I’m bursting with envy about other people’s happy lives

DEAR BEL I AM a 41-year-old single mum of one gorgeous 11-year-old girl. I’m unemployed, currently looking for work, and I have bipolar disorder type II.

This leaves me prone to long depressions, which I struggle with and often lead to periods of social withdrawal, hopelessness and negative thinking.

I’ve been dealing with this for a decade now and know what to do when times are bad, including adjustments of medication, exercise, stress avoidance etc.

It’s difficult, but it’s there and has to be dealt with — one foot in front of the other. It’s been the cause of failed relationships and I’ve been single for five years now.

Prior to being diagnosed at 28, I was a bright spark with a career in finance taking off.

Since then I’ve had to adjust my lifestyle to fit and right now I’m struggling to find a suitable job that will provide myself and my daughter with a sustainable life.

My problem is the bitterness I find myself feeling about my situation. No matter how much I try to reason and remind myself of all the things I am lucky to have, including my daughter and a supportive family, I find myself feeling lonely and jealous of the two-parent families out there with several children (I would have loved two or three), no apparent illness and happy lives.

Indeed, most of my friends are now in this situation and have disappeared for the moment off the social scene to raise young children.

I have one good friend I still see regularly, but most of my time is spent in my house.

I know Hollywood has a lot to blame in setting up expectations that aren’t filled for everyone and I do spend a lot of time trying to get past these mean thoughts and focus on the good, but I am struggling.

A lot of time is spent looking for work and a job would help things a lot, but right now things seem quite bleak.

I don’t know how to get past these feelings — they’ve been with me for about five years. How can I focus on the positive, get past these disappointments and move my life forward?

BERNADETTE

You have written an honest, intelligent letter, which I greatly admire. Your illness has dealt you a bad hand, but it sounds as i f you are coping with fortitude — or (in other words) ‘just getting on with it’.

I love it that you can write, ‘ one foot in front of the other’ — and wish so many others could view their own lives with such patient pragmatism.

You have your ‘gorgeous’ daughter to live for, and, of course, she will need all the more love and support when she enters secondary school and her teenage years. There’s not a shred of doubt that she’s lucky in her practical and courageous mum. Thinking how to reply to you, I’ve decided to avoid the usual routes of suggesting counselling, new interests etc. useful though such advice can be, i t’s clear you’re perfectly capable of trying such things without prompting.

Your deeper question is — how can we deal with deep-seated feelings of wistful envy at the good fortune of others? Natural they may be, but they can topple into something more negative and self-harming.

The next stage along from your feeling is summed up by the German term, Schadenfreude — pleasure derived f r om t he misfortunes of others.

This word literally means ‘ harmjoy’: a feeling of pleasure when one sees another fail or suffer misfortune. So the person who has endured a

miserable divorce and felt very lonely may feel, ‘Aha, so now you know what it feels like!’ when he/she hears that an old friend, seemingly happily married for years, has just been ditched.

You wouldn’t want to be that person, would you? So (with German in mind) let me offer you a thought that crossed my mind when I was reading an essay by the great philosopher Schopenhauer.

Pithy and pessimistic, he wrote in the first half of the 19th century and one essay seems to sum up his theories on compassion.

We are all in this together — and so, when you look at happy people, you should reflect that underneath they may be experiencing forms of pain equal to yours. Thinking like that (says) Schopenhauer ‘ is in fact calculated to instil in us indulgence towards one another . . .’

He goes on: ‘From this point of view one might consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be not Sir, but “Fellow sufferer”.’

THen he adds: ‘ However strange this may sound, it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity — which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes.’

I think that’s rather wonderful. What might seem bleak is actually full of hope — even though in that essay (called ‘On The Suffering Of The World’) the philosopher calls life ‘ hell’.

Some people appear to live gilded lives, but sooner or later they will lose somebody precious or realise they have not achieved their life’s dreams . . . and then they will be brought down. Accepting this truth is a good antidote to bitter envy. Think about it.

From an old book to a new one, I heartily recommend the novelist Matt Haig’s short, positive and accessible account of his own depression and how he f i nally triumphed — or, perhaps I should write, worked with it.

Reasons To Stay Alive is only £9.99 and I think it will help you. Haig writes: ‘ We all matter because we are all alive.

‘And so kindness is an active way in which we can see and feel the bigger picture . . . by feeling part of humanity, rather than an isolated unit, we feel better.’

And that’s the message of that long-dead German too, you see?

It may seem strange that I am talking like this to a person with an illness which has so curtailed her life, but we must start somewhere to combat your ‘mean thoughts’.

Matt Haig knows that. With your innate courage as well as your supportive family and the love you share with your daughter . . . you will take more steps along that road, one at a time.