When I was a child my mother always told me, “Don’t be jealous of others. Don’t desire what others have. Don’t strive to possess and control someone, because in the end you will be alone as nothing that belongs to us but is merely an experience.” She was a Buddhist sage who tried to calm the tantrums of young adolescents from unfulfilled wishes.

It is true today that I rarely feel jealous or envy, which I attribute to my upbringing and the love that was given to me as a child. Therefore, in the spirit of my mother I would like to leave a footnote to know that hopefully it will lighten the weight of those emotions that are hungry in our soul: jealousy, anger and envy.

I have often heard in therapy and in my own life people project this emotion as a trigger for another person’s behavior: “She makes me jealous. It’s her fault she makes me that way.” Basically, when it comes to jealousy, we quickly pass the blame on to our partner as the creator of this unwanted feeling. Unfortunately, they are often not to blame, since no person can create feelings and emotions inside us. Only I have the power to create and control what is inside of me.

Now I know, some of you are thinking “stop this Zen crap, it’s definitely not me, it’s really her”. Well, sure they are cases where couples work very hard to make you jealous, but I would bet money that they are very jealous people themselves and that they are both in hot water suffering from the same disease just with different symptoms. The disease is one you probably know as low self-esteem and insecurity.

When we have negative beliefs about ourselves, we lose balance and feel very powerless in the world. We will even try to regain this power by negotiating with our partners saying things like: “If you didn’t do it… then I wouldn’t react this way.” However, this has very little success in the real world, often you don’t even achieve your goal because this is not a balance within yourself and just a fake quick exchange of power.

So to eliminate jealousy we just have to look within ourselves and start the change there, by addressing our beliefs that create the emotions. Your relationship will change once you eliminate jealousy, and even anger and envy will subside.

Here is how to start the process:

• Build your inner power, so that you see that you have control over your emotions and do not become a bulldozer that is reactive.
• Look at the whole picture. What are you jealous of? What is the underlying emotion. Focus: is it perhaps fear, abandonment, unworthiness that you are experiencing? Delay your reaction by understanding where it comes from?
• What are your inner core beliefs about yourself and the world? Identify your triggers? Example: I am jealous of my girlfriend, because I am afraid that she will leave me and that she will leave me for someone better.
• Just because you feel and believe something doesn’t make it a fact. Learn to separate and question yourself.
• Be the creator of your inner world. You have the ability to create the images that you project into your mind and the emotions that you choose to experience.

Alex Karydi ~ The lesbian guru