In this episode:
I share some insights about feeling jealous and how to shift the experience of jealousy into something either practical or into an opportunity to practice acceptance.
Resources:
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
Hey everyone, before I start on today’s topic, yesterday I was interviewing for someone else’s podcast talking about education and drinking. This crazy story came up and I thought that I would share it because again, it’s so wild the things that we do while drinking and the red flags that we see and how easily we can still just ignore these damn things. We were talking about how heavily embedded…
drinking is in teaching culture, right? And recently there was a new story about an educator in Oklahoma who was found drunk on the job. And I was telling the podcast hosts, I was like, yeah, we drink a lot in schools, like in the teaching environment, not like actively in a school. But so to give you an example,
There was a school that I taught at in Brooklyn, not gonna say its name, or the principal’s name, but I remember that one of our goodie bags, like as a welcome to school bag, included the airplane size bottles of like liquor. Like everybody got like a random liquor bottle, and that was given to us at school as a joke to like keep it in our desk in case of emergency, right? Like that’s pretty wild. And that’s not actually the red flag story though. My other red flag story.
has to do with a different school administrator who was an assistant principal who had hosted a holiday party in Brooklyn also a different school and you know all my fellow colleagues were at this party and Of all the people to like introduce the weed and the marijuana, right? There were drinks there, but it was the school administrators like they pulled out, you know blunts and things like that and I remember smoking and drinking
And back in those days, the way that I would drink typically around people was I always tried to watch what other people were drinking and match what they drank so that I never went overboard and I never would stand out as drinking too much. But because this was a party and the drinks were kind of like all in the kitchen and it was really hard to gauge how much people had been drinking because everyone was just kind of like standing around holding a cup in their hand, right? I started to just kind of drink based off of
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how I wanted a drink, which always was way too much. And then I added like marijuana, smoking on top of that. And basically what ended up happening was when it started snowing, and when it was time for me to leave their house, you know, it was a brownstone in Brooklyn. I like walked out down the stoop and it started snowing pretty heavily. And I walked maybe like a block and I was like, I can’t function, I can’t go home. So I literally went back to that assistant principal’s house.
knocked on the door and said, I’m so sorry. I’m way too out of it to go home. Can I stay here? So I stayed the night. And then the awkward part was in the morning, their kids, I guess, had gone to sleepover. So their kids come back. And when I wake up, I’m like sitting there to breakfast with the, you know, assistant principals, kids, like having cereal and just like, Hey kids, nice, nice to meet you. Um, and the funny thing is I remember being mortified, but I remember, you know,
First of all, like my AP, my assistant principal brushed it off and she was like, no, it’s okay. It happens to all of us, right? But there were so many times throughout my career where there were times that I had like a big embarrassing moment like that. Like again, I was pretty good at keeping it together and matching other people’s like drinking energy, but when things got out of hand for whatever reason and things like that happened, people were always so quick to be like, oh, you’re fine. These accidents happen all the time. It’s not a big deal.
And nobody stopped to think that these episodes were problematic because I did such a good job at work, right? Because I was such a high performer, nobody would stop to question like, oh, maybe Jessica has a problem, right? That wasn’t ever a topic of conversation that at least was brought to my face. So anyway, it has nothing to do with today’s podcast topic, but those stories were fresh in my head and I just wanted to share them. So with that being said,
What I did want to talk about today was jealousy. I started reading a book recently called The Mountain is You, Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery by Brianna East. And as I’ve gone through it, this one section really jumped out at me about jealousy. And so I wanna go ahead and read it to you and then talk about it a little bit. This is from page 76 in case you happen to have the book. Jealousy is a coverup emotion. It presents as anger or judgment.
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when in reality it is sadness and self-dissatisfaction. If you want to know what you truly want out of life, look at the people you’re jealous of. No, you may not want exactly what they have, but the feeling that you are experiencing is anger that they are allowing themselves to pursue it while you are not. When we use our jealousy to judge other people’s accomplishments,
we are siding into its shadow function. When we use our jealousy to show us what we would like to accomplish, we begin to recognize the self-sabotaging behavior and get ready to commit to what we actually desire. You can think of it this way. When we see someone who has something we really want, but we are suppressing our willingness to pursue it, we must also condemn it in them so we can justify our own course of action.
Instead of this, we can see what we’d also like to create. So pretty short read, but it’s really powerful. And I think the first thing is, it’s almost like the first step to any problem, right, is admitting it. And I think the first step with jealousy is actually being willing to admit, like, yes, I am jealous of this person.
