How to Deal With Jealousy: What It’s Really Trying to Tell You

Ally Iseman: Jealousy comes up in all types of different relationships, all different types of relationship structures from monogamous to non-monogamous, but also insecure and secure relationships also show jealousy the difference is what they do with it.

Dr. Lisa: On today’s show, we are talking about how to deal with jealousy. Are there your jealousy? Maybe your partners feel in jealous? And we need to address this because this is a common dark emotion in any relationship.

Ally Iseman: We’re getting into, you know, scrolling, doing scrolling till 3 a.m. on their ex’s page. But, you know, that’s not helping us. So we have to find some sort of pattern interrupt and start creating more healthy behavioral patterns that aren’t so obsessive or compulsive in that

Dr. Lisa: way. And if we don’t know what to do with this, it can take a toxic turn. So by the end of today’s episode, you’re gonna get new insight into what these feelings actually mean and also what to do with them.

Ally Iseman: We have to cultivate a sense of discernment. We have to learn how to trust ourselves first.

Dr. Lisa: If this is your first time tuning in, I’m so glad you’re here. I am Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I am a marriage and family therapist. I am also a licensed psychologist and a very proud board certified coach here every single week to talk about a variety of things, all in support of your growth, your love, your happiness, and your success. And today, we’re tackling jealousy. My guest could not be more perfect. I’m speaking with Ally Iseman. She is a relationship coach, founder of Passport to Pleasure, and she works with couples all over the world around these

Dr. Lisa: types of issues. And her main message is our relationships need to be built on values. I think we can all get behind that. And Ally, I know you have a ton of experience in working with people who are experiencing jealousy and don’t even know where to go with it. So thanks for being here to unpack all this with us.

Ally Iseman: Oh, it’s absolutely my pleasure. It’s my favorite conversation to have, and I’m so thrilled more people are willing to have.

Dr. Lisa: Well, it’s an important one because it’s so common, isn’t it? Where do you think we should start?

Ally Iseman: I think a great place to start is, first of all, understanding what jealousy even is. And the best way to start with that is to understand what it is not. So what we’ll hear a lot of times is people use jealousy in place of envy. And it’s actually, there’s a really, really important distinction that helps us really understand what jealousy has available for us. So envy is really about pure desire, just wanting something that you don’t yet have or wanting to be the person who has the thing that you don’t yet have. Jealousy, on the other hand, is really about the fear of losing something that you already have. So you’ll hear me bring up a number of metaphors. We’ll start here. So the easiest way that I can think of to explain this is imagine your neighbor has purchased your dream car. It’s the car that’s been in your vision board that you’ve been ogling, that you’ve always wanted, and now your neighbor has purchased it, and it’s sitting there in the driveway next to you, and you can see it every day.

Dr. Lisa: Taunting you.

Ally Iseman: Exactly, on your way to work. You envy your neighbor, you want that car. You don’t have that car, you want it, they have it. Now imagine that your neighbor is taking your partner for a spin around the block in that car, and you’re afraid maybe something a little bit more than a ride is going on, or maybe they’re not gonna come back. They’re gonna keep driving. They have jealousy.

Dr. Lisa: Okay, got it.

Ally Iseman: That jealousy.

Dr. Lisa: All right.

Ally Iseman: Well, that’s the big distinction.

Dr. Lisa: Well, you know, I love that, and I don’t know that I’ve heard it put that way before, and as I think about it, you’re absolutely right that jealousy is really that fear of loss. Yeah, exactly.

Ally Iseman: It’s fear.

Ally Iseman: Yeah, it’s very, very much based in fear, and it’s also important to understand that’s not intrinsically insecurity. So like I mentioned, you know, I’m about neck deep or nose deep at this point in the research for my book, “For the Love of Jealousy,” I’m going through, I think I’m at 112 studies now, so there’s a lot of research back from the 30s all the way through now, about 100 years of research we have on this. And what I can really see here is that the difference in the messages that we’re told about jealousy versus what we actually understand from not only the psychological lens, but from the physiological, the sociological, these are all components in how we understand jealousy.

