Overcoming Jealousy
The title of this post is a little misleading because I don’t think overcoming jealousy is actually the goal but I’m going for something catchy and alluring. Did it work?
Jealousy pops up in relationships for a variety of reasons. Maybe your partner was invited to the BBQ but you weren’t or they have a more active social life than you do. Maybe y’all are polyamorous and they’re dating other people and every time they go out, jealousy consumes you.
Whatever the situation, I’ve got some tips for you to beat back the green-eyed monster so it doesn’t entirely rule your mood.
Normalize the feeling
Jealousy is not a pleasant feeling by any means. It often stirs up a bunch of emotions from the past and can be truly distressing to experience. And many of us have internalized cultural messaging around jealousy. For people socialized masculine, being jealous was probably a good thing that received positive feedback and was encouraged. For people socialized feminine growing up, jealousy was probably written off as hysterical and you only received positive feedback for being “cool”.
But jealousy is completely normal. It’s a normal feeling that everyone experiences in response to different situations and to varying degrees. If you truly don’t experience jealousy, that probably means you were raised with a secure attachment style and have continued to have relationships with secure attachment. While we’re all very happy for you, that's not the norm.
If you’re like the rest of us with insecure or anxious attachment, don’t be too hard on yourself when you feel jealous. It’s a normal feeling and there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling it.
Acknowledge the accompanying (or underlying) feeling)
Most of the time, jealousy is accompanied by or underpinned by another emotion. Fear, rejection, anger, abandonment, and hurt are all normal and common. Identifying which emotion goes with jealousy for you can help you trace back where that feeling might be coming from. Knowing where it’s coming from can help you ask for specifically what you need for support around that feeling.
If rejection is particularly difficult to cope with, you can try to find some ways to reframe the situation so it’s not a rejection or you can ask your partner to communicate differently so the rejection is less of a blow. If you feel overwhelmed by fear when jealousy comes up, try to ascertain what you’re afraid of. Name the fear to yourself and to your partner and explore ways to feel reassured. The more you try to hide or ignore an emotion, the louder it has to scream to get your attention. Giving it the soothing attention it needs will help it grow quieter over time.
Take care & ask for care
Jealousy is a normal feeling that can be exacerbated by insecure attachment. If you grew up without secure attachment and haven’t had the chance to heal that or if you and your partner have some anxious attachment or codependent behaviors, jealousy can be truly overwhelming.
To help you cope, I highly recommend creating a care plan for when you feel jealous. Some examples of what this could include:
Watching a show or movie your partner wouldn’t enjoy
Eating certain foods or from a restaurant your partner doesn’t like
Singing very loudly to music that your partner hates
Making plans with friends
Having a care plan like this works to rewire the way your brain reacts to jealousy-inducing situations. If you reward yourself every time one of these opportunities to be jealous arises, you’ll gradually start to associate these occasions with positive feelings rather than negative ones.
If you’re too distressed by jealousy to create or implement a self-care plan, make a plan with your partner when you’re not feeling jealous to ask for care when you do. You could come up with a special word or phrase to use when you’re feeling jealous or if you already have a practice of asking for care you could say “I’m feeling jealous and afraid you’re going to leave me, can you tell me why that’s not true?”
The goal here isn’t to eliminate jealousy from your life. The goal is to build your capacity to tolerate it. We can do that by normalizing the emotion, understanding where it comes from, and taking care when it comes up. Over time, you’ll create resilience to the emotion and it will become easier and easier to cope with. If you want guidance and accountability in tackling jealousy, book a sales call for one-on-one coaching with me. We’ll work through all of this together until jealousy is just annoying rather than devastating.
