The Uncover YOU podcast
Guiding you to shift reactive patterns so you can experience the YOU underneath conditioning and finally feel secure and connected in relationships. Your host is Eva Beronius - Love Coach, transformational teacher and founder of Embodied Self Mastery.
The Uncover YOU podcast
Ep 187: Jealousy as Wisdom
What if you could transform jealousy from a shameful reaction into a powerful tool for relationship growth and self mastery?
This episode dives into a listener question about navigating jealousy after infidelity and feeling shame about emotional outbursts. Rather than viewing jealousy as problematic, we explore a revolutionary perspective: jealousy as a protective mechanism for your relationship's sacred agreements. Like a dashboard warning light, it signals when energy that belongs in your relationship container is leaking elsewhere.
When working with intense jealousy, it helps to separate it into two components. Your personal half involves tending to wounded parts carrying unprocessed emotions, often connecting to childhood experiences of feeling unchosen or unseen. The relationship half requires communicating your experience without blame, taking responsibility for your emotions while maintaining boundaries about what you need.
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Let's grow together into the relationship leaders we're capable of becoming.
Welcome back to the Relationship Revolution. I'm so excited about how excited you are reaching out, expressing to me how refreshing, how helpful this new perspective is, that we're shifting the narrative from, oh, all the reactions I'm having, my insecurities in relationship is what is like disqualifying me from love, and instead it's my dojo. And by practicing meeting all of that with love, I'm growing my capacity for love in ways that I could never had imagined. I thought this was problems, but it's actually my biggest like sparring partner, my trainer, to become the relationship that I've longed for for so long and become the life and the version of me that feels really true to myself. So in this episode I want to bring us into a question that I received recently in alchemy. So alchemy is my foundational program, where you get initiated into the four pillars of the embodied self-mastery work. It's how you learn to heal the underlying emotional wounds to your reactive patterns. So they don't have to put you in a survival state, but instead you're now able to have more freedom to navigate those situations that used to trigger you and pull you into an automated pattern. You have much more freedom to navigate them. You have more options instead. I wanted to take the time to expand on it. So I'll read the question first, and just know that I've translated it from Swedish to English.
Speaker 1:So here it is, listening to episode 132 about jealousy. Unfortunately, I suffer from that, although I don't know if I think it is way over to react with jealousy when you've actually experienced infidelity. How do you lead with love here and how do you apologize for your outbursts of anger and distrust? I experience that I become fawning and filled with shame. I have lived with uncertainty for too long in the name of love, although I now realize that I have lost myself in it. Such a beautiful question, such a heartfelt question, I think something that many of us can relate to. It's often that point of mistrust with ourselves when we're like is this a true reaction or am I overreacting? And even if I know like, yeah, there's truth to this, this jealousy is happening because the other person is actually putting attention on someone else, is actually forming a romantic sexual, whatever it is connection with someone else is actually forming a romantic sexual whatever it is connection with someone else. But now the way that I bring it up doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't get to the point I'm lowering my self-esteem, eroding my self-esteem rather than feeling better about how I'm able to bring it up.
Speaker 1:So I want to take this question apart a bit, because there are a few things that I'm both like reading in here and then actually wanting to respond to that question, like, how do I lead from love from here and I love that question I'm training my peeps inside of being me this month to really ask the questions that you want your mind to try and answer. If you're asking questions of, well, what's wrong with me, your mind is going to try to answer them. It will come up with things. But if you start asking higher quality questions like this one how do I lead with love here, in this situation, your mind will try to come up with similar answers and it's, I'll tell you, it's such a more interesting, fun, exciting question for me to answer as well, instead of like what's wrong with me, because then we're going to have to take apart, well, what part of you believes there's something wrong with you, and that's great too. That's often when we start out, but the more of the inner artist and the inner loving leader you become, you can become aware of this. So it's like another piece of that garden that we talked about in last week's episode, you can tend to your garden, to with or through what questions you're asking yourselves and others about your journey and about your process. So I just wanted to highlight that Love the question how do I lead with love from here? And so let's get to that one. And first of all, let's break some things down in this question. So I'm hearing like a statement, there's a sense of like unfortunately I suffer from jealousy and there's a sense of like I'm overreacting, even if I know something infidelity has been going on. Like there's a sense that I'm overreacting, even if I know something infidelity has been going on. Like there's a sense that I'm overreacting and I just want to reframe that it's not overreacting, it's never overreacting.