Dr. Lisa: Well, let’s crack into this a little bit as well. I love some context, and I think that from my own research, and so mine is going into

Dr. Lisa: heartbreak recovery, relationship loss, and the dark emotions that go with that, jealousy can be a big piece of that.

Dr. Lisa: And one of the things that I came across through the work of Dr. Helen Fisher, and I don’t know if you cracked into any of her research for your book, is this idea that our feelings of jealousy or fear when our relationship and attachment is threatened is actually like hardwired. It is part of our survival drive, and it is this reflex that will always happen whether or not it’s a good relationship, whether or not we even want to be in their relationship. There’s this like, this mate guarding response that is not anything that we have control over.

Ally Iseman: Yeah, yeah, so what you’re talking about is more on the evolutionary psychology side of things, which I’m pulling from a number of different

Ally Iseman: backgrounds when I’m looking at this, and what I’m seeing is, let’s say that is the case. The beauty is that we’re at a point in our evolution where these things kind of, jealousy is a physiological experience too. It’s not just the psychological story that we’re being told, it’s also the story in relation to the social world we’re in. What has our culture told us about this thing that we’re feeling? So we’re at a stage in our evolution where there’s a lot more impact and a lot more variables than just nature, just the physiological reaction. We have the ability to have thoughts about our own thoughts, to make decisions, just because something is coming up, we can choose to be responding to it rather than just in reaction. So it’s not just simple enough to say, well, this is gonna happen no matter what, and therefore we should avoid it at all costs. That part is what I really wanna drive home and look at. So let’s say it does, now what? Now what? Avoiding it isn’t serving us, quite the opposite. So that is really the foundational part of my whole jealousy growth method, which is a process I created that I use with my clients, like I said, based in the physiology, the psychology and sociology of what jealousy is to help people really turn it into a tool so it doesn’t turn them into one.

Dr. Lisa: Absolutely, I love that. Yeah, and that’s so great. And that we all have agency of understanding what’s going on and then knowing what to do with it. We have a lot of choices.

Dr. Lisa: So in your research and your work and your experience, what have you found are the most,

Dr. Lisa: how should I say it, vulnerable moments, but more most likely to have this experience?

Ally Iseman: So let me make sure I understand the question. So you mean the things that are triggering it? Yes. Like that are triggering that experience of whatever version of jealousy.

Ally Iseman: Well, it can be so many different things because what, I feel like I’m repeating myself, but

Ally Iseman: what the research also shows us is that there’s reactive jealousy and then there is suspicious jealousy and those show up in slightly different ways and they’re caused by slightly different things. Interesting. So reactive. Something’s actually happened. Like there is a perceived rival in the room or whatever, your partner laughed a little too long at their coworkers joke and they’ve been bringing that coworker up a lot at dinner and conversation. So then we start layering potentially story. Is it something that’s actually happening or are we looking for proof based on previous experience? Say we have experienced infidelity in the past or we’ve experienced

Ally Iseman: caregivers from our childhood being dishonest and we don’t have that foundation. Our brain is, like its best skill is pattern recognition. All it does is find patterns. So if that’s been your experience and you haven’t actually looked at it and worked with it, it’s running in the background, right? Your subconscious is looking for those patterns and it could be applying them very well to the relationship you’re in now regardless of whether or not those things are actually happening or mean the same thing that they did back then. Does that answer your question?

Dr. Lisa: Certainly, yeah. And so

Dr. Lisa: there are different sort of sources of these feelings and sometimes it’s a response that is actually happening that we either witness.

Dr. Lisa: Sometimes it is an artifact of old experiences that makes a trigger. But the kinds of moments that might

Dr. Lisa: create or trigger those feelings in us would be perhaps your partner engaging with another person in a way that makes you curious, shall we say, about their feelings for that other person. Curious would be a great option. Curious, all right, sanitized.

Dr. Lisa: And

Dr. Lisa: what else? I mean, you might notice your partner being kind of dazzled in their conversation with another person or certainly evidence that

Dr. Lisa: a relationship of some kind is blossoming, that doesn’t feel bad. Are there other things that you’ve seen are sort of common moments where people tend to have this?

