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For a long time, jealousy was one of those emotions that I wasn't able to manage well. Maybe I still don't manage it very well, but at least I can identify it better.

I'll give some examples of times I've been jealous. My earliest memory of it was when my father gave my older brother a rifle for his birthday. I remember feeling sad, and saying "I wish I had a rifle". My dad and my brother laughed, and said "you're jealous" and I said "no, I just want my own rifle, too".

Once, visiting distant (future) in laws, there was this family of four. Smart, well off people. The kids were attending a fancy academy school instead of public school. I remember thinking, "well aren't y'all just a perfect ******** family". The mother was so charming, you couldn't hate them very much, but it bothered me those kids got all the advantages I never had.

In my first "career" job, there was a co-worker who started around the same time I did. For months, he was a "superstar" that everyone praised and I came to really dislike him for a time. It was this experience that really opened my eyes to jealousy. Here was a guy who was optimistic and enthusiastic and good at his job, and for some reason I had a problem with him. We had never had a negative interaction, yet he bothered me.

It was with this last interaction that I realized the impact jealousy was having on my feelings, and in a way that wasn't always obvious. I carried on disliking that coworker for some weeks before I asked myself "what's my problem?" There are some types of jealousy responses that are obvious, like the "jealous boyfriend" situations. "I'm mad that you're spending time with someone else" has a clear cause and effect relationship. But when it's something like "this person had a better upbringing than me" and the result is "I hate that guy", it's not as obvious.

The unfortunate part about jealousy responses, and most emotional responses in general, is that while you can identify and acknowledge them, it doesn't immediately resolve those feelings. In my case, it's still pretty easy to carry on with those feelings.

My solution to the problem these days is just avoid situations that will trigger a jealousy response. I'm less active on social media, because I know if I see someone traveling the world, living life to the fullest or whatever, I'll get angry because of the jealousy. I avoid finding out how much my coworkers make, because I know that if they make more than me, then that will be all I can think about whenever I think about them, and it will bother me.

A part of me thinks "it should be possible to just suppress these feelings entirely", but if there's a way to do that, then I haven't figured it out yet.