Speaker 1:You feel what you're feeling. It might be that you're the stories that you've connected with it. The stories you're telling about what you're feeling is not 100% true, and this is often the case, right? And sometimes they have 10% of truth in them, sometimes they have 80% of truth in them. So wherever on that scale, we need to get better at pulling apart, like the story, the meaning where we've given to the emotional experience, to like the emotions that parts of us are having. So you are not overreacting. You are reacting from a feeling you, a part of you, are carrying in insight. So someone in there is having a strong emotional experience from what is happening and then protector parts are probably activated Like, oh my god, this feels so terrible, someone being like putting their attention, forming a new connection with someone else when we had that sacred commitment and union. That hurts and that will very well hurt in itself. But you might also find that this is reminding you of experiences growing up, of unprocessed emotions, of unmet needs, and how you can tell that is when it feels like you're going to die, is when it feels like oh my God, I don't know what to do with this, when your nervous system activation goes really high up, really high up. So that is your opportunity, of course, to go in and meet with that experience.
Speaker 1:So what I find helpful in these situations is to kind of pull them apart. It's your half and then it's the relationship half. You can't really do anything about the other person's half. That's also there. But the pieces that you can work on and address, communicate around is your half and the relationship half. So now we're coming into the point of like how do I lead from love in this situation? Well, one, your half.
Speaker 1:It's tending to the part inside of you that is feeling something and it might take a little while to go through the layers there because you might only feel a protective layer. You might feel someone who's like blaming or pointing finger. This is terrible. How could you do this to me? But can you see that that's the protector part, that's like someone inside are feeling so bad and we don't know what to do with that. We don't know how to process that. So we need you out there, the other person, to do something different. You can't keep doing this because it feels like we're going to die, and that is also what I talk a lot about inside in the episode that this question was referring to. So if you want to hear more about like your half and how to heal it and what might be going on in those layers of a jealous reaction, go back to episode 132 and listen to that for that. But I'm so glad that we get to revisit this topic of jealousy because there are some other pieces that I don't really mention inside of this, that episode, which is this like more relationship half, and I really want us to change the narrative and unshame jealousy because it has a beautiful piece to it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll get there.
Speaker 1:So your half is tending to the part that is feeling something. Does it feel betrayed? Does it feel not loved? What happens when another person puts their attention, forms a romantic sexual connection with someone else, like what is happening to a young part of you. Is that reminding them of an experience they had growing up? Is this a part of an unmet need of like? I want to feel chosen, I want to feel met, I want to feel claimed. You know, and now that is not happening again and is bringing up all this pain from a past experience, and probably from many past experiences. You know a tree that has been growing in your garden that is kind of like infected and when you touch it like ah, that whole root system, you'll feel it like that tree is branching out and it has different experience with it, like not just one singular one, but like that root system when you follow it down, like where, where is the seed, where did it start? So that is leading from love in your half tending to a wound, bringing love to it, being there with that part of you, maybe for the first time, or maybe you've visited before, but now you're getting that third or fifth chance to like, oh, bring that love even deeper, to sit with that part and let it process the emotions without believing the stories. Oh my God, this keeps happening. I'm never going to be loved. It means I'm broken, I'm too much Like. It's never about the stories, the meaning we've attached to that experience. It's the emotional experience that needs to be processed through. So now the second piece of this how to lead from love in the relationship.
