What is jealousy?
Jealousy is a complex emotion that includes feelings ranging from suspicion to rage to fear to humiliation. It affects everyone to different degrees (we are only human after all) and is usually stimulated when a person perceives a threat. The threat may be real or imagined.
Jealousy comes from a lack of trust. A lack of trust in the process of life, in your partner, in yourself. A lack of trust breeds insecurity, which creates jealousy; we stifle these feelings because they’re uncomfortable. …
This is the cold hard truth about jealousy: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A self–fulfilling prophecy is the socio psychological phenomenon of someone “predicting” or expecting something, and this “prediction” or expectation coming true simply because the person believes it will and the person’s resulting behaviors aligning to fulfill the belief.
The centre of the onion
When my clients come to me with feelings of jealousy, I imagine them turning into a pink sparkly onion…! (Legit just Googled ‘pink sparkly onion’ so I could add a visual in here but no photos came up haha!)
The reason I’m using this analogy is because an onion has layers. So, first of all, you peel back the tough onion skin and then underneath that skin (which sometimes takes forever to peel away right?!), you get that hard white layer… almost like a protective film. Then you peel that back and so on… As you peel each layer off, the onion gets softer and it makes you cry… (see where I’m going with this?)
Underneath the emotion ‘jealous’, you will always find at the core of the onion, lack of self-worth/self-trust/self-esteem/self-confidence. Lack of self-love – which to me, equals all of the above.
The brown skin will be the jealousy. The tough protective film will be something like anger. Next will be fear. Next will be insecurity. Next will be I’m not as good as her which means I’m not good enough. The core will be lack of self-love.
Being jealous of other women’s bodies
This direction of jealousy is a common one and it comes from comparison. If we didn’t compare, we wouldn’t be jealous. If we were so full of love for ourselves, we wouldn’t feel jealousy. Because what someone else had wouldn’t matter to us.
I remember, before I started my journey of transformation and inner healing, I was SO jealous of other women that I be FUMING if I was watching a movie with my boyfriend and there were hot women in the movie.
I mean, I would be furious. The conversation that regularly occurred in my head was as follows:
“How dare she be so hot?!’
“How dare they zoom in on her perfect body whilst she’s getting undressed?!”
“How dare my boyfriend watch this film, I know what he’s thinking… I wish Victoria looked like that, that actress is so hot…!”
The above shit was real for me. My heart would race, I would want the scene to hurry up so my boyfriend couldn’t see how hot she was, I would feel horrible. Jealous. Angry. Scared. Annoyed. Sad. Not good enough. Unloveable. Unworthy.
Maybe you can relate? If so, I feel you beautiful… and I’m sending you the biggest compassionate cuddle ever. Because there’s nothing I can do to magically ‘fix’ your jealousy.
It takes time. It takes working on yourself. It takes stepping out of your comfort zone. It takes radical self-acceptance. It takes learning how to trust yourself again. AND YOU CAN DO ALL OF THESE THINGS!
Use everything as a mirror
The next time you’re jealous of anyone or anything (someone else’s body, car, money), this is showing you that there’s something inside of you to work on.
Our Triggers are our Teachers
Chanee Momoko
If you’re jealous of someone else’s body, it’s a sign you need to work on your body acceptance and work on building a relationship with yourself.
If you’re jealous of someone’s car, house or money, how is this a mirror to you? Only you will know the true answer for yourself.
But maybe it’s showing you that it would be beneficial to you if you showed gratitude to what you have now. And again, work on your self worth because if you felt worthy you would know that everything that you have now is a gift and everything you desire you can achieve with faith, action steps and resilience.
Another way I like to explain the mirror analogy is to think of your triggers (triggers being jealousy, embarrassment, anger, fear), as a wound that you have within you.
Let’s use body image as an example. Say if someone comes up to you and says:
“What happened to your abs, I thought you was into the gym and health?”
If someone saying this to you causes you emotional pain, then you have a wound about your body image within you. (The old me).
If someone saying this to you doesn’t bother you in the slightest (the me now), I know that I’ve healed my old body image wound. In fact it’s scared over so it’s stronger than it was before I got the wound!
I invite you to journal about this. Write down your triggers (what hurts you in some way, what bothers you) and then explore why you think this is. It will always relate back to something that happened in the past and you’ve kept this with you throughout your life, attracting more ‘evidence’ that this ‘story’ is true.
Tips to soften jealousy
1. Shift your focus to the goodness in your life.
I’m talking gratitude people! When aren’t I?! Seriously though, it’s impossible to feel grateful and any other negative emotion at the same time. So during times of jealousy, I invite you to write down at least 5 things that you are grateful for in life and why. Whilst writing really feel the feelings of love and gratitude for what you have.
2. Remind yourself that nobody has it all.
There will always be someone who is prettier than you, smarter than you, richer than you. Buuuuut NOBODY IS YOU! How amazing is that?! On the flip side, you will always be prettier, smarter, richer than others too.
So remind yourself that the people you’re jealous of are most likely jealous of someone else! It’s funny when you think about it!
3. Avoid people who value material things and hold their self-worth in their body image.
You become the average of the people closest to you. FACT. If you’re constantly surrounding yourself by people body shaming themselves or others or those who are always on a diet or off a diet or people bragging about their car or how much money they earn etc etc, it IS going to have an affect on you.
Come back to your personal values. What ARE your personal values?
4. Spend time with people who are grateful and happy just because they’re alive!
Have you ever spent time with someone who just makes you feel happier? They always seem to look at life through rose tinted glasses, nothing is a problem They see problems as opportunities to learn, to grow and to find solutions to their current situation, never a problem.
They are grateful to be alive and they appreciate the small things in life… the warmth of the sun, the beauty of the flowers, the taste of food.
By spending time with such people, they will have an affect on you! Go get yourself some positive grateful people and if you struggle, BECOME that positive grateful person.
5. Understand that the media and marketers fuel the flame of jealousy.
Just like diet culture fuels the flame of body hate. When all you see is advertisements of anything and everything that you ‘absolutely must have in order to happy’ then no wonder you’re always wanting something.
You buy the new iphone and within what seems like a couple of months the next version is released. You don’t want your old one anymore, you want the new one! We are literally taught and conditioned to always what more than what we have.
6. Celebrate the success of others.
When you notice that jealousy creeping in, sometimes it helps to challenge it. And completely go against what you’re feeling.
If you’re jealous of someone’s body at the gym, go tell them how great you think they look!
If you’re jealous of your friend’s car, make an effort to genuinely tell them how much you love it!
This won’t solve the jealousy, as I said previously, the ‘solving’ part comes from within, the inner work, but it can definitely help. The most important thing to do when choosing this challenge for yourself is to give yourself compassion and positive self-talk before during and after giving the compliment. Be proud of yourself for complimenting someone when all you really wanted to do was hate on them and find fault.
I hope this has helped beautiful? If it has please comment below and share with a friend or on your social media so I can help others.
If you would like help with constant jealousy please reach out to me! Apply for a free coaching call. ☺️
During this call, we will chat about the different ways I can help you, whether it’s private coaching, group coaching or one of my programs (that aren’t available to purchase online). Or maybe none of them are right for you. Either way, you’ll walk away with insights and clarity as to what to do next to help your situation. 🤩
Hope to talk to you soon! 🥰 👑
