I resent people who are more fortunate than me, and I don’t know what to do to get rid of these negative feelings of contempt and envy.

featherblackjack · 2024-05-30T23:40:46+00:00

I used to feel envious and bitter when I saw caring parents and kids. My dad was a pedo and a psychopath who enjoyed torturing us, his family. Believe me, having a relationship isn't necessarily all that, just ask my mom.

I got into talk therapy and I talked. I talked a lot to a long series of therapists, some I had to fire, some were amazing. It's been a journey. I stuck to it and now I don't feel those feelings of envy and bitterness about loving families. They were awful feelings to feel and I'm glad they don't haunt me anymore. If they come up I have a whole toolkit to manage them.

Not understanding the nature of emotions and being unable to handle them is what I went to therapy for. There's very good books available but you need to work through them with a therapist.

Miserable-Ad9857 · 2024-05-30T23:11:20+00:00

This isn’t a competition. People are allowed to feel negative emotions even when they are already in relationships and have friends. They are also allowed to feel negative emotions when they have none of these things. Someone has a friend that died of an illness and you don’t think they care enough because of some arbitrary rules you made up in your head? I mean what even is this post?

Allusionator · 2024-05-30T23:25:15+00:00

If you’re open to it, an epistemological solution to this problem would be for you to recognize your own inability to comprehend the relative joy/blessings of others based on social media posting. Believe it or not, people who ‘have it all’ can and do suffer. Frankly suffering is always more about us and our shaping experiences we carry than what is actually happening in the moment.

Firelight-Firenight · 2024-05-30T23:09:15+00:00

First things first get off social media. Think of posts on social media as the highlight reels rather than the real deal. It’s really hard to keep that in mind when you are constantly being bombarded with pictures and posts though.

Secondly, therapy. It helps to have someone who can ask you questions. It’s good for introspection and figuring out why you feel a certain way and how to go about addressing it. Every one has the same needs, but how they go about addressing them may differ.

Third, since nothing is perfect and problems are every where, think about what kinds of struggles you would like to have in your life. A huge part of life is dealing with adversity and the day to day grind. So it makes sense that the problems you’re going to deal with every day should be ones you find fulfilling to deal with. I hope it makes sense

AssistTemporary8422 · 2024-05-31T02:00:50+00:00

I suggest when you have these thoughts you write them down in your phone. Then when you've collected enough of them now its time to go through them. Have a list of cognitive distortions handy.(https://psychcentral.com/lib/cognitive-distortions-negative-thinking). I'll evaluate the accuracy of your thoughts to show you how its done. When you understand why these thoughts are inaccurate then they have far less power over you.

Recently, someone I follow on Instagram (I follow people in my city who engage in my hobbies) posted about how one of her male friends had passed away due to illness and she and her boyfriend had posted a GoFundMe for the family. I started thinking lots of things, most of them (if not all) harmful. Things like "You already have a significant other, I don't think you care enough"

How does having a significant other mean she doesn't care about her friend? I have a significant other and I care deeply about my friends.

"Why are you asking your followers to contribute money in this economy?"

This is a challenging economy but the economy is usually challenging and its often a lot worse. Not everyone is struggling financially and the amount to contribute is up to everyone. Most people can pitch in $20 for people in need and be just fine, and if not nobody is requiring them to contribute, its purely voluntary.

Why are you going to parties, conventions, raves, and having fun even though you're posting this stuff?

Everyone grieves a loss differently and some people do fun things to deal with the pain. Its also true that we don't feel as much pain when a friend dies than when a family member dies and thats okay if her grieving is over.

It just feels like to be in a healthy relationship, you have to be "perfect"

Actually good relationship skills is how to deal with conflicts and mistakes we make because we aren't anywhere near perfect. Being in a healthy relationships is actually about how we handle being imperfect.

and since these two have been in a relationship in a while, it means that they usually have their life in order and things sorted out.

I know a lot of couples and many of them have lives that are a complete mess and marriages that are a mess too.