Speaker 1:Half Like how do I also apologize for outbursts that I'm making, or blaming, or where my anger, where those like more surface protector layers are coming through without making myself wrong for what I'm actually feeling or intuitively sensing? You see the difference there. Instead of making myself wrong for being jealous overall or feeling something is off, or like not wanting this in relationship like how can I apologize for the piece? That is okay, I'm responding from a protector part I'm now blaming you, I'm coming at you with a lot of anger, and it might I'm not saying that's always wrong, it might be appropriate to just like I'm so angry right now. But the piece is like how do we do this is to express where we take full responsibility for what we're feeling.
Speaker 1:This is a piece that we will be practicing a lot inside of the Embodied Relationship Academy, the new program that being Me and being Me With you is becoming, and you'll have a dojo in there to practice with others, because growing up we've often learned the opposite. Someone else is responsible for how we're feeling, because that's how our parents treated us. Like don't be sad, you're making me angry, or don't do that, you're making me so frustrated. So we've been taught that we are responsible for other people's emotions and therefore the other way around too. It's circumstances, it's the weather, it's the traffic and it's how other people are treating us that makes us feel a certain way, and yes, of course, that can trigger and activate something, but ultimately it's your experience. So I'm not saying this to blame you. I'm saying this so you can take your power back. You create the internal experiences. They are yours. So this is an important piece to be able to say.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling so much anger right now coming up around this and as I'm sitting with it, I can sense how it's trying to protect a part that feels so heartbroken and so alone inside. So I have some episodes around this also, like how to get to the bottom layer of your relationship reactions, so you can also go back there and listen to that one to like, how can you follow the thread down and really see and layer this reaction, see what's really there for you to become present and breathe through it? But this is the first step to speak and express to someone else, not about like how could you do this, but like, oh, I'm feeling so much sadness inside of me right now. Speak about your experience, speak about what's happening for you inside of you, the sensations that are there, the emotions that are there, and not so much about what the other person did or didn't do. So how can I apologize? Well, this way, right, because if you start separating these two things, you can separate your apology. You can say you know what? I realized that I came really aggressively onto you in this situation and I'm sorry about that, and I realized that's not going to help anything. You're probably already feeling really bad about this. You're feeling shame, you regret it.
Speaker 1:Like I understand, and I have some layers that I need to process, like this is what's going on and we're really touching on something here we're really moving through something that are really touching on something. Here we're really moving through something that is deal breaker for me in relationship and it's touching on something wounded, something that is painful inside of me. So I want us to move slow through this. I need some time, regulate, being with myself, really processing, like being with what's here. But this happening in relationship is not what I want. If that's what you want, it's completely fine that you want something else than me. It's just that the relationship don't have a clear agreement then have a clear agreement then. So I'm sorry for yelling at you. I understand that that's not helpful. I'm sorry that I'm putting all my painful experience like on you, because it doesn't have only to do with you. It has to do with something that I experienced growing up too, for example.
Speaker 1:Like I'm not with these examples, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. I just try to point to something of like pulling the layers apart here and we can take responsibility for what our protector part does and what our survival state does in this and say, hey, I'm sorry about that, and still communicate our wants and our desires, our deal breakers, our boundaries and we can talk about like us being in a process with this. I need to move through the layers. I don't know yet what I want to do about this, but I do know that I want to have more conversations. I do know that it's going to be very important for me to hear an apology and understand more about, like, why this happened. So that's how I would look at like how to lead from love in here. It's to acknowledge everything that's going on inside of you and also acknowledge, like their relationship. The relationship is like this third entity that you're looking after. It's not even so much that you're looking after the other person, you're caring for the relationship Both of you are, and if someone did something that is hurting their relationship, then that's kind of what to focus on instead of you hurt me.
