I'm sure there's no feeling that makes me more uncomfortable.
When I see people whose lives seem organized, disciplined girls at the gym and when I hear how easily others organize their time.
Then I feel a mixture of anger, sadness, and shame.
And envy accompanied by the question - why not me?
I usually don't admit it to myself at first.
Saying you envy someone is just as bad as saying out loud that you're no good.
We define envy as a feeling of discomfort that occurs when we realize that others possess something that is the object of our desire, whether it is a personal quality or some kind of social or material good, explains Ivana Jakšić, a psychologist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade.
This emotion "can occur in almost any social situation and there are no individuals who are immune to it," she tells BBC Serbian.
"People often say they're not envious."
"This is because we are programmed to hide this feeling from ourselves," said Yochi Cohen Cherish, a professor at the City University of New York in the United States. previously for the BBC.
But why do we envy?
And how do we allow the 'little green monster', as William Shakespeare called the related feeling of jealousy, to destroy our relationships with the people we love?
The only difference is that it is for It takes three to be jealous., especially in a partnership or friendship, which we are afraid of losing, and for envy, only me and someone I compare myself to.
A feeling that makes us ashamed
For 23-year-old Tamara Vukčević, envy often appears when she looks at other people's photos on social networks.
Then he realizes that he is comparing himself to others.
"I feel restless and immediately start to belittle someone's success or positive actions."
"If I envy someone's beauty, I think they're not educated enough, if I see someone successful, I immediately say they definitely don't have time to go out and the like," the brown-haired girl describes to the BBC in Serbian.
While in the evolutionary past we compared ourselves to a very limited number of members of our group, modern societies allow comparison with countless others. a larger group of people.
Social networks increase the hunger for envy, connecting us with a huge number of people we can envy for a huge set of traits or other assets, Jakšić points out.
Tamara sometimes gets jealous of the people around her.
"Since that feeling makes me feel ashamed, I try to praise the person I'm jealous of and that's how I curb the negative feeling," says Tamara.
Persistent envy can negatively affect psychological functioning.
"This emotion drains emotional strength and distorts self-image through excessive focus on personal shortcomings," says psychologist Jakšić.
Social connections with people we envy can also suffer, she adds.
"It would be best to turn envy into imitation," Jakšić suggests.
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How is envy related to our desires?
Mina Petrović sometimes wishes she "had the qualities she sees in others."
"Sometimes it seems to me that the things other people have are much better than something I have."
"And then I find myself taking on other people's desires," she explains.
The desires that are shaped by others around us are called mimetic.
Those could be known personalities, family, peers.
"Unlike needs or appetites, which are physical and immediate, desire arises indirectly," says Aleksandar Prica, a doctoral student in philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.
He believes that philosophy can help us understand the relationship between envy and human desires.
"We want what we see others want, in that sense, desire is always imitative."
"When two people want the same thing, both of them can't have it. That's where the root of envy is born," he explains to the BBC in Serbian.
The idea of imitation of desire becomes particularly important in 20th-century philosophy, primarily among philosophers Rene Gerard.
Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and psychologist, held a similar view.
"He makes a clear distinction between need and desire; need is bodily and immediate, while desire is always socially constituted."
"This means that there is always someone or something outside of us that drives what we want, while at the same time, we want others to want us," says Prica.
'I envy people and that helps me'
Mina Petrović believes that envy has its good sides.
"Since I'm someone who likes to compete with others a bit, it often happens to me that by envying others and comparing myself, I manage to do some good things."
"It, for example, made me finish college faster or train more," she tells BBC Serbian.
Does this mean that envy can be good?
"It can be like a mirror," Shows Professor Koen Cherish.
"It helps us admit to ourselves that we are envious and what we are envious of and what we can do about it," she said.
Envy could also be related to the desire to let's fit.
"It is beneficial for humans as a species to want everything that improves our chances of survival and reproduction, and most often these are means by which we increase material resources, improve our social status, or find a more attractive partner," adds Jakišić.
But the problem arises when the system is set up "so that desire never dries up and its fulfillment does not bring as much satisfaction and happiness as we predicted."
"As individuals, this mechanism pushes us into a race that will not necessarily increase our personal happiness, but at the species level ensures that we continually find ways to survive."
"If we were forever satisfied with the favorable circumstances we find ourselves in, we would miss the opportunity to try to reach even more favorable ones," the psychologist adds.
The famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche distinguished 'good and bad' envy.
Bad envy would be when two people want the same thing, but since one of them is unable to obtain that thing, he wants to destroy the one who possesses it, explains Aleksandar Prica.
This is precisely the "toxic" envy we speak of in everyday language, he adds.
"Good envy does not desire the destruction of another, but, in a certain way, acknowledges and respects him."
"It's not overtly evil, but subtle and productive, it can motivate us," he explains.
How to control envy?
Tamara Vukčević often downplayed her own successes, feeling frustrated because others seemed to do everything easily.
"Whatever I do seems to be irrelevant."
"I used to feel like everything I had or achieved wasn't enough because I was constantly comparing myself to others," she admits.
And can envy be stopped?
No, but it can be curbed, claims psychologist Jakšić.
"It is important to become aware of the values that are important to us and to shut out the noise of pressures that arise from social comparison."
Then "some objects of desire will pass through this value filter."
"It is important to become aware of the feeling of envy, hear which object it directs us towards, and then focus our mental capacities on planning how to get there, while maintaining a positive self-image and relationships with the people we envy," she concludes.
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