Envy, Resentment, Jealousy, and Schadenfreude – The Dark Side of Human Emotions
- Aug 28, 2025
- 4 min read
Written by Tatjana Gaspar, Coach, Consultant & Author
Tatjana Gaspar is a certified Systemic Coach and Online Trainer who uses methods that focus on the clients’ individual goals, thus aiming at improving their business or life situation. She is also the CEO of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Switzerland, where she organizes events, hosts webinars and is responsible for operational and financial issues.
There are feelings that inspire, motivate, and connect us. And there are feelings that divide us, burden us, and, in the worst case, poison us subtly but effectively. These feelings include envy, resentment, jealousy, and schadenfreude. These terms are often used synonymously, but in reality, they reflect different shades of the same basic attitude: comparing ourselves to others and the fear of falling short.
The subtle differences of emotions
Envy
Envy means wanting to have what another person possesses, be it success, beauty, money, recognition, freedom, or love. The envious person feels a lack in their own life when they look at the abundance in someone else’s life.
Resentment
Resentment goes a step further. Here, it’s not enough to simply want what’s missing. We want the other person to no longer have it. Resentment aims to diminish the happiness of others rather than increase our own.
Jealousy
Jealousy is related but has a special connotation. It usually revolves around relationships. Jealous people fear losing something valuable, usually someone’s love or attention, to another person. They experience less a desire to have than a fear of losing. The concept of sharing love or attention isn’t easy for them to comprehend.
Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude (literally meaning in German “experiencing joy when damage is caused”) is the dark pleasure in another person’s misfortune. It occurs when someone fails, falls, or is exposed, and one feels satisfaction because the perceived distance between “him up there” and “me down here” suddenly shrinks.
Cover up until you drop
It’s interesting to note that many people are aware that envy, resentment, or schadenfreude have a negative effect. Therefore, they try to conceal these emotions with excessive friendliness, ironic remarks, or by remaining ostentatiously silent. At its core, this is the fear of appearing weak, small, or insincere. But this attempt to cover up doesn’t give them self-confidence and doesn’t change their state of mind. Rather than alleviating it, it intensifies the inner conflict: the feeling of not being honest with oneself and others. In the short term, it may ensure social harmony, but in the long term, it undermines relationships and self-esteem. They are trapped in a negative spiral from which it is difficult to escape.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Those who are strongly influenced by these emotions live in an inner state of lack. These are typically people who define their own worth through external comparisons. They unconsciously ask themselves: Am I enough? and find the answer not within themselves, but in the reflection of others.
The roots of possible causes run deep:
Psychologically speaking, envy, resentment, and jealousy indicate great insecurity, low self-worth, or a deep-rooted sense of injustice. They are an expression of an unresolved conflict within oneself.
Biologically, they are survival strategies. Even in early societies, those with fewer resources than others could easily fall behind. Envy and jealousy were signals that one should remain vigilant.
Socially, these feelings are reinforced by comparisons, today more than ever. Social media makes us visible around the clock. For deeply insecure, unfulfilled people, the lives of others always seem more glamorous than their own. It’s only a few steps from envy to resentment to hateful comments on social media.
Individually, such feelings often arise from experiences in childhood or adolescence. Those who have learned that love or recognition is scarce, either through loss or through humiliation, easily develop the feeling of always coming up short.
What effect can we expect?
At first glance, envy may seem like a driving force, a motor for wanting more. But in the long run, all these emotions are extremely stressful and have a destructive effect:
They poison our relationships or prevent us from having any because we resent what others have.
They promote the development of a victim role that is systematically played out.
They block our creativity because our gaze is constantly directed outward.
They prevent gratitude and thus contentment and serenity.
They prevent us from developing our own potential because we are trapped in our self-made competitive spiral.
The inability to reflect on our own behavior often leads to counterproductive decisions, which further increase our dissatisfaction.
Instead of listening to our own inner voice, we compare ourselves constantly, and in the process, we lose our uniqueness.
A counter-action proposal
These emotions probably can’t be completely eliminated. They are part of being human. But we can counter their cold poison with warmth, compassion, gratitude, self-love, and generosity.
It takes the ability to be generous, the will to eliminate constant comparisons from our repertoire, the intention to start building trust in ourselves and others, and above all, the courage to define our own goals.
This cannot be achieved easily. It requires genuine desire, conscious decision-making, and engaging in the process of behavioral transformation with all our strength and conviction, while knowing full well that it will be a marathon, not a sprint.
Ultimately, it is about taking responsibility for our own inner life. As long as we live under the spell of such emotions, we remain prisoners of our own frustrations. Only when we realize that we are enough, just as we are, with our strengths and weaknesses, can we break free from this cage.
Tatjana Gaspar, Coach, Consultant & Author
Tatjana Gaspar is a certified systemic coach and online trainer who uses methods that focus on the clients’ individual goals, thus aiming at improving their business or life situation. She is also the CEO of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Switzerland, where she organizes events, hosts webinars and is responsible for operational and financial issues. Before coaching, she spent 20 years in international wealth management and leadership positions with different banks in Zurich. Initially, Tatjana obtained a degree in hispanic and russian literature and history from the University of Geneva. She is a firm believer in life-long learning and fluent in seven languages.
