How to Cope With Jealousy

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is John Bosworth I am a licensed mental health counselor in Saint Pete, Florida, I would like to talk a little bit of how to cope with about how to cope with jealousy. Okay, jealousy is one of those emotions that people really do not identify correctly, they will say I feel jealous or I feel this or I feel angry, but jealousy is kind of made up of two, I like to say two components, to most jealousy okay. There is also, what I would like to say before we get into how to cope with jealousy is there is a rational component to jealousy and an irrational component. The rational kind of jealousy I like to call concern which is, you are out on a date and you are concerned that your partner or your boyfriend or girlfriend is talking to somebody a little longer than you feel comfortable with, or they are staring at somebody in a suggestive way that you are really not comfortable with, but you deal with it you accept it you move on you accept it as part of life maybe you will talk with her or him later, but you kind of accept it and you do not make a big deal out of it. That is kind of rational concern for your relationship. Irrational jealousy comes about usually through two separate emotions; usually anger, a demand that your partner or person you are with should not have talked to somebody that long or should not have stared at them that long, and then second anxiety in that whoa what if they leave me, what if they you know what if they do not want to be with me anymore and they are looking at this other person okay. So what I like to do is identify and diffuse both those emotions and how we do that, is recognize - usually I can go into a long description on anger and anxiety reduction but one thing that really helps tremendously in coping with jealousy is unconditional self acceptance. If people really accepted themselves and did not compare themselves or put themselves down compared to others especially people that our partners are looking at or talking to, then we would probably be a lot less likely to become irrationally jealous okay. So, when coping with jealousy turn inward do not look at your your partner's behavior right away look at what you are telling yourself and how you are thinking about your partner's behavior that creates that jealousy, and then try to work with work with the thoughts that create the jealousy and really work on unconditional self acceptance, which means you are not a good person or a bad person, you are just a person same as your partner same as the person they are looking at. But when we have a healthier sense of self acceptance we tend to feel a lot less jealous. My name is John Bosworth and we are talking about how to cope with jealousy."