Jealous thinking is what your mind usually does after feeling jealous: Of course, this acting out of our jealousy is usually subtle and mostly invisible to other people. We almost always end up acting jealous immediately after feeling jealous. What’s less obvious, is what happens after that initial feeling of jealousy… You notice how fit and muscular the person on the treadmill next to you at the gym is and feel jealous.You listen as your best friend describes the big promotion they got (and corresponding pay increase) and feel a spike of jealousy.You catch your boyfriend chatting with a member of the opposite sex and feel a little surge of jealousy.Feeling jealous vs acting jealousįor most of us, it’s pretty obvious when we’re feeling jealous: ![]() ![]() We’ll talk a lot more about this in the next section, but one of the biggest problems with most definitions of jealousy and the way most of us think about jealousy is that it’s framed purely as an emotion.īut I think there’s often a lot more to jealousy than just the feeling… Specifically, jealousy usually involves both patterns of thinking and behavior that are important.īecause that last point is so important for how to actually manage your jealousy, let’s take a closer look into this distinction between feeling jealous vs acting jealous. In reality, I think jealousy is a much more inward-focused emotion-as if another person’s success or value is a reminder of an inadequacy or fear within us. This standard definition of jealousy makes it seem like it’s all about what the other person possesses. Part of the problem with resentment as a proxy for jealousy is that typically resentment happens as a result of being wronged in some way-and as such is closer to the anger family of emotion.Īnd while there’s definitely some of this anger element in jealousy, it’s my experience that when you really reflect on it, jealousy is more closely related to sadness and fear-that is, it tends to be a response to a perceived or threatened loss or inadequacy (more on this later). Resentment is close, but I think feeling jealous is really its own distinct emotion. Now, this is an okay definition, but I think it misses some psychological nuance… 1. ![]() The standard dictionary definition of jealousy is something like this:įeeling resentment because of another’s success or advantages. We’ll end with some practical suggestions for how to manage jealousy in your own life in a healthy way. In the rest of this guide, I’m going to walk you through the psychology of jealousy-showing you a more helpful way to think about what jealousy is and how it really works. Unfortunately, this sense of disgust or shame we feel about feeling jealous is exactly the thing that makes jealousy such a difficult emotion to manage effectively. Jealousy is one of those “icky” emotions where it feels gross or wrong simply to feel it in the first place.
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