Episode 23 - Part 2 - Jealousy : Smothering love to death

Letters to my kids: A suicide survivor's lessons and advice for life

Episode 23 - Part 2 - Jealousy : Smothering love to death

Music: “Just A Blip” by Andy G. Cohen From the Free Music Archive Released under a Creative Commons Attribution International License

"More Technology, but we have less communication. We have become long on quantity but short on quality. These are times of fast foods, but slow digestion; tall man, but short character;steep profits, but shallow relationships. It is time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room." - The dalai Lama

The inability to tolerate negative emotions, especially sadness and loneliness, is common with irrational jealousy. Frequently, though, due to fear of experiencing the unpleasant emotions, individuals will become stuck in the grief especially the anger stage of grief. Anger is a self-protective emotion that is often easier for people than the overwhelming sadness.

"An idle mind is the devil's playground" - Proverb

HOW DO YOU STOP IRRATIONAL JEALOUSY?

Step 1. Stop jealous behaviors. - Review and monitor your behaviors to pick up any excessive jealousy. - what you need to consider is that the most destructive thing to your relationship is your jealous behaviors. These can be addressed immediately even if you haven't changed the underlying causes of the jealousy.

Therefore, the first step is to identify the jealous behaviors. Make a list of the behaviors in which you engage that create problems in your relationship. If possible, talk to your significant other and find out what bothers him or her.

"More than jealousy or possessiveness, pettiness kills love" - Marty Rubin

Step 2. Challenge Irrational Thoughts.

Underlying the jealous emotions and behavior are the irrational thoughts. A fixed desire is any kind of belief that demands a certain outcome for the person to be happy. A jealous person may have a belief such as "This person must love me or I can't be happy." This type of belief is a demand that potentially leads to thoughts such as "I must make this person love me" or "I must make sure he/she doesn't leave me." These thoughts then will lead to attempts to control the other person or to other jealous behaviors such as suspiciousness and questioning.

"Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening." - Maya Angelou

Step 3. Stop Jealous Self-Talk Refuse to engage in the jealous self-talk.

Whenever you engage in the jealous self-talk, internally tell yourself to "shut up." You may need to do this repeatedly, but you want to do whatever is necessary to not listen to yourself on this topic.

If you worked through the above exercise involving identifying the irrational self-talk about the jealousy, you have probably identified some statements that occur frequently. Sometimes there may not be a clear statement, but instead, you may have images. Frequently, jealous people will have images of their loved one with another person.

"The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time" - johann kaspar lavater

Step 4. Improve Self-Esteem Remember that irrational jealousy is not about your spouse but is about yourself. Use the presence of jealous feelings to remind yourself that you need to focus on improving your self-esteem. Although improving self-esteem is another entire topic to itself, generally, you need to give yourself positive self-statements and engage in behaviors that make you feel good about yourself.

"Being jealous of a beautiful woman is not going to make you more beautiful" - Zsa Zsa Gabor