Ally Iseman: So jealousy, another differentiator between jealousy and envy is that perceived rival. And I say perceived because not necessarily so, right? But our brain is looking at it in that way. Whether it’s the coworker, the ex, whatever. There’s actually a really interesting sort of newer section of the research on jealousy called retroactive jealousy. It’s something that’s much more prevalent now because it has to do with what’s happened in the past. And social media now gives us this wonderful evergreen window into everything our partner has ever done or been, that whole thing. So there can be a fixation on our partner’s previous partner, previous sex life, XYZ, fill in the blank. This is something that’s already happened. It’s in the past. It’s different from the other four types of romantic jealousy because those are happening right now, right? Those are things that are happening in real time which means we can address the trigger, right? When it’s retroactive, it’s already occurred. We can’t actually change anything about the trigger. So we really have to look at our behavior and our relationship with it, right? If we’re getting into doing scrolling till 3 a.m. on their ex’s page, but that’s not helping us. So we have to find some sort of pattern interrupt and start creating more healthy behavioral patterns that aren’t so obsessive or

Dr. Lisa: compulsive in that way. I get it. So I think I heard you say there were four types of jealousy. I think we talked about reactive. We talked about retroactive. There was another, you had a name for it related to sort of historical, like our own relational trauma, honestly is what you’re describing coming through. And then there’s a fourth.

Ally Iseman: So I knew this was gonna come up. I have a- Quiz. The four types of romantic jealousy out there and all my content, I’ve talked about them. And now that I’m neck deep in research after 10 years of doing this work and really streamlining it, there’s new studies just came out this year. I’m actually reformatting those four types because of that. So in the past I’ve talked about insecure, comparison or competition, fear of abandonment and distrust. The qualities there are all still there, but what I’m calling the four now is gonna be a little bit different. So bear with me. No, that’s great. So we’ll see. But what you’re talking about with the distrust, we can bring that into the thing. So distrust is really about the relationship because we talked about reactive jealousy we also have jealousy that’s about the relationship. So it’s about the bond. And then we have jealousy that’s also actually about us, about our sense of self, not actually so much about the bond. What does this relationship say about me? What is my partner doing XYZ mean about me? So it’s a lot more about our sense of identity than it is actually about the bond itself. So with those four, I’m sort of trying, I’m creating a four quadrant model so that people can really identify which type is really showing up the most for them. So distrust is really a bond type thing. There’s a pattern happening in the relationship. Is it something that’s actually happening or are we overlaying our previous, how did you say it so beautifully, our artifact from the past? Are we overlaying that onto the current relationship? So if I have a client who’s coming in with some version of distrust right out the gate, what I’m gonna do is like, okay, so you shared with me all the things that you’re seeing

Ally Iseman: that are causing this distrust. What else is happening? What are the things that your partner does that give you trust, that deepen trust, that like, what are the other things that are happening that counteract that? And if that list is short or non-existent, that’s a different conversation than, oh, actually here’s all the things that they’re doing and maybe actually I’m just seeing this through a lens to protect myself from what’s happened before.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Ally Iseman: Right? So that’s what really gives us the ratio of, reality to story when we’re looking at something like trust.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Well, and I think, in my experience, this is where it gets so hard for people because

Dr. Lisa: to your point, there’s this

Dr. Lisa: challenge, I think that comes from

Dr. Lisa: having experiences that make us feel uneasy or threatened, jealous,

Dr. Lisa: but then also we are interpreting events through our own filter. And if there is relational trauma or bad experiences in our background that are kind of fueling the fear,

Dr. Lisa: but then it gets so confusing because just cause you have had bad experiences in your past, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. And there’s this real like, people literally don’t know what to believe and frequently when they try to broach this conversation with a partner, the partner feels

Dr. Lisa: accused of doing something wrong or bad that they’re not frequently and then that can turn into a conflict or

Dr. Lisa: maybe they are defending themselves and covering things up and gaslighting is happening, which then goes back to the person having these feelings and like, it doesn’t help. So I mean, where do you even start to unpack this? Cause this is hard. Oh yeah. Like what is actually happening?

