Research on Jealousy

Today I decided it would be a good idea for me to start doing some research on jealousy, on why we as human beings feel it and why it hurts not only ourselves but relationships we have at the same time.
For quite a while, since maybe around 2015, I've had pretty bad problems with jealousy...It's not something I'm very proud of nor am I proud of my behavior because of it. I do know, that from my own jealousy, it sparked a lot of very negative thoughts I have about myself. Things like, feeling like I'm not good enough or always a disappointment, things like feeling scared that maybe the people I love and care about don't actually love me and are just telling me they do so they don't hurt me.
So I'm doing this as a way to try to understand jealousy a bit more and try to find a way to make it so I don't feel it as often or at all to be honest. I'd rather not get jealous. Just because I know how bad it got last time, it tore me apart. And I don't want to risk the same thing happening this time with a relationship I am extremely happy in.

So, my first instinct was to start off by watching a Ted talk about Jealousy. The one I chose was titled "An Ode to Envy" the speaker was Parul Sehgal. It was a very interesting and thought-provoking speech. Something I realized is, for me, it's definitely true that I seem to make up stories of other peoples lives in my mind that make me feel horrible. And those stories can originate from the smallest of things, and it could even originate about myself. And it definitely tells me that I need to grow from this and change how I think if I want to get away from this seemingly never ending maze of jealousy and negative feelings.

The next thing I decided to do, was ask a few people, about what their thoughts on jealousy are.

I'll be keeping these people anonymous, but the first question I had was "How do you feel about jealousy?"
To this the first person responded "I think it's a natural human feature, I sometimes even feel jealous about my best scoring higher marks than me. But then I usually deal with it, without leading to any negative effect on anyone else."
To that I responded with another question, "What usually helps you deal with it before it leads to that?" 
"I deal with jealousy by explaining myself I am better and can do much better in any situation" They responded.
"What is the main thing that you've noticed, that sparks this feeling?" 
"Someone being better than me in a field/thing that I can do better or is my forte"
"Does it ever happen for things like relationships/friendships?" 
To which they responded with "Yess, a lot of times."
I responded back with the question: "For that do you have a different method of controlling it?" 
"Yes, I just try to relax and believe the person as they have been loyal to me till now, but ngl in cases like these controlling my feelings is really difficult. If it's getting too much I would just tell the person what I am feeling about the situation. It sometimes ends up ugly."
"Okay...And this is my last question for you, do you find that when you get jealous your brain will come up with negative assumptions?" 
"Sometimes negative assumptions do come up but I am an optimist and somehow try to see the positive in the situation."

And for another person, I asked the question "What have you noticed is a negative side to jealousy?" 
To this they responded with "The negative side from jealousy, I myself become so possessive and get so angry when they're socializing with their other friends, it's almost like I act that I own them and they should only talk to me. But, thank god I've never did that to anybody. I keep saying to myself that they are not mine and they have the right to talk to everybody else!"
To this I responded: "What is it that usually helps you control your jealousy?" 
"My mind controls it, I don't know how to say it, but when I think about things I would do just because I'm jealous, my mind just said that it's not healthy and you should never do that to anyone. I don't really have anyone I really love? Even if I do I always say to myself all of them will leave me at the end, so why bother being possessive, toxic and jealous over nothing?"
To which I responded with the question of: "Do you find that when you get jealous other kinds of negative thoughts such as the assumption that person will leave, pop into your head?" 
To that they responded with: "No I never do, I used to get scared about people leaving me, but still I didn't do anything, I'm already on my way, accepting that people will eventually leave and we can't do anything about it. Of course it hurts but there's nothing I can do."
"This is my last question for you, what would you say is the main thing that sparks the feeling of jealousy for you?" 
"When they start to slowly disappear from my dm notifications, and when I see their tweets talking sweetly and doing cute things to their other mutual. And for real life : it's when they talk about someone else and choose to hang out with them rather to hang out with me."

And for the last person, I started the conversation with the question of: "In your own words, how would you explain the feeling?"  
To this they responded: "Hmm, feeling a sense of uneasiness (may be extreme) consisting of a situation with something/someone you care for."
I responded back with: "What is something that you noticed sparks jealousy for you?" 
"Envious of attention."
"What have you noticed are side effects from being jealous?" 
"Anger, sadness, accepting why it happened, not loving myself."
"Do you have a way to control the jealousy?" 
"Listening to music and accepting the thing that happened to make me jealous."
My last question for them was "Have you noticed anything that might make it more difficult to control the jealousy?" 
Their response was "How much I want something/someone."

I know that I definitely needed these conversations and to actually have done this research. I relate in a lot of ways to a couple of the things each of these people had said, my main goal with this is to better myself as a person and a partner for the person I love and so doing this research was definitely crucial for that.
I know that my jealously can/is a big problem and so I want to work towards fixing that. Not just for the sake of my relationship and the friendships I have but to also help myself as a person and to be a better partner for my own.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, I hope to continue on my journey with this and continue giving updates with how this is going.
I'm also working on researching and learning more about my fears and how to control those. And I think that jealousy pays a large amount of contribution to those fears. So I definitely think that jealousy is something I need to control better.

Thank you for reading!

I'd highly appreciate it if you could give me your thoughts on this blog post and if you could follow me on my other main social medias, my twitter @JoonsTokyo_ and my instagram @TheZlovee

Again thank you and I hope to have all of you with me for the next one!

~Zoe Love.