The big stumbling block when trying to figure out how to deal with jealousy is that we have so many misunderstandings around it. It's hard to deal with it when we don't really know a whole lot about it. There's way too much unknown energy around jealousy.
Therefore, I'm going to delineate some of the traits of jealousy to help demystify it. Make it simpler to understand.
Jealousy is when you disrespect yourself.
When you're captured by jealousy, you are not respecting yourself! You're saying that what the other person is doing is more significant than you. You devalue yourself. "Their actions are more important than who I am as a person."
You drain your power when you're jealous.
You give your power away to the other person when you get jealous. Of course that power can't be used by them. So it's not like they all of a sudden become more powerful. Quite the contrary. But when you act jealous, you don't have access to your power either. And along those same lines, here's another jealousy quote:
You end up powerless if you keep being jealous.
Look, if you become powerless, bad things happen. You have a natural tendency to lash out at others when you feel powerless. As a way to try to feel powerful. Jealousy unattended, in the extreme, can end up in violence. You don't want that!
Rage is the end result of jealousy.
Once you become powerless, that's when rage begins. Powerlessness always creates rage. That's what powerlessness is. By first feeling powerless, if you don't resolve those feelings, it will turn to rage. The key to understand is that - strange as it sounds - by feeling the feelings of powerlessness, you actually become more powerful.
That's because when you feel anything (cleanly) then it lifts your resonance as your heart processes out the feelings. (In this case, your heart processes the energy of powerlessness.)
No good side exists for jealousy.
The assumption that jealousy means you're in love, or shows your love, is a common misconception. But that is not love. Love doesn't involve suffering and martyring yourself. Love involves feeling love. It's all the faulty beliefs we hold about love that cause us to end up in martyrhood and pain rather than that wonderful feeling of love itself.
Jealousy functions as a mental construct which is just a made-up story.
To get jealous, you have to make up stories. Period. Your own mind has to conjure stories that may or may not be true. Maybe a whole bunch of stories. Which are always painful. Sometimes, very painful. The more stories you tell yourself, the more off-center you get, and the more powerless you become, and the farther away you travel from your own true feelings.
What's the bottom line to all this?
With jealousy there's never enough to go around, so I won't get any. I'll be denied.
In relationships, it's easy to see this. There's only one of them - and I want to be the one who's with them. I could lose them. I could lose the object of my affection. But I think I'll tell myself a story rather than working on that fear in a healthy manner.
At this point jealousy has become what's called a tape loop. This is where I end up thinking the same painful and life-sucking thoughts over and over like I'm on a hamster wheel. It never ends and it never gets resolved. Which is so unfortunate because it's not really that difficult to end. I did it. And so can you. It starts by going to this page on how to deal with jealousy and reading the straightforward instructions it offers. Because you're worth it!
