What To Do With Jealousy?

Some time ago I was reading a post from a fellow coach where she shared how well her year went financially and about how awesome and high-status her clients were. The first thing I noticed was my judgment about her bragging. The next thing I was thinking was how unqualified she was compared to me. And at that point, I was fully aware. This was my jealousy talking. What does one do with jealousy? Typically people pretend it’s not there, pretend that they are bigger than that, or try to suppress it. Never I saw that working for others. Never I saw that working in me.

So I decided to write what I do with an emotion like this. I will use jealousy as example. But I notice similar approaches work with other interpersonal emotions as well.

I’m going to share with you three models but first, I want to lay down some presuppositions I’m making that are central for using these models:
— What leads to jealousy are not facts or observations. Jealousy is brought about by interpretations, opinions, and value judgments. They all reside with me. Hence I am the author of the jealousy.
— Even though these interpretations, opinions, and value judgments are subjective they lead to thoughts and emotions that are real. They are not real in the sense that they don’t describe reality well, but they are real, meaning they do exist in me
— Having these thoughts and emotions doesn’t make me bad
— Thoughts and emotions are impermanent. They always flow to something next. Flow is their nature.
— There is always a seed of goodness in ‘negative’ emotions or thoughts.

With that in mind, here are three models I want to share with you.

Underexpression and overexpression

This a very elegant idea I learned last year from Adam Quiney (and you can read much more in his book Who Do You Think You Are?). It helps me get a broader context when I think about emotions, behaviors, or thoughts that I don’t like or I’m not proud of.

Here’s the gist of it. We have certain essential qualities. Something that is an expression of who we are. In other contexts, they can be called strengths or core needs. The way to use it is to trace our not-positive behaviors, thoughts, and actions to either an underexpression or overexpression of one of these essential qualities.

For example, justice overexpressed becomes vengefulness. Connection underexpressed becomes aloofness. Brilliance overexpressed becomes derision. The reason our essential qualities deviate into under- or overexpression is because in our childhood we learned that it’s not enough to be just the way we are. And to get love and attention we either need to suppress them or to push them to the extreme.

In my example with jealousy, first I need to notice that I experience it and then I can explore what essence in me is underexpressed or overexpressed to create such an experience. In this situation, it’s mostly about integrity. My overexpression of integrity would trigger me to attack–of course, in my thoughts only–someone who I may suspect of not being in integrity. And because it often happens fast, there is not much thought put into considering how substantiated my suspicion is. As a next step, I can acknowledge my need for integrity and I can also acknowledge that it’s overreacting. No one was wronged. Nothing is needed from me. I can just sit quietly meditate on that and calibrate my integrity back from an overexcited to a normal relaxed state. Sometimes it could be that there is some action that I want to take once I reconnect to my integrity.

Let’s look at the next model.

Rogerian conditions for change

Carl Rogers and his team spent a few decades researching what are the conditions for successful therapeutic change. While analyzing thousands of recorded sessions he crystallized three crucial elements:
— unconditional positive regard, he would often call it ‘prizing’ another person, essentially it’s caring for another person;
— empathy which is continuous striving to understand the internal world of another person; and
— congruence or being real, genuine, and not wearing a mask.

So when I want to help an internal part of me that is jealous, judgemental, and spiteful, I go inside of myself to check whether I am able to provide it the same kind of facilitative environment that a Rogerian, person-centered therapist would strive to provide to a client? Most importantly it means:
— can I warmly accept this jealous voice inside of me? It doesn’t mean that I approve of or agree with what it says or that I’m going to act based on what it says. It means only whether can I be acceptingly present with it.
— can I empathetically strive to understand what it wants, what is needs, and what it means? Can I explore what’s behind the vitriol without being dismissive or moralizing?

Anytime when I can provide this kind of space internally to this process inside me that I perceive as a jealous voice, I notice that it then transforms into something else.

Buddhist Four Brahmaviharas

I’m far-far from being a Buddhist. But I learned to appreciate the small things I know about Buddhism because of the practical, down-to-earth wisdom about it.

Brahmavihara are four Buddhist divine virtues that one is called to cultivate. I consider cultivating them as an immensely practical useful exercise. These virtues are:
— Loving kindness (metta) – wishing others happiness.
— Compassion (karuna) – wishing other to be free from suffering and pain
— Sympathetic, altruistic joy (mudita) – experiencing joy for the successes of others
— Equanimity (upekha) – the ability to be with the experience without resenting and resisting it. In my interpretation, it’s about the capacity to be with something the way it is and not trying to change it.

The meditations on the first three are usually structured in the following way. First, you think about yourself and wish yourself well (you can also say to yourself a mantra like ‘May I be happy and free from suffering’). Then you conjure in your mind an image of someone you like and you repeat the process. Then you repeat it for someone you feel neutral about. And lastly for someone you don’t like.

These are meant as continuous practices but it’s also possible to do it as a one-off exercise when a state like jealousy is triggered. So I can use metta meditation to wish both my jealous part and the coach I was reading happiness. Or I also can use mudita meditation to cultivate the joy of observing the success of another coach.

I notice that when I am able to tap into whatever small amount of these qualities available to me, invariably I experience a move and shift into something lighter and more positive.

You probably can notice that there are a lot of commonalities between these three approaches. So you can try different bits and pieces from what I described with different emotions that you experience and see what works better for you.

Do you feel that you want to try some of these ideas? If so I would love to hear from you about your experience. Feel free to email me at alex at alexmartynov dot com.