Simple steps to overcome jealousy

Written By Nik & Eva Speakman
A woman in front of a waterfall holding 'I'm here you not' sign

INSANE JEALOUSY

Do you get so intensely jealous, that sometimes you can feel jealousy eating you up from the inside and consuming you? For example you might not like it when your best friends also have other close friend. Potentially you feel unfavourably towards your partner, for even just talking to a member of the opposite sex without you. You possibly even find that you struggle to trust people due to your jealous nature. Undoubtedly, jealousy can be a very destructive emotion in our lives. Hopefully this blog will help you identify WHY you might be feeling jealous towards someone, and also offer you tips to help address it.

WHY AM I JEALOUS – Step One?

Principally, low self-esteem causes jealousy. So naturally, the step one is to identify and understand why you have low self-esteem. Why do you feel that someone is better than you, or that someone has got something that you haven’t? Once you understand why you have low regard for yourself, you can then begin to take steps to fix it. You can then change your perception on what happened to you in your life, and see it for what it is now, in context to where you are in now your life.

COMMON TRIGGERS FOR LOW SELF ESTEEM

Common triggers for low self-esteem and feelings of jealousy, are:

  • Bullying

  • Humiliation

  • Infidelity to you

  • Feeling abandoned by your friends

  • You have a sibling (typically an older sibling) and you feel that you were consistently overlooked because of him/her by your parents. Also you felt you didn’t receive enough attention and care

    • Perhaps you were constantly compared to your sibling by your parent or guardian. They may have potentially they used labels I.e., ‘he’s the clever one’, ‘she’s the pretty one’ which damaged your self esteem at an early age

BUILDING SELF ESTEEM – Step Two

Step two in overcoming your jealous streak is to build up your self-esteem. Consider the notion that your jealousy is a symptom of your low self-esteem, therefore once you begin to bolster your self-esteem, you will begin to feel no longer threatened by those emotions. Our YouTube and TikTok accounts have more films on this topic. Our book ‘Everyday Confidence’ which goes into further detail on how to ditch your self-doubt. It also covers how to move on from your social anxieties and self-esteem issues, such as feelings of jealousy.

In our book Everyday Confidence, we tackle common confidence saboteurs via many case studies that you might relate to. We also look at changing old behavioural patterns, negative people and toxic situations. In every case, we aim to remind you that you have more power than you think. Because after all confidence is an inside job.

QUESTION YOURSELF

Until you have solved the origin of your low self-esteem or until you have found successful ways to build your self-esteem back up. When you find yourself feeling jealous, question why? Realise that you are being unfair to that person in question, just because of your past. Don’t punish yourself, or make others pay for somebody else’s actions in your past. Actions which made you feel bad about yourself. Realise just how amazing you are! That person who you’re feeling jealous about should in fact be inspiring you, and making you feel more motivated.

Nik & Eva Speakman

We have studied and worked together since 1992. Between us we have studied human behaviour and psychology for seven decades. We both share an uncontainable passion to offer hope and to help people lead happier and less inhibited lives.

After many remarkable breakthroughs we created our own behavioural change therapy, ‘Schema Conditioning.’® Subsequent work with trauma victims and their related symptoms, led to the creation of two further trauma-based therapies.

‘Schema Conditioning Psychotherapy.’®

‘Visual Schema Displacement Therapy (VSDT)’®

‘Visual Schema Detachment & Restructuring (VSDR)’®

Qualifications from the creation of our therapies, resulted in training psychology professors, doctors and masters students at Universities in Amsterdam and Utrecht. In 2015, this training produced the two sets of scientific studies conducted into the workings of our therapy; the first two study papers highlighting the remarkable efficacy, was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in June 2019. A further third study was then published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in April 2021, with a fourth clinical study with hospital patients is currently underway and will be completed by the end of 2022.

In addition to members of the public, we work with, and have treated many high-profile clients and ‘A’ list clients around the world, having had prodigious successes. We are resident therapists on ITV’s multi award-winning ‘This Morning’ and have been for over a decade, we have also had own television shows, one of which, ‘The Speakmans’, also aired on ITV and several countries worldwide. Over the last two decades we have appeared on numerous other television shows as experts, such as the multi award-winning Saturday Night Takeaway.

Our mission is to illuminate that there is ALWAYS HOPE and that overcoming trauma and improving quality of life is entirely possible. Many people have either never been given hope, or worse had hope taken away from them, our aim is to correct that by sharing our message in any way we possibly can, including live workshops, theatre tours, books, podcasts, radio, television, social media and YouTube.

At the heart of all we do, is our relentless mission to offer HOPE to as many people as we possibly can.

https://nikandeva.com
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