And even for me to say that sentence, it makes me feel physically uncomfortable and I feel almost like a slightly nauseating feeling in my stomach saying that, even though I’m not even talking about a specific example as I say that, because I think about how I was socialized since I was a little girl to believe that jealousy was like a sinful emotion to have and that if I felt jealousy, it was, you know, up there with, you know, several other terrible sins and, you know, like.
would make me morally lacking as an individual if I experienced jealousy. And so to admit to such an emotion to me is still a really uncomfortable act because I still have to work through that socialization of the fact that jealousy, jealousy is just another emotion, right? It’s just another emotion on the spectrum of the human experience. But for so many of us, we’ve been taught that it’s like this evil feeling.
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because of that, right? It’s so easy to try to deny the feeling, to cover up the feeling, to hide the feeling, to be ashamed of the feeling, right? If we feel shame around a feeling, it’s because we’re worried that experiencing that feeling makes us less worthy of human connection, makes us less worthy to be considered by others, right? And so the first step in this process, for me, when I think about jealousy, is letting go
of the moral judgment of the feeling. It’s a feeling like any other feeling that we experience. Now, like the text says, right, that the shadow function of jealousy falls into judging other people, right, and condemning other people. But the other side of jealousy, I guess the opposite of shadow is, I don’t know, being in the light, but the other side of it is…
using that to commit to what we actually do desire, right? So what I would say with that being said is take the jealousy that you’re experiencing and get curious about it, right? It’s giving you information. Everything that we go through gives us information. So ask yourself, what am I feeling jealous of? What is it in this situation that I would like to have?
Right? And then when you are able to identify what it is that you would like to have from that situation or person that you’re feeling jealous of, ask yourself the next question, why have I not gotten there? What’s blocking me from getting there? Is it a circumstance? Is it you? Right? Like, is this something within your control that you actually can take action and move towards? Or is this a situation that
unfortunately is out of your control. And so maybe you need to do some work around acceptance. I think those are really, really important questions to ask yourself the next time that you feel jealous. Instead of self judgment, right? Instead of being critical towards yourself because since you were a kid, you were socialized that it’s an evil feeling to have, release that, get curious. What is it that I want? Why don’t I have it right now?
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Is it within my control to work towards that? Or is this something that I have to accept that I don’t have, cannot have for whatever reason? So like, I’ll give you a personal example that I take to heart in terms of that. Lately, I have experienced jealousy when I see images, media, particularly social media of pregnant women, women who are
pregnant women who have just recently had babies, right? And I swear, I feel so uncomfortable to say this, but this is how we go through the healing, right? Shame dies when we speak our stories. And so anyway, I have been experiencing that, right? And for context, if you don’t know, I don’t have children. And so one of the things that I have been telling myself, right, like, well, why am I not in that situation? And it’s because for years, I have not…
tried to be in that situation, right? I have very throughout my act of drinking, I have been very dedicated to avoiding having a child because for all those years that I drank problematically, I didn’t think that I was fit to be a mother. And I probably did myself a favor by having that mindset at that time. However, at this point, right now I need to look at what is in my control and what is in my control is…
at least trying, right? I can try to get pregnant. I’m in a healthy relationship with a partner who is already a wonderful parent to his son, right? And so that is something that I can try to work towards. That’s like an end goal, right? However, the other part of it is I’m a little bit older. I’m 38 years old, even though my mom had me at 45 with no problems, so whatever. I technically probably have a ton of fertile years left. But you know what I’m saying? The point is,
is that there’s always the possibility that this may not happen for me, right? And so at the same time, I have to work with my thoughts and practice the framework of also acceptance that right now I do not have a child, that right now, today as I record this, I am not pregnant. And so I have to also practice acceptance of that present reality too, right? So I just kind of wanted to share that to give you an example of how
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I can take something that makes me feel jealous, get curious about it, ask questions, identify what is in my control, what is not in my control, and also see where I can practice acceptance to help me make sense of the feeling. Because again, when you feel that jealous wave initially to start, all that is, is that’s giving you information. And I always tell people and I always tell my one-on-one clients, right? Like we, our…
We are our own science, like living breathing science experiment. We produce data for ourselves all the time. It’s up to us to do our own personal data analysis and then decide what we’re gonna do with that information next. So I hope that you found that helpful. Again, I do recommend that read. I always have books that I recommend and I do definitely recommend The Mountain is You. I think that it provides a lot of really valuable insights. And with that, I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up. I hope to hear from you soon. Again, in…
Two weeks I’m hosting my free writing workshop. And then in three weeks, I am starting my last round of my Writing for Healing program for 2023. So I highly recommend that you sign up for those if you are interested in storytelling. Storytelling is so powerful. So with that being said, have an awesome week and I will talk to you all soon.
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