort of mood. 

 

[Nahm]

@OnceMore Gotta shift your attention off anyone else and on to what you want to do. You’ll regret it later if you keep thinking so negatively about him. The situation you’re in sounds pretty terrible.  You thought your way there though, you can think your way out, and onto what you can do for yourself. Good luck❤️

[OnceMore]

@Nahm

But how can I shift my attention when I literally live with the guy? Or when I hear my parents everyday praise him for doing so well, when he did nothing to deserve of such high things?

His success + lack of any work ethic is staring me in the face everyday, mocking me, laughing at me.   

[Nahm]

@OnceMore You can love him and want the best for him. This is really about you. It’s not like there’s one of everything in the world and so only one of you get’s It. You can’t be free of it and hold negative feeling perspectives about it. One or the other. If your focus is on resenting him, it could have been on bettering your own situation.

[Echoes]

@OnceMore The anger arises because the posessions of your brother making conscious that you seek ego-gratification in these things. No problem with wanting to have a gorgerous girlfriend, but what is your motivation behind that? You yourself think that you deserve these things, because you think you worked for it. If you don't have them, you don't deserve them. Life does not owe you anything, and nobody ever said that it is a fair game. So what are you going to do about that? You have only these options:

Try to get what you want.

Or

Wait until you get what you want, because you think you deserve it. And if life doesn't give it to you, spiral down into resentment and envy.

You have to confront the thing in you that feels entitled to get what it wants. Life is showing you this with your brother. You are angry/resentful/bitter at him because it is trggering the entitled brat in your own unconscious.

There is no actual lack, and the belief in lack blocks us to see that there is enough for all of us.

[OnceMore]

@Nahm What you say makes sense. I know this is all about me and how I'm not in the life situation I wish to be in. But still, there's still a lot of negative feelings in me right now. I'm very angry at how easy it is for him. Angry, bitter and resentful. 

[Key Elements]

Ages 20 & 23 are young if you take into consideration the whole life. If he gets away with not having any skills and get paid a lot, it may backfire on him later on.

It's really about discovering your interests and where you want to take those in life. Everyone has something they're good at. The question is: are you willing to discover it.

I dunno if this is gonna make any sense to you now, but your life is about you, not you and someone else. Even if you get married, the main person in your life is still you -- although you're in a committed relationship. 

[OnceMore]

@Echoes I know I don't deserve any of that. I know that.

But what I do not know is how all of that can come to a person who hasn't worked hard in any way. 

Most people slog through so many hoops to get the career my brother has now just been handed. 

It's so fucking unfair man. 

And I know I'm acting like a little victim right now but god, how the hell can that happen so easily for a person?

[Elisabeth]

42 minutes ago, OnceMore said:

I honestly feel that I'm just going to cut contact with him.

 

How is your relationship with him? Do you like each other, does he respect you? Or does he lie to you and manipulate you just as he did with his job interview?

I'm asking because, honestly, this could be just envy, or you could be dealing with a toxic manipulative person. 

[OnceMore]

@Elisabeth My relationship with him is ok I guess. 

He is definitely not toxic or manipulative, just a really lucky guy. 

So this is purely jealousy and envy on my part. But I think one way to quench that envy is to just get away from him. I feel like I don't want to be around someone who is just given things of such a high calibre, because it makes me feel insecure and small with my own life. 

[Faceless]

Don’t escape the fact there is a movement of jealousy would be a great first step

[OnceMore]

@Key Elements Or it may not backfire and he'll continue to coast and fly through life with no problems like he already has been, while I'm gonna have to grind my way to get anywhere near the pay he is getting. Or like I'm gonna have to grind my way to perhaps have even just a small opportunity to try to improve myself so a girl might be interested in me getting to know her. etc. 

 

[Elisabeth]

1 minute ago, OnceMore said:

@Elisabeth So this is purely jealousy and envy on my part. But I think one way to quench that envy is to just get away from him. 

1

There's a balance to be found between running away from the trigger, and working on your feelings to not get triggered. 

If you feel like becoming more independent and not live with him/family, so that you don't have to compare yourself all the time, maybe it's a thing you have to do.

Cutting all contact would probably be a bit over the top

[OnceMore]

@Faceless Can you elaborate on that please as I did not understand the sentence? 

[Faceless]

Just now, OnceMore said:

@Faceless Can you elaborate on that please as I did not understand the sentence? 

Don’t escape the fact there is jealousy into an idea of non jealousy 

[Faceless]

That’s avoiding the problem of jealousy 

[Echoes]

@OnceMore Ultimately, life may be not about collecting as much crumbles of pleasure/success as fast as possible. Everybody has their own lifepath with its own unique lessons. What helps me in these kind of situations is to contemplate the temporary nature of it all. Everybody is going to die and lose everything. If you see clearly that your brother is going to die, if you see his mortality, his fragility behind the facade of the social super-achiever, that can help in a situation like this to re-cognize feelings of compassion and love. No success/girlfriends/jobs are going to protect him or anybody from death, so in that we are all equal.

[OnceMore]

@Faceless So how do I beat the problem of jealousy? The ideal situation is that my brother does well, and I feel good for him. That is the ideal. 

But that is not what has happened. My brother did well, and I feel angry and resentful that good things are happening for him and not me. 

I know that's horrible because he's my younger brother, so I'd rather this jealousy didn't occur. 

[Faceless]

But it is occurring ‘the fact’ 

Ask  yourself is “the you” seperate for that which you call jealousy? 

Or is “the you” jealousy?

if you are not separate from jealousy how can You change that fact?? 

Think about it? Be simple about it. 

Edited February 10, 2018 by Faceless

[Empty]

5 minutes ago, OnceMore said:

So how do I beat the problem of jealousy? The ideal situation is that my brother does well, and I feel good for him. That is the ideal. 

I think the best way to solve your problem is to simply sit and ask yourself: 

• What is my mind? 
• Am I my mind? 
• What is jealousy? 
• Why am I jealous? ..... etc 

If keep asking those questions everyday, you will know why you are jealous and you will overcome all of your problems.