Ally Iseman: Nobody knows, right? Right. Right. So there’s a few really important factors within what you just talked about. So this is some of the stuff that’s available to us when we actually start working with jealousy instead of doing everything in our power to avoid it. Yeah. So we have to cultivate a sense of discernment.

Ally Iseman: We have to learn how to trust ourselves first. So in the event that we’ve experienced infidelity XYZ, in the past, what has been the repair process for ourselves? Cause we don’t always get to repair with the person who is a part of the damage, right? But we always have ourselves, we are our only life partner. We’re the only one here from the beginning till the end. So your repair process. Yeah. Like it’s an uncomfortable truth for some, but also very comforting because you’re always there. So your repair process with yourself is so key. Have you rebuilt your capacity to trust yourself, to believe in your discernment of like, no, I make good decisions. I assess situations. These are the reasons that I chose to trust this person. That doesn’t mean somebody is incapable of, you know, breaking that trust. But that’s a different thing than no, I trust myself. I made a good decision. They made a bad one. You know, those are two different things. We are not the product of other people’s decisions, right? So we can be impacted by them, but this is not about us, right? So it’s like, again, that discernment. Do I trust my own decision-making process, my own assessment of others, you know, have I rebuilt that? Do I have a repair process with myself that I’m always, always strengthening that? And then we have, how are we broaching it with our partner? Cause that’s also important, right? Both people, if we’re in a partnership of two people, both people have to really be responsible for how they’re showing up in difficult conversations. Am I showing up to my partner, vulnerable? Hey, this is happening for me. This is what I’m doing to take care of myself. And this is the kind of support I could use, or I’d like us to get support to work through it together. Are you available for that? Is not the same thing as you’ve done this. This is how I’m feeling and you need to make it better. It’s a very, very different statement, but in the same breath, if you’re the partner receiving this knowledge, whatever is coming at you, honestly, whether they’re, you know, delivering it well or not, are you reactive and not wanting to feel uncomfortable and throwing it back on them? Or are you willing to be like, wow, I had no idea. That is not the experience I want you to have. How can we make this better? You know, we’re both responsible for how we’re showing up in that. Neither of us is responsible for the other one’s way of expressing or their actions. Is that making sense?

Dr. Lisa: Yes, it absolutely does. And

Dr. Lisa: what one might argue, that feelings of jealousy motivate

Dr. Lisa: efforts to, what’s like get reassurance from your partner. Also, are we in this together? Do you care about me? Do I have anything to worry about? And I love that message right there, Ally, that the way you broach those conversations can either turn into a really yucky feeling conflict where you’re gonna walk out of that feeling worse and less connected, or you can manage this and have authentic, vulnerable, but also like emotionally safe way of

Dr. Lisa: entering that conversation that makes it much more likely that you will get a response that does make you feel cared for.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Ally Iseman: And if you don’t, that’s still data. That’s information. Now we’re going back to our discernment. Oh, is this relationship supporting me in the way that I need right now? Am I also showing up in integrity? Am I showing up the way that I want to in it? And am I being met with the kind of behavior and treatment that I would like? That’s still data, that’s still information, right? Now we’re actually working with the information instead of just being reactive to the trigger, right?

Dr. Lisa: Very, very different. Such a good point. And that if you’re real confident that you’re showing up in a very appropriate way that should elicit a warm response and it’s not happening, to pay attention to that

Dr. Lisa: data. Exactly. All right. Exactly. I invited you to take us into the two sides of this experience. And one might be that we’re sort of having,

Dr. Lisa: you know,

Dr. Lisa: triggers going off and feelings. We’re overlaying past experiences or our own feelings of insecurity, sometimes worth, right? And we are feeling afraid. That is door number one. Door number two is when we are actually receiving information that maybe we’re not fully safe in this relationship or our partner is developing some type of attachment feelings to someone else. And so step one is do you have any guidance for people on how to begin to figure out

Dr. Lisa: what’s really going on? Like the actual risk or threat to their relationship.

Ally Iseman: Yeah, I mean, the short answer is I have a whole process that I created that helps people actually work with it. Because if you’re not, if you’re coming from, I’ve never actually mindfully been with my jealousy, felt it, looked for what it’s trying to tell me, what conversation is it trying to get me to have. If I’ve never done that before, I’m not gonna start from, well, you know, I’ve got it figured out now. I’m gonna start working with it. I’m gonna start with the question, okay, jealousy, you’re experiencing some version of jealousy. That’s wildly uncomfortable. What if that was okay?

Ally Iseman: Yeah. Just gonna start right there.

Ally Iseman: What if being uncomfortable was okay? Because uncomfortable is very different than unsafe. And a majority of people are having a lot of trouble telling the difference. The first, we have to actually be okay to be uncomfortable. Are we actually expanding our capacity to sit with discomfort? And so I’ll work with clients, what’s your daily discomfort practice? And they’re like, “What, like, ew, no, like we’re supposed to, everything’s supposed to feel good, especially love, right?”

Dr. Lisa: I’m trying to make me feel better, Ally. What are you doing?

Ally Iseman: Yeah, what is this?

Dr. Lisa: Got it.

Ally Iseman: All right, so, but this is how we titrate an experience, right? Jealousy is like, I’m talking about jealousy. I sound so chill, right? So collected. That’s not what it looks or sounds like when I’m triggered and I’m in jealousy, absolutely not. And I’m, you know, a quote unquote expert, right? I’m a professional in this space, studying it, decade plus of experience with clients, my own study, et cetera. I still deal with this. It’s wildly uncomfortable. But it’s the difference between, you know, like I said, I use a metaphor. You know what surfing is, but let’s just say you’ve never surfed in your life, right? Well, I’m gonna take you, I’m gonna put you on a board and I’m gonna set you on a 10 foot wave. Good luck.

Ally Iseman: Don’t die.

Dr. Lisa: That’s intense.

Ally Iseman: Right, here we go, let’s go, go, go, go. That’s intense, a lot is happening really fast. There’s no, you’ve never done this before, but now I’m gonna take somebody who’s been surfing professionally for 20 years. I’m gonna put them on that same board. I’m gonna put them on that same wave, just as intense, all the same stimuli, but they have muscle memory. They’ve been here before, they’ve gotten through it. They know they can get through it again. It’s still uncomfortable, it’s still intense, but they’re now practiced, right? So this is the benefit of practicing discomfort. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable. Like it doesn’t stop being uncomfortable. You go to the gym, the weights are always heavy, but they get bigger because you’re getting stronger. So maybe it’s, you go to the local coffee shop and you, you know, maybe you’re like me, a recovering people pleaser. This was my practice for a little while. I’m gonna go to the coffee shop. I’m gonna place my order. And then after they’ve written my name on the cup and all the thing, I’m gonna be like, you know what? Actually, I changed my mind. And I’m not gonna do this, like I’m not gonna like waste coffee. I’m not waiting for them to like make the drink and like it’s a whole thing. I’m gonna get them before it becomes, you know, a cost, but it’s uncomfortable. Oh my God, I changed my mind, but they’ve already put my order in. That’s okay. It’s their job to get you the thing that you want. So practicing those little hiccups of discomfort in a containable way with low stakes, right? We’re not at a play party and we’re gonna push a boundary. No, we’re just frying it in our day-to-day lives of like, what is it like to just touch that edge? And then as we get comfortable with that, maybe our edges expand, right? And we start getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I can assure you, if you’re practicing that in your relationship, that is gonna expand into every area of your life. It shows up with you, you know, responding better at work and your family relationships that’ll impact finances at like everything. If you can master your capacity to hold discomfort, that is a lifelong skill that serves you across the board.

Dr. Lisa: Fantastic, I totally get it. We shall be comfortable with our dark emotions and not freak out. Yes, and

Dr. Lisa: how do we interpret the information that those dark emotions are bringing?

Ally Iseman