Overcoming jealousy is like changing any emotional reaction or behavior. It begins with awareness. Awareness allows you to see that the projected stories in your mind are not true. When you have this clarity you no longer react to the scenarios that your mind imagines. Jealousy and anger are emotional reactions to believing scenarios in your mind that are not true. By changing what you believe you change what your imagination is projecting and you can eliminate these destructive emotional reactions. Even when there is justification for the reaction, jealousy and anger are not beneficial ways to deal with the situation and get what we want.
Trying to change anger or jealousy once you are in the emotion is like trying to control a car skidding on ice. Your ability to handle the situation is greatly improved if you can steer clear of the hazard before we get there. This means addressing the beliefs that trigger jealousy instead of attempting to control your emotions.
To permanently dissolve the emotions such as anger and jealousy in relationships means changing the core beliefs of insecurity and mental projections of what your partner is doing.
The steps to permanently end jealous reactions are:
1) Recovering personal power so that you can get control of your emotions and refrain from the reactive behavior.
2) Shift your point of view so that you can step back from the story in your mind. This will give you a gap of time in which to refrain from a jealous or angry reaction and do something else.
3) Identify the core beliefs that trigger the emotional reaction.
4) Become aware that the beliefs in your mind are not true. This is different than “knowing” intellectually that the stories are not true.
5) Develop control over your attention so you can consciously choose what story plays in your mind and what emotions you feel.
There are a number of elements that create the dynamic of jealousy. As such, effective solutions will have to address multiple elements of beliefs, point of view, emotions, and personal will power. If you miss one or more of these elements you leave the door open for those destructive emotions and behaviors to return.
Principle triggers of jealousy are beliefs that create feelings of insecurity.
Feelings of low self esteem are based in beliefs we have in a mental image of who we are. In order to eliminate the insecurity and low self esteem we don’t have to change, we just have to change our belief in the false self image. While some people assume this may be hard, it is only challenging because most people have not learned the skills necessary to change a belief. Once you practice the skills you find that changing a belief takes very little effort. You just stop believing the story in your mind. It takes more effort to believe something than it does to not believe it.
Self Judgment can amplify the feeling of insecurity
It is not enough to “know” intellectually that we are creating the emotion. With only this information the Inner Judge is likely to abuse us with criticism for what we are doing. The Inner Judge might use this information to take us on an emotional downward spiral to further insecurity. For real lasting change you will need develop skills to dissolve the beliefs and false self images and gain control of what your mind projects. The practices and skills are available in the audio sessions. Session 1 and 2 are free sessions and should lend insight into how the mind works to create emotions. Session 1 and 2 also give you excellent exercises to recover some personal power and begin shifting your emotions.
One of the steps to changing a behavior is to see how we actually create the emotion of anger or jealousy from the images, beliefs, and assumptions, in our mind. This step not only allows us to take responsibility, but taking responsibility for our emotions also puts us in a position of power to change them.
If you are in a relationship with a jealous partner, and they want you to change your behavior to prevent the jealousy then they are not taking responsibility. If they say things like “If you wouldn’t _____ then I wouldn’t react this way.” That type of language flags an attitude of powerlessness and an attempt to control your behavior with a deal.
How the mind creates the emotions of jealousy and anger
It starts with a man feeling insecure about himself. Insecurity comes from his False Hidden Image of being “not good enough”. With the belief that this false image is him, rather than an image in his mind, the man creates self rejection in his mind. The emotional result of self rejection is a feeling of unworthiness, insecurity, fear, and unhappiness.
Compensating for Insecurity
In order to overcome the emotion generated from his Hidden False Image, he focuses on his perceived positive qualities. From these qualities the man creates a more positive False Image of himself. I call this the Projected Image because this is how he wants to be seen. The emotional result of a positive self image is no self rejection and no feeling of unworthiness. There is greater acceptance for himself, therefore he creates more love and happiness. Notice that he has not changed, he is just holding on to a different image in his mind depending on the moment.
The Hidden Image beliefs become the triggers of unhappiness while the Projected Image triggers more pleasant emotions. It is important to note that both images are false. Both images are in the man’s mind and neither one is really him. He is the one that is creating and reacting to the images in his imagination. He is not an image in his imagination.
The man’s mind associates the Projected Image with qualities women are attracted to. Often the qualities are considered positive as a result of the assumption that women are attracted to them. When the man gets attention from a woman he associates himself with the Projected Image rather than the “Not Good Enough” image. The strengthened belief in the Projected Image results in more self acceptance, love, and happiness in his emotional state.
It is the man’s action of acceptance and love that changes his emotional state. It is not the image, or the woman’s attention that change his emotion. These are only triggers that activate the man’s mind towards certain beliefs, self acceptance, and love.
The man’s mind often makes the false assumption that “she makes him happy” or that he “needs” her to be happy. It only appears this way because he is noticing the woman’s relationship to his emotional state. Often the man doesn’t realize that she is just an emotional trigger for his mind to express love. He may not have formed other triggers for expressing his own acceptance and love so he is dependent on a woman for a trigger. When the man recognizes that she is only a trigger and his role of expressing acceptance and love is what changes his emotional state, then the man doesn’t “need” his partner in order to be happy.
The man’s conflicting False Images might look like this in his mind.
Controlling Behavior
The man is operating from the false belief that he is happier because of a woman’s attention and love. When he imagines that her attention is on someone or something other than himself, he reacts with fear. The majority of the fear is not about losing the woman as he might falsely believe. The majority of the fear is about avoiding the emotional pain he creates in his mind with the Hidden Image.
Without her attention, his Hidden Image beliefs become active. His point of view about himself also moves into perceiving from this “not good enough” state. His emotion of unworthiness and unhappiness follows his paradigm of beliefs and point of view.
The man attempts to get and control the woman’s attention so that the Projected Image beliefs are active. He works to “activate” her “trigger” to support his Projected Image beliefs. It is the mechanism he knows for avoiding his emotionally unpleasant Hidden Image beliefs. He is not aware that it is the expression of love and acceptance that is the means to change his emotional state.