Bad feelings

Happy Fall everyone! I have been enjoying long walks with my pups in the crunchy leaves this month and I am loving it! I hope you all get a chance to get out and enjoy the fresh air.

This week, I want to talk to you about jealousy. Jealousy is one of those emotions that people tend to either deny they feel it, or they feel ashamed they feel it.  Neither are helpful. When you deny jealousy, you tend to judge and gossip about the person you’re feeling it towards. This is a defense mechanism to protect your inner self from feeling the pangs jealousy can cause. Often, we don’t even realize this is happening. The other option is that we feel shame for being jealous. Due to religious beliefs and the stigma attached to feeling jealous, we internalize shame. We hide and we feel like something is wrong with us. It hurts. Clients have described it as a warm, oozy feeling in their stomachs. A sick to their stomach feeling with a flush in their face.

What I want to offer you is a different way to look at this of course. Jealousy is nothing to feel ashamed about, nothing to hide and nothing to judge anyone else for. Jealousy is an indicator. It’s an indicator of something you want. Something you are lacking in your life that you see someone else have. It’s not the feeling that’s an issue. It’s what you do with it.  Judging someone is so ironic, isn’t it? We’re judging them to feel safer, to feel better about our lack, yet it’s the very thing we want. If we can begin to question jealousy, we can start to understand ourselves better. So, examine it. Look at it. Separate ourselves from it and observe it. We can begin to discover things about ourselves. Maybe it’ll be longings we never knew we had. Then, we have a choice. There is the option to use jealousy to motivate ourselves to work towards having what we want, achieving what we want. Instead of being angry or upset with the person, switch that around! Get happy for them! Celebrate them! Begin to plan to work towards it in your life. Part of the shame is that we will often think our value is diminished for not having what someone else has. It can feel like our worth has changed because suddenly we’re aware of what’s lacking. Our worthiness doesn’t change, ever. 

So, pay attention to jealousy, work with it instead of against it. And of course, give yourself grace and kindness, you are right where you’re supposed to be.