'JEALOUSY'

     Jealousy is typically used to describe the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that occur when a person believes a valued relationship is being threatened by a rival’. Jealousy is a destructive emotion hell-bent on causing unhappiness. Jealousy can strike at any moment eroding your mind and heart with thoughts and feelings that are meant to be emotionally destructive. Jealousy cunningly lies under the surface of love, hate and desire waiting for the opportunity to jump out and show itself. Jealousy takes pleasure in sowing seeds of discontentment in your mind, and is only sated when disharmony occurs. All of us have experienced jealousy of some description. I believe jealousy is the result of a creative over-active imagination. If you have a seed of doubt in your mind about your partner and/or your relationship your jealous thought will take you through a series of negative scenarios as a means of torturing you. It feels terrible but you, somehow, can’t stop or help yourself from sliding down the road to despair. Jealousy brings about an emotional state of being ‘out of control.’ Only someone who has experienced jealousy can fully comprehend how awful this feeling is. You know what you are doing but you can’t stop it. Jealousy feeds you the mental images of your worst scenario and leaves you feeling angry, empty, dissatisfied. Being jealous says a lot about who you are.

Why are you jealous?

Here are some examples:

• You are scared your partner will leave you

• You are scared of being betrayed

• You are scared of losing face

• You are scared of having ‘egg on your face’ (being humiliated)

• You are scared it will affect your self-esteem

• You are scared it will affect your self-confidence

• You are scared because you are unhappy with your appearance

• You are scared because you are unhappy with your weight

• You are scared because you are embarrassed by your lack of skills

• You are scared because you don’t feel good enough

• You are scared because you believe that you are an inadequate lover

• You are scared because you believe you are unable to sustain a relationship

• You are scared because you believe that you are unable to communicate with family, friends, partners

This list is unique to us all. Make your own list and discover your own problem areas with regard to jealousy.

Ask yourself where did the seed of doubt come from?

• Have you always been jealous?

• Were you jealous as a child?

• Were you loved as a child?

• Is one, or both, of your parents jealous?

• Has a past partner alerted you to jealousy by betraying you?

• Are you’re family, or friends, jealous of you?

Make a list of all the times you have been jealous. Make a list of what it was you were jealous of. Are you still jealous of those things you have identified? Do you believe you are unworthy of having a partner?  Wherever and whenever the seed of jealousy was planted it is now firmly positioned in your mind. Jealousy is an indicator that you place no value on yourself. Jealousy searches in your memory box for examples and scripts that prove you have a right to be jealous. Your mind is like a computer that forages through your mental files to find evidence that you are unworthy, and that it is only a question of time, before your partner moves on to someone much better than you believe you are.

The first step in overcoming jealousy is to learn to accept and love yourself for the person you are.

You can do this by:

• Listening to what you are feeling

• Listening to what you are thinking

• Listening to what you are saying

• Listening to the negative stuff that you say about you (mind chatter)

• Listening to the old pattern of thoughts regurgitating and repeating yet again

In order to rid yourself of jealous thoughts you must clear your mind of stuff (old habits and beliefs) you have been holding on to. Erase the repeating thoughts that are the root cause of you inflicting this negative pain on you.

You can do this by:

• By writing your negative thoughts down on a notepad

• By changing the negative thought script that you have identified to a positive thought script. If you write these positive thoughts down they will form a definite script in your mind

• By repeating these positive script changes you have made, over and over again. This exercise will help to reduce, and eventually rid you of, your negative beliefs

• By remembering ‘you are what you think you are’

• By remembering ‘others are what you tell yourself they are’

• By using your energy to create the person you want to be

• By understanding that you must take responsibility for creating your emotional security. Don’t look to your partner to provide you with emotional safety

I can assure you that if you do this exercise and stick with it, you will see the benefits in a very short time.

Ask yourself:

• Ask yourself am I suspicious of my partner?

• Ask yourself why am I checking up on my partner?

• Ask yourself why am I searching through my partner’s jacket pockets?

• Ask yourself why am I constantly questioning my partner about where h/she is going or what h/she are doing?

• Ask yourself why am I withdrawing from my partner without giving an explanation as to why I am doing this?

• Ask yourself why am I suspicious when I meet new people?

• Ask yourself why am I frightened of change?

• Ask yourself why am I frightened of being abandoned?

Take time out to look at each negative script you have identified.

Ask yourself:

• Ask yourself have you ever had caused to be suspicious or jealous of your partner?

• Ask yourself has this ever caused a rift between you and your partner?

• Ask yourself now that you are looking back, do you think you handled the situation in the right way?

• Ask yourself can you see that your negative thoughts produced positive results?

• Ask yourself can you see that your negative thoughts produced negative results?

• Ask yourself now that you are looking back on the incident, do you think you behaved reasonably?

• Ask yourself now that you are looking back do you believe you acted in a rational manner?

• Ask yourself now you are looking back do you think you exaggerated the situation?

• Ask yourself would you handle the situation differently in hindsight?

• Ask yourself are you focusing on your partner because you are unable to focus on yourself?

• Ask yourself do you trust your intuition?

• Ask yourself do you trust your perception?

• Ask yourself do you trust yourself?

All these questions are important in order for you to see clearly that, on reflection, you may have made a ‘mountain out of a molehill’ through your own fears and emotional insecurity. Your fears and emotional security are seated in your past. This fear and insecurity stems either from your childhood or from your personal adult relationships. This results in you feeling ‘out of control’ and unable to sustain a healthy relationship. In order to have a healthy relationship with your partner you must exorcise these irrational fears. Get rid of them once and for all. Take a peak at your past life, alone, with a friend or therapist and you will discover how this negativity came about. Once you have identified the root cause, don’t make the mistake of hanging on to it, thereby justifying your present behavior. Look at it, accept it and decide to ‘move on’ from it. I can’t see the benefit of reliving your past ad infinitum. Sufficient to say, that you have allocated the cause, and are now ready to address it. By doing these exercises you will find it easier to let go of your destructive negative jealous feelings and embrace new positive thoughts feelings and attitude.  Jealousy is powerful and dangerous and is a real issue. It destroys your relationship and it destroys you in the process. It is one of the biggest emotional problems and is a barrier to creating a successful partnership. You feel jealous when you think that your partner is being unfaithful or looking at someone for too long. You see other people as ‘predators’ who are trying to take your partner away from you. When this happens you feel physically sick, with your heart pounding and on the verge of a full blown panic attack. Jealousy isolates you. The good news is jealousy can be controlled. It will not go away forever. It will lurk in the annals of your mind ready and waiting to erupt if you allow it. It needs to be put away in a safe place with you holding the key. You are in control.

Take into consideration the following suggestions:

• You should not rely on your partner to make your life complete

• You should create your life and fill it with stuff you want to do

• You should have mutual friends but also have your own circle of friends

• You should value who you are

• You should learn to be more understanding

• You should learn to be more honest

• You should learn to be more trusting

The next step is to learn to have faith. Faith in yourself. Faith in your partner.

What is faith?

Faith is blind. Faith is a strong belief. It’s a feeling of warmth and loyalty you generate when you believe in yourself, your partner, your family or others. Without having faith in your relationship you will flounder and fall by the wayside into an emotional, unhealthy abyss. A healthy relationship is based on trust and faith. Decide together to be open with each other. Communicate your worst fears to each other and work through these fears to a positive outcome.

This is a taste bite of a self-help book that I have written that is awaiting publication. It is called: 'How To Overcome Jealousy: A Practical Guide'