Jealousy

Jealousy was completely segregated off in my system. I had a jealous mother and she tried, still tries, to incite very unhealthy jealousy between me and my sister. So my system shut down that emotion when I was about 8. I remember it vividly.

I thought up until very recently that it was an emotion I simply didn't have. Then I discovered it was just severely suppressed or trapped and seperated from everyone in my system. When I found this was the case I read some articles about jealousy to decide what to do - leave it where it is or try to incorporate it. I read some jealousy is healthy so jealousy has been distributed throughout the system. It's allowed to breath again as an emotion.

I've lived without jealousy for 30 years so it's a very new feeling. I felt it today. Went to work meeting. Told that a guy is being promoted - felt jealous. Realised I felt jealous. Now I don't know if I rationalised it or if I squashed it. I think I rationalised it "the company makes people do extra work without pay rise. I wouldn't want to do that extra work without pay rise anyway. He can be better at it than me because he has more experience. At least they recognise they need someone with relevant experience in that role rather than someone with no experience in that role as it was previously."

I wondered if anyone here has experience of completely squashing an emotion out of their lives and then realising you've done that and found a healthy way to relearn using that emotion?

Not necessarily jealousy, could be any emotion.

I don't like it. It has caused some friction generally in my whole system with parts being jealous of other parts but it has to be better than completely suppressing and segregating the emotion?

I have the same thing with the "suicidal thoughts and self harm" and I don't want to try to integrate that emotion before I've tackled the jealousy one because suicidal thoughts are obviously more dangerous than getting jealous of outside people or jealous of eachother. Infact it's probably a leathal combo to try to integrate self harm and jealousy at the same time so I'm leaving the suicidal stuff in the desert and working on the jealousy first.

Thanks in advance,

Lapis Lazuli

(was announced as Melusine by Obsidian but I prefer Lapis Lazuli as I can't use the given name for complication issues).

The healthy way, in my opinion, is to try to see what the emotion wants to tell you. Jealousy, from what experience I have with it, means, "I deserve that too".

You deserve that your work be recognized, too. You need your work to be recognized and praised. It's normal. Therefore you are jealous of people who recieve what you, too, deserve: praise of your work.

Now, you know that you, too, deserve praise. Your work is important, too. You matter, too.

-X-

ArbreMonde wrote:The healthy way, in my opinion, is to try to see what the emotion wants to tell you. Jealousy, from what experience I have with it, means, "I deserve that too".

You deserve that your work be recognized, too. You need your work to be recognized and praised. It's normal. Therefore you are jealous of people who recieve what you, too, deserve: praise of your work.

Now, you know that you, too, deserve praise. Your work is important, too. You matter, too.

-X-

That is a very helpful way to look at jealousy. It nearly came over me again earlier - long story - but a flash image of how that woman was towards me stopped it amoungst other things.

Because of how I was abused jealousy is seen as a really powerful negative emotion. The person experiencing jealousy is weaker than the person who is "causing" the jealousy. That was a message I received from very young. The second message was that if someone is jealous of you then they will be vindictive towards you.

Those two messages made me squash jealousy and hide it away. I've been very worried how it'd effect me to start feeling it. The time and work and one other time before that we're ok.. didn't feel weakened or vindictive towards anyone.

Today I nearly felt it, saw an image of this woman's face - basically a type of disgust towards me and it stopped the jealousy feeling I could sense coming in its tracks. Stopped it dead. And my usual way of pushing it away happened and I was forced to feel "happy for her"

The flash of the woman's facial expression last time I saw her (her face often looks like that, I think she just has that facial expressions stuck on her face) was of disgust. So that had two problems in allowing a bit of jealousy for me 1. She is already expressing disdain (could be towards everyone not just me because like I said her face generally looks like that) so to be "jealous" of such a person and weaken myself in that way would be dangerous, to weaken yourself towards someone who already doesn't like you is seen as foolish generally to my system. 2. Because of her general disdainful nature it would then feel ok to be vindictive towards her myself. I do not like to be vindictive or indulge in vindictive behaviour. So my usual defence to jealousy kicked in and I felt happy for her.

In the earlier examples it was safe to feel jealous. The guy at work I like, he's a nice guy and always been genuine and friendly. There's no risk to be weakened by being jealous of him because he's an ok person. Also because he's an ok person I wouldn't and didn't feel vindictive towards him personally. I felt f this job for a moment but nothing towards him. So it was safe in both ways.

If jealousy can be managed so it's "safe" and it seems like it is being then it's ok to feel. I guess eventually I'll have to learn to feel jealous in unsafe situations where past experiences of jealousy could be triggered but for now only "safe" jealousy is ok.

Thanks for your view on jealousy, is helpful