How to Overcome Jealousy
- 5 Essential Tips

Jealousy - The Green-Eyed Monster

If you have experienced jealousy then you will know the feelings of anger and shame that you can undergo when you realize how you acting and reacting, often towards someone who is tremendously important to you.

It may seem to you that in these situations your feelings and actions are completely out of your control. Wrong! There are sensible practical things that you can do to manage and change your behaviour and to tackle the distorted thought patterns that may well be at the heart of your instinctive jealousy, whether or not your judgements have some basis in reality.

David Bonham-Carter worked for many years as a life coach with people experiencing jealousy, using CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) techniques to help his clients deal effectively with the thoughts and feelings that were consuming them & dictating their jealous behaviour. In the course of his work he identified 5 particularly important questions to ask yourself:

5 Important Questions to Help You Deal with Jealousy

1. What attitude should you adopt towards your jealousy?

2. How can you deal with your jealous thoughts?

3. What should you do when you feel jealous?

4. What can you do if jealousy is affecting other aspects of your life?

5. How can you keep yourself motivated to overcome jealousy?

Answering the 5 Jealousy Questions

Here in brief are the answers to the above questions that David found to work best.

1. What Attitude Should You Adopt towads Your Jealousy?

Answer: Adopt an Attitude of Acceptance towards Your Jealousy

Ok so this may sound crazy to you since what you really want to do is to get rid of your jealousy and the feelings that go with it. But have you ever noticed how the more you try to fight your jealousy and eradicate it, the harder it comes back to bite you and the more down you feel about it?

So instead, be kinder to yourself. Accept that everyone has some kind of problem and yours is jealousy. It is likely that it will recur. What you are going to do is to accept that and to use techniques to help you manage it as effectively as you can. You may not always succeed but it is highly likely that you will do much better than when you felt that you had to get rid of it altogether and set yourself up for a fall in pride by doing so. Consequently you will also:

Feel Better
Improve Your Relationships
Be Able to Get On with the Rest of Your Life

2. How Can You Deal with Your Jealous Thoughts?

Answer: Use Techniques to Put Your Thoughts in a Balanced Perspective

You can use techniques to help balance out your distorted jealous thinking patterns by making use of simple and practical ideas drawn from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This is not simply the same as positive thinking. It is about managing your thoughts in a realistic practical way to keep them in perspective.

Here is an example (the person with the jealous thoughts in the example below is a heterosexual woman but the example works equally well with heterosexual males or with gay couples, male or female):

Negative Jealous Thought: 'My boyfriend is smiling while talking to another woman. He must prefer her to me.'

Technique: Weigh up both sides of the evidence for the thought and create a balancing thought to say to yourself which acknowledges both sides sensibly, e.g.

'It is probably true he is enjoying her company. That doesn't mean that he prefers her to you. You find it difficult to cope with because you are imagining things developing between them but you can handle it and remember that the success of your relationships depends on you and your partner not on someone else.'

Repeat your balancing thought to yourself when you are experiencing the jealous thought to help you deal with it.

At the foot of this page you will find information about where you can get a succinct mini guide to this approach to jealousy which will give you further ideas and techniques for balancing your thoughts and actions.

3. What Should You Do When You Feel Jealous?

Answer: If You Suffer from Repeated Jealousy Try Doing the Opposite of What Your Instinct Tells You to Do!

Jealousy is a form of anxiety. It is a characteristic of excessive anxiety that it tends to lead you instinctively to react in unhelpful ways because you just want to get rid of it as soon as possible, so you act without thinking sensibly.

Remember this and try to do the opposite of what your instinct is telling you to do in a situation where you experience jealousy, e.g. if your tendency is to overreact then try to stay calm.

Obviously there are a few exceptions - for example, if your personal safety is compromised then do whatever is most likely to help preserve it - but if you can safely try acting in the opposite way to your instinct then give that a go and see if it helps! Often it will help greatly.

4. What Can You Do If Jealousy is Affecting Other Aspects of Your Life?

Answer: Make a Conscious Effort to Maintain a Healthy Life Balance even if Your Jealousy is Severe

Your jealousy is consuming you so it's easy to drop everything else and focus on getting rid of the jealousy. But if you 'let yourself go' and stop doing healthy activities and routines it's highly likely that will make the jealousy worse because you will be giving it way too much attention and your mind and body will not get sensible rest, diversion and enjoyment.

So instead, even if you are jealous:

Continue with normal day to day activities
Spend some time relaxing
Do some exercise
Avoid unhealthy habits such as drinking alcohol when your mood is down. The temporary respite that those unhealthy habits might give is often followed by a worse 'down' period (and in the case of some habits such as excessive alcohol or drug use these habits also carry potential health risks).

Continuing with you day to day activities and a sensible life balance, helps you to keep your jealousy in perspective.

5. How Can You Keep Yourself Motivated to Overcome Jealousy?

Answer: View Your Efforts to Manage Your Jealousy Effectively as a Project and Create a Project Plan

Doing this will help you to realise that you have some control over your behaviour and over the extent to which you let your jealousy get to you. Remember you are not aiming to beat it. You are aiming to manage it more effectively. Write down in your project plan sensible outcomes that you are aiming for and any initial actions and strategies you are going to try (these could be specific actions you are planning based on points 1-4 above). Then keep a record of how you get on. Gain confidence and build from successes whist learning from any things that don't work out. This is the practical approach.

Where Can I Find More Information about this Approach to Jealousy?

You can purchase the 16 page downloadable mini-guide How to Overcome Jealousy - 5 Essential Tips written by Self-Help Author David Bonham-Carter, which examines each of the 5 Questions above and each of the 5 Answers in more detail and provides practical concrete suggestions on how to implement each answer. The guide aims to:

Reinforce your efforts to manage your jealousy in a much more effective way than you are doing
Help you to help you feel more in control of your jealousy
Point you to take practical steps that will help you.

About the Author

How to Overcome Jealousy - 5 Essential Tips is a succinct and useful mini-guide written by Self-Help Author David Bonham-Carter who specialises in the use of CBT and other practical techniques to help people deal with negative thinking patterns and address difficulties such as:

Relationship and communication difficulties
Self esteem and confidence issues
Stress, anxiety and assertiveness
Life change and motivation

David worked for many years in the UK as a social worker before becoming a professional life coach in private practice for several years. He now focuses on sharing useful coaching and CBT techniques through self-help guides.