Jealousy can be hugely disruptive in relationships, and I have seen many clients with jealousy issues. When clients first contact me for help with jealousy, it’s often when a relationship is in real trouble. Many find themselves in a destructive cycle of thinking that creates ongoing, unhelpful jealous feelings. Many who experience jealousy intellectually know that there is no real basis for it, yet can’t help “feeling jealous”. There can, of course, be genuine reasons for jealousy, but when someone experiences jealousy for no apparent reason, it suggests their imagination might be spiralling out of control.
A jealous person can find themselves in a constant “loop” of imagining their partner with somebody else. This “loop” can then consume the jealous person’s thoughts to the point that they find it hard to think of anything else. Sometimes a client may make additional unhelpful suggestions to themselves, as well as or instead of “picturing problems”, setting up this sequence of negative thoughts. The Hypnosis and Provocative Change Works toolkits are excellent for addressing this condition and breaking the looping behavioural process.
Jealous thoughts can manifest in a variety of ways, from anxiety and panic to anger when a partner simply looks at another person. Maintaining these patterns of unhelpful behaviour can also be exhausting for the jealous person, to the extent that they not only become emotionally stressed, but in some instances physically unwell. Jealousy can cause a person to become withdrawn and moody, leading to anger or even fury. Afterwards, it’s normal for a person to feel remorse and frustration with themselves, with an inability to control thoughts and feelings, producing anxious and depressed states of mind.
I have had excellent results changing these jealous patterns with clients, and this usually takes one to two sessions. The key is not in endless analysis of “why” a person may have these behavioural patterns, but rather in “how” to break out of the unhelpful loop to create newfound freedom.
Symptoms of jealousy
Below are some typical symptoms reported by clients I have worked with:
•Imagining that a partner is having inappropriate relationships with others
•An inability to stop thinking unhelpful, destructive thoughts
•Difficulty in relaxing
•Experiencing anxiety and insecurity daily
•Difficulty in maintaining long-term relationships
Successfully resolving jealousy – thinking and feeling different
My experience of working with clients over many years has given me some really useful insights into resolving unhelpful jealousy. Any feeling can only be created by firstly thinking in a very specific way. The feeling of jealousy requires a person to think about what “they imagine is happening or going to happen”. Let’s remember that it’s impossible to get a feeling without first having some kind of thought process. This is true for any feeling. If I ask you to feel jealous but insist that you don’t look at anything externally, picture anything internally, listen to anything externally, or think anything to yourself internally, it’s virtually impossible to get a feeling of jealousy. There are senses of taste and smell, but in my experience these rarely trigger jealousy. Most clients I see for unhelpful jealousy have got into the habit of thinking in a way that makes them self-conscious enough to experience jealousy.
When I work with clients, we focus on changing this unhelpful thinking process to change the jealous response. This typically doesn’t take much time, but it does require precision to identify the nature of the problematic thinking. My many years of working with jealous clients have been very helpful in quickly identifying the sequence that creates unhelpful jealousy and in giving each client a series of helpful exercises that offer the opportunity to think and feel differently in situations where jealousy typically would have occurred.
Testimonials from clients who had unhelpful jealousy issues
“Thank you for Friday, I did feel a lot better when I came out!”
Vicky S (Treated for jealousy)
“I’m 100 per cent different! The jealous feelings I had are no longer there.”
Wes (Treated for longstanding jealousy issues)