Enslaving the green-eyed monster!

By Fathmath Ibrahim* Jealousy is a natural human emotion. Jealousy can be any object that takes your partner's interest, time or money away from you. It could be a sport, it could be a friend or friends in general, it could be an animal, it could be a job or it could be their family or children. When you remarry and inherit someone else's children, and even if you think you're ready, you suddenly experience feelings you can't begin to understand. When your boyfriend/girlfriend starts giving someone else their attention, you feel like murdering them. We all have feelings of jealousy from time to time. It becomes a problem once we go overboard with our emotions, especially negative feelings like anger, jealousy and depression. Those feelings of jealousy are powerful. They will quickly overtake anything positive and do all kinds of harm. For an attack against the green-eyed monster, try these steps: 1. First, don't be so hard on yourself for feeling the way you do. You can't overcome feelings of jealousy if you continue to deny them because it's not what you want to feel. The feelings are natural, and you can deal with them once you acknowledge them. 2. Accept the facts. Jealousy is an irrational emotion. It rules out of fear and insecurity and goes straight to your heart. To combat the feelings of jealousy means to simply fight them with logic. Try to explore the core reasons for your feelings. Is it the fear that you are going to be replaced or is it that the other person is going to share a part of him or herself with another and you need it all? Once you can identify your needs you can communicate this to your partner. 3. Replace jealousy with something else. There is only so much room in your heart for conflicting emotions — sooner or later, one or the other will win out. You can be filled with jealousy and insecurity or acceptance and security. It's your choice. 4. When you stop focusing your mind on your boyfriends' ex-girlfriend's life and start focusing on how to best run your own, your heart will follow. When you stop worrying about the time your partner spends 'apart' from you and start focusing on making the best of the time that he's 'with' you, you'll be filled with hope and potential, not jealousy and regret. In a healthy relationship, your partner listens to your feelings and shares his or her own feelings about why those events are happening. The two of you can talk them out and if one of you sees how this is affecting the other and is willing to change and can change that behavior, you've both got what you wanted. A happy relationship is where both gives and takes. Jealousy keeps you down and always focuses on what you don't have. Look instead to the future that you can build and focus your energies on what you do have. Being in a relationship allows you to grow and face the challenges of letting someone else use your 'personal space'. You can't do that if you're looking back. Enslave the green-eyed monster within you and look ahead to grow. It's the better choice. [*Iko is a psychologist working with the Narcotics Control Board (NCB). If you have any questions or concerns about drug abuse and related social or interpersonal issues, please contact her at: fi4@waikato.ac.nz]