- in Relationships by Tony
Dealing with jealousy
Everyone has the potential to be jealous. Some people will experience small bouts of it while it will become an obsession with others. Slight incidents are usually no reason to worry, and you can probably pass them off.
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However, if you are overly jealous of someone, it means you don’t trust them. When you start to become obsessive, you may want to look into ways to reduce it.
Jealous vs Envious
While many people believe that jealousy means fearing, someone will take what you have, and envious means desiring what someone else has.
Jealousy is commonly experienced at some point in most romances but it can also be a red flag for emotional abuse. So, it would be best to get to the root cause of why you have mistrust issues.
Have they done something terrible in the past that violated your trust?
If they want to make amends and cannot overcome your feelings of jealousy, this could be a roadblock in any future relationships.
Try to be more empathic; what is the motivation behind that violation of trust? Sometimes, it can be a simple matter of miscommunication. It doesn’t necessarily excuse their behaviour, but it can allow you to talk openly, calmly and constructively.
People have killed over a jealous rage. They lose all sense of themselves and get caught up in the heat of the moment. Although not convicted, individuals still consider O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife and her lover, and they believe he did it in a fit of jealous rage. There are plenty of other situations where this has occurred and will continue to happen.
As far as talking, don’t let those feelings build up inside to incite revenge. Alternatively, you could be setting yourself up for a showdown. When this happens, you won’t be able to take it back, and you can damage your relationships beyond redemption. Talking can help you get to a point where you can try to come up with a solution.
There are some cases were some jealous individuals overact even when others haven’t violated any trust. If this is something you are guilty of doing, the lack of confidence can be within you.
If you have harmed others, you may hold the belief and theory that no one can be trusted because you cannot be trusted. This is something you will need to address with a therapist or a relationship counsellor. You may need to take action to make yourself trustworthy to others. Only then will you stop thinking that people will wrong you just because you have wronged others.
It takes some time to break the habit of jealousy, after all, it is just a pattern, and it could also be beneficial for your mental health to change.
Lanmiao He
“Extending loving-kindness to others worked equally well to reduce anxiety, increase happiness, empathy, and feelings of social connection.”
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That means it takes some practice, and you need to be consistent with your actions. Sometimes, it can help to reinforce a particular message in your brain, what many refer to as an affirmation.
This can be as straightforward as, “I will be trusting today.” Do this over and over for several months, and you will likely find you have reduced your need to express jealousy.
Further Reading
When Jealousy and Empathy Collide in the Brain (2015)
https://www.thecut.com/2015/11/when-jealousy-and-empathy-collide-in-the-brain.html
Jealousy and Relationship Closeness: Exploring the Good (Reactive) and Bad (Suspicious) Sides of Romantic Jealousy
By Mark Attridge
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244013476054
Jealousy is an often overwhelming feeling of insecurity about a potential loss or inequity in the distribution of resources. The term is also used to describe a feeling associated with being.
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/jealousy