Therefore, I couldn't help feel these feelings of confusion, anger, disdain, contempt for people who have a better life than me appearing to suffer but not really suffering.

Thats mindreading. How do you really know these people aren't actually suffering?

It feels what they feel is less than what I feel because I have had to feel all these negative emotions for most of my life with no productive outlets or emotional support.

Happiness is only correlated with quality of life and people with better lives can suffer more than you because they are just more predisposed to negative emotion. We tend to adapt to positive things in our lives and go back to our baselines so people with things you don't have aren't necessarily that much happier.

Also your suffering isn't a universal metric for when people should stop talking about their pain. You yourself suffer less than a starving person in Africa but its okay for you to tell others about your suffering just like its okay for someone who is suffering less than you.

I felt something similar when I saw someone posting that they got harassed at a convention and I'm like "So? You have a significant others and friends already".

Just because you have friends or family doesn't make harassment not an awful experience. As someone in a relationship getting harassed feels just as bad as when I was single and didn't have friends.

Or when someone posted about their credit card bill and saying "Fuck this country". Like they already enriched themselves using the country's resources, has a significant other and friends.

Are these people particularly rich? You'd be surprised how many people with six figure incomes struggle to make ends meet because of really understandable reasons in their lives. And even if you aren't living paycheck to paycheck its frustrating to see most of your paycheck disappear to inflation and taxes and you have far less to contribute to your retirement. And most of those people enriched themselves by working hard and contributing something valuable to society.

HappyRainbowSparkle · 2024-05-30T23:06:01+00:00

So stop following people if you don't want to see thier posts

IrishShee · 2024-05-31T07:12:54+00:00

As others have suggested, therapy.

It will help you look deeper into how you feel and why you feel it. It sounds simple but it really helped me to be able to link my knee-jerk reactions about things today back to the same feeling I had as a kid and some of the things that created that feeling in me. For some reason, just knowing the underlying reason for my reaction to things today makes me feel better about them, whereas I used to feel shame about those feelings and try to ignore them or pretend to others they weren’t happening. Sorry I’m rambling a bit, I hope this makes sense lol.

Also remember that everyone’s definition of “suffering” is unique. Some people looked at me, a young parent, and felt bitter because they can’t have kids. Or they saw me and felt bitter because I was still with my kids’ dad.

But those who actually knew me knew that it wasn’t my intention to get pregnant so young and I’ve been suffering from the consequences of that ever since (no career, not enough money, haven’t bought a house). And that I separated from their dad 4 years ago and then suffered domestic abuse from him for three years after that.

All this to say you really don’t know what’s going on in peoples’ lives, and even if you do and everything seems perfect, that doesn’t mean they’re happy. They may be unhappy with their relationship and unsure how to leave. They may be suffering with depression or anxiety. They may have a bad relationship with their parents.

FellasImSorry · 2024-05-30T22:55:52+00:00

Go to therapy.

My god, man. This might be the most narcissistic thing I’ve ever read.

Like dude, it’s sociopathic and extremely disturbing, to react to someone’s friend dying by saying, “but what about MEEEEE?!”

I try to have some sympathy for damaged people, but shit, this post makes it very hard.

ConsultJimMoriarty · 2024-05-31T03:17:50+00:00

You need to grow up and realise the world doesn’t revolve around you.

absolutebeginners · 2024-05-31T04:22:06+00:00

Your profile says you were born with empathy but you clearly lack any semblance of it. If you're not willing to be honest with yourself you'll never self improve, just keep wallowing in self pity. You post regularly about your extreme empathy which as you can imagine is hilarious after a post like this. Seems like you're trying to convince yourself of something. Have you been to a psychiatrist?

Title	I resent people who are more fortunate than me, and I don’t know what to do to get rid of these negative feelings of contempt and envy.
Author	AndlenaRaines
Upvotes	17
Comments	35
Date	May 30, 2024 10:19 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/1d4fzwa/i_resent_people_who_are_more_fortunate_than_me/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/i-resent-people-who-are-more-fortunate-than-me-and.1520087 https://theredarchive.com/post/1520087

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