Why do some people imagine everyone is jealous of them?

[Blushmataz]

I’ve known a few people like this and it’s like they imagine people are out to get them or take them down a peg or two because people are jealous of them or intimidated by them. If someone else happens to look good on a particular day they aren’t just looking and feeling good in themselves they are making a show of themselves because they are trying to undermine them because they are jealous, intimidated or obsessed with them. If there is any negative interaction even if justified it’s always reduced to people being jealous of them or being triggered by them and their presence, beauty or whatever. They literally seem to think everyone is thinking about them 24/7 when it’s more likely that other people aren’t giving them a second thought.

What causes this? Is it insecurity, narcissism or some kind of persecution complex, what is at the root of this?

Immaturity. That's what their mum told them when they were a kid

It's what my mum told me when she made me wear shit clothes.
People laugh at you because they, too, want to wear a tartan kilt thing with brogues and huge flappy collars.

@MorrisseyGladioli Sorry I shouldn’t have laughed at that but I did!

Made myself lol, as well.

@ncforcatquestion Perhaps that’s true, it certainly comes across as pretty immature. I was wondering as well if it relates to poor theory of mind?

@MorrisseyGladioli For what it’s worth it sounds like a legendary look!

Sure some of it must come from a kind of insecurity. I also think a much higher proportion of people than we realise have inflated opinions of themselves. They're both deluded in their own ways ... If we accept that a lot of people are irrationally insecure, it stands to reason that roughly the same number are irrationally confident.

Narcissism, if you like, though not necessarily insane enough to be personality disordered. Mind you, if they're barmy enough to believe a colleague has done her hair nicely specifically to make them look bad, I'd hazard a guess there is a diagnosis lurking in there somewhere!

There is a misogynistic stereotype of women that we are always competing against each other for men and men's attention and are jealous of attention other women get that we do not. This feeds into the - they are just jealous trope. No one claims this about men.

Because they are massively up themselves. I dunno if it needs an explanation or a diagnostic label. There have always been and will always be people who get high on their own farts.

Lack of intelligence mainly, and probably insecurity, some people can't leave the house without choosing to be judged and especially do the school run

Jealousy and envy are real emotions for some people. Sometimes these people confess and own their emotional behaviour.

@Edingril Yeah I wondered if it was kind of a low IQ or rather EQ response and then as @TortolaParadise says if they themselves feel jealous rather than own that and work through it they project it on to the other person.

Narcissism

Some people are brought up to believe the world is a dog eat dog place. My mother genuinely believes that life is a constant battle of king of the castle and she is surrounded by jealous enemies. It’s sad. She got that belief from her dad so there’s a generational history.

It seems to be pretty universal. I've lost count of the number of threads on here where jealousy or envy is assumed to be the reason for people's behaviours. It's like when people tell girls "Oh, he's only mean to you because he fancies you".... Lazy thinking. And a comforting way of avoiding any self analysis.

Seeing jealousy

Where there is none absolves us

From our behaviour

It is a bit odd really, I can’t imagine anyone being jealous of me, I’ve definitely been a bit jealous of others but more in a “ah it would be nice to be or have xyz” but not in a malicious way, I don’t hate them for what they have or are.

Maybe they experience extreme jealousy towards other people themselves so they think other people are like that too? Projecting perhaps. But yeah not everything is because someone is jealous of you, I think often people jump to that as a self soothing mechanism.

It's very common on Mumsnet for people to attribute behaviour as jealousy when it's clearly not.

E.g. someone doesn't morally agree with private education, they express that opinion. At least a few posters will come on the thread and accuse them of jealousy. Or someone is concerned with climate change and expresses that we should be scaling back our use of the earth's resources. Someone will say it's jealousy because they clearly can't afford to buy a load of old tat.

I always find it baffling. I have wondered if it's just a failure of imagination- that they can't imagine people having different motivations to them.

Sometimes it is jealousy but usually it isn’t. You have to have something objectively amazing for people to look and think either wow or envy.
Often if someone does not like you, it is seen as jealousy by them, but it isn’t because they haven’t got anything to be jealous of.