By Paula Bianchi –

Our feelings and emotions are very powerful. They’re our biggest challenge to overcome when we sign up for a life on Earth. There are times when we simply can’t control them, or so we think.

If we let emotions like anger, anxiety, fear, jealousy, or worry dominate our inner dialog, we will suffer from the negative energy they bring. For this article, I’m going to be focusing on jealousy, but all of these emotions can gang up on us at once making it hard for me to write about just one. 

Jealousy can raise its ugly head in an instant. Quite literally, we’ll be fine one moment, then suddenly something we hear, see, or fear, triggers the feeling of jealousy. Every one of us deals with this feeling in our own way depending on our temperament and how we perceive the world.

Most of the time when we feel jealous, it comes from the fear that we’re going to lose our significant other to someone else. We can create a lot of drama over this especially if our jealous fear is wrong. These thoughts without merit, if not corrected, can and will destroy the relationship.

Sometimes our hunch is right though, and the jealousy we felt was, right on the mark, leading us to the truth. How we deal with this scenario, shows our character. Being jealous can send some people over the deep end causing them to do terrible horrendous things through jealousy, anger, rage, and revenge, while others can fall into a despair of anxiety, worry, and fear as they try to navigate themselves through the heartbreak and betrayal.

We can become full of jealousy and envy over what others have that we don’t. Feeling jealous from wanting what our best friend has, has hit all of us at one time or another. Some may act on these feelings by sabotaging their friend making them lose what they have. There’s definitely a lot of drama that can happen from these emotions. If we choose to focus our attention on what others have that we don’t, we’re setting ourselves up for a hard life that will never fulfill us because we only choose to notice and fixate on what we don’t have. 

When we’re young, we had to deal with the feeling of jealousy toward a sibling, or they were jealous of us. Parents can intentionally or unintentionally feed this jealousy. It can take over the dynamics of a family. Who we chose as our parents and siblings, can bring the most important lessons in life because, like it or not, we’re stuck under the same roof with them until we move out on our own.

Some families experience a harmonious life with little to no drama, while on the opposite side of the spectrum, some other families can’t stand to be together and go out of their way to cause drama and heartache. This also includes extended family members like aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Any of these relatives can bring their jealous tendencies to the forefront in a family.

A single mother/father has to be aware that when they bring their new boyfriend or girlfriend home, their kids may be jealous of him/her for taking mom/dad’s time away from them, or the boyfriend/girlfriend can be jealous of the time the kids take away from them. Here’s another family dynamic that can cause a lot of drama.

When we allow jealousy to over take us, we can suffer mentally and physically from the negativity of this emotion. Once this emotion kicks in, our other negative emotions stand at the ready to help us deal with the feelings that it stirs up inside of us, and that’s when our personalities take over as we choose which emotion we’ll use to deal with our jealousy.

The first thing we need to learn when dealing with this emotion is to not act out rashly or jump to any conclusions without compiling all of the facts. It’s always better to have a plan of action before we confront someone. If we do, we can eliminate having to deal with jealousy, so we won’t fall into the emotions of, fear, worry, anxiety, or anger that can over shadow us.

If we sit and covet what others have, then go out of our way to steal it from them, we’re doing a disservice to ourselves. Part of what we’re supposed to learn is to get what we want but never at the expense of someone else. It’s in our best interest to walk away from causing this kind of drama to others.

By the same token, when we realize someone is jealous of us because of what we have, it’s in our best interest to be direct and get to the bottom of it. If people tell you you’re just tripping, but your gut tells you you’re right, trust your gut because it’s usually right, as long as you’re not being ruled by fear, anger, anxiety, or worry.  

We can’t control how others think, feel, or act, but we can control those things in us. The true test to any obstacle we encounter is how we’re going to react to any given situation. Choosing the positive solutions, will elevate your energy and check off one more lesson on our list. Reacting with negative solutions, can send us backward, so we lose ground on the lessons we’re supposed to learn, which possibly adds more lessons than we had before because of our mistreatment of others.

It’s not impossible to control our emotions. One of the things therapy teaches us, is to take a moment to step back and look at the situation you’re being presented with. Just because you feel jealous, doesn’t mean you have to act upon it. Remember, you reap what you sow. Any action or emotion we choose is mirrored back to us through others.

In my next Mind Games article, I want to talk about revenge. Hope you’ll come back and check it out. Thanks for your visit and your time. Bye for now.

Email: Remyel@hotmail.com