Have you ever had that horrible little moment when someone you care about tells you something wonderful, and your first feeling isn’t happiness but disappointment, irritation, or a sinking feeling in your stomach?

Today I’m talking about envy: that embarrassing, occasionally ugly, but completely ordinary human emotion. We’re increasingly comfortable admitting to anxiety, overwhelm, and exhaustion, but envy still feels shameful. I don’t think it’s evidence that you’re a horrible person, and it isn’t always an instruction to go and get what someone else has. Sometimes it’s telling you something important about your own life.

Today’s dilemma comes from a woman who’s worried her jealousy is damaging one of her closest friendships. She and her best friend have known each other since university, and their lives always ran on parallel tracks - but lately her friend’s life has taken off, with a big promotion, a beautiful new house, and a third holiday of the year, while our listener is struggling with her mortgage and feeling exhausted. Her friend is genuinely lovely, which somehow makes it worse, and she’s started noticing herself reacting negatively to her friend's successes.

So, perhaps the real question isn’t why can’t I be happy for other people, but why have I started treating their happiness as evidence that there’s something wrong with mine?

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Email: contact@dial-emma.uk

Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to explore why we give some people the power to change our entire mood, without actually doing anything at all.

I want you to think of someone who has the extraordinary ability to ruin your day, just by existing. You’ve slept well, you’ve got things done, and then you see their name on your phone or their car outside, and suddenly your entire mood changes. They might not have said a word, and you’re already irritated. Why does one person have the power to change how we feel so dramatically, and how do we share a world with someone without having our experience of it dominated by them?

Today’s dilemma comes from a listener I’m calling Sarah. She’s been married for around 20 years, but the difficulty comes with her husband’s sister, Laura. Sarah has never particularly liked her, and over the years Laura has said things Sarah experienced as belittling or unkind. For a long time they didn’t see each other much. Then Laura and her husband moved to the same town, and their lives began to overlap in schools, clubs, and community events. Sarah has stopped going to things she enjoyed because Laura turned up, and now she’s wondering whether she needs to move away from a town she loves.

Sarah's question is this: is there a way to feel better, or is the only solution to leave?

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app

Social media:

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Email: contact@dial-emma.uk

Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to talk about something I suspect many of us experience but aren’t especially proud of: finding other people really, really annoying.

I don’t mean the obviously rude or provocative ones. I mean the perfectly pleasant friend who sends a seven-minute voice note when you asked a yes-or-no question, the colleague who begins with “can I just ask you a really quick question?” that you know will be anything but 'quick', or the person who tells you a story you’ve heard several times, and you still have to laugh in the right places.

I do like people. I’ve spent my working life listening to them. But I can still find them annoying, and admit that it feels oddly mean, especially when it’s someone we love. Irritation isn’t very precise. It tells us something is bothering us, but not always what. So in this episode, I want to get curious about what it’s pointing to.

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app

Social media:

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Email: contact@dial-emma.uk