Speaker 1:The third piece that I want to bring up in here that I mentioned a while back here in this episode, that I didn't talk so much about in episode 132 about jealousy, is that at the core of jealousy, it's something beautiful. It's not to be problematized or diagnosed like oh my God, jealousy, that's a terrible thing, it shouldn't be here. I think that is a problem, because we're making jealousy shameful and that makes it just come out these sideways ways. Now it becomes this pressure cooker. I'm feeling jealous, but that's not attractive, that's not welcome, that's not a good thing. Therefore, I'm hiding it until it comes exploding out in some other way. What if? And just play with this, not saying it's the right answer, but just play with this idea and see if it resonates with you.
Speaker 1:There needs to be protection of this sacred union in a relationship. If you've decided to have a commitment of, like, an exclusive intimacy and sexual connection or whatever you draw the line for that relationship Like this is what we're only doing inside of this relationship, these things we're not doing with other people Then there needs to be a protector of that sacred commitment and union. If we were to like oh yeah, you know, whatever, oh, you're off there and forming that connection with someone else, well, that's great for you. Like, then we're not following through on that intention and that commitment. So I love this idea when I've heard it that and I feel it to be very true for me that I feel it to be very true for me that jealousy is a protector of that commitment and of a sacred union. But because we haven't learned to process, to be with, to experience that jealousy and we haven't practiced expressing it from a place of love and we're instead like, who are you texting away then? What's going on over there?
Speaker 1:So the piece here, like the relationship piece of how to work with jealousy, is one you need to have a shared understanding of this, where you need to look at jealousy with similar eyes and it doesn't need to be exactly the same. But can we agree that jealousy might not be so bad. It might be like a little feeling, a little whisper in the pit of my gut or something like in the pit of my belly. Something is a little off here, like energy that we've said is going into the relationship container, is leaking out somewhere else. It doesn't make you bad, it doesn't make you wrong. But like that flag, that little signal, it's like lights on the car, you know the instrument panel, like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Something is a little going on here and if before that has, if that is connected with a painful experience inside of us, that's going to be a 10, right and we are going to go into survival response and we don't know how to be with that signal inside.
Speaker 1:But the more we grow our capacity to be with that signal and like, huh, I'm going to listen to this and like what is off here and it might be that it's 15% off and just a beautiful opportunity for a conversation where we get to like, hmm, I feel like something that is going in our relationship container is now happening over there and I want us to care differently for our relationship, for the entity of our relationship. So now jealousy is something that you can use as a signal, just like hunger or sleepiness, tiredness, like ah, it's there to put us I don't even want to say put us back on track, but it's like to have us grow into more of alignment, of the relationship that we do want to create. So I think this is important, Like, don't make jealousy wrong. It is signaling that there's something here that you don't want to have in relationship and that you want something else. And the more you grow your capacity to communicate this from a place of love and this is often where we're communicate this from a place of love and this is often where we're lacking, where we're like, not so skillful yet. And that all makes sense because we didn't have it modeled to us. We had the reactions model, we had the blaming model. We had the withdrawal and dissociating model to us.
Speaker 1:So we don't know how to like stand in that little uncomfortable fire and like, hey, you know what I want right now. I want us to work through this in this way. I want us to grow and become our connection becoming even more loving after working through this. So, like, how do we do that? That is the leadership from love that I'm talking about and that is like the leader of love with yourself because, can you see, it's your, it's about leading yourself through your half and then also leading in the relationship to growing that connection, to let the relationship become more of what you want. That is the kind of leader in love that I want to train you to become inside the Embodied Relationship Academy.
Speaker 1:And it all starts in the relationship revolution in the beginning of July, july 10 to 15. So come join me there and then, if all of that resonates, join me in the Embodied Relationship Academy where we'll have a big dojo together. I hope this has been helpful in breaking down jealousy in this way. And go listen to those episodes 132 on jealousy, the one that's named, getting to the bottom layer of your relationship reactions and ponder this a bit, like what's my capacity to be with jealousy right now and alchemizing it, turning it into something fruitful rather than something that is like ruining, tearing apart, causing pain. Go play, go explore, and I'll talk to you soon.