Envy - Recovered 469

Questions

What is envy?

How was envy a part of your life before program?

How did envy contribute to your addiction/codependency?

When you were new, how did you recognize envy as harmful in your life?

What steps, slogans, prayers, actions have helped?

How does envy manifest in your life today?

What are some of the symptoms of active envy in your life today?

What other shortcomings accompany envy in you life?

How can envy be turned into a good thing?

What basic instinct of life underlies envy?

How can envy contribute to a relapse?

 

References.

Big Book. p. 145 Chapter 10 - To Employers

The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear. Wherever men are gathered together in business there will be rivalries and, arising out of these, a certain amount of office politics. Sometimes we alcoholics have an idea that people are trying to pull us down. Often this is not so at all. But sometimes our drinking will be used politically.

 

Definitions

• Envy is an emotion which "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it" Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness

 

• a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.

 

• desire to have a quality, possession, or other desirable attribute belonging to (someone else).

12&12 Step Six, p.67

We live in a world riddled with envy. To a greater or less degree, everybody is infected with it. From this defect we must surely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else why would we consume such great amounts of time wishing for what we have not, rather than working for it, or angrily looking for attributes we shall never have, instead of adjusting to the fact, and accepting it? And how often we work hard with no better motive than to be secure and slothful later on--only we call that "retiring." Consider, too, our talents for procrastination, which is really sloth in five syllables. Nearly anyone could submit a good list of such defects as these, and few of us would seriously think of giving them up, at least until they cause us excessive misery.

 

12&12 Step Six, p. 66

No one wants to be agonized by the chronic pain of envy or to be paralyzed by sloth. Of course, most human beings don't suffer these defects at these rock-bottom levels.

 

12&12 Step 10, p.90

Anger, that occasional luxury of more balanced people, could keep us on an emotional jag indefinitely. These emotional "dry benders" often led straight to the bottle. Other kinds of disturbances--jealousy, envy, self--pity, or hurt pride-did the same thing.

 

Final Thoughts

 

http://anonpress.org/bb/

http://aa.org/twelveandtwelve/en_tableofcnt.cfm

 

http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/thought.view?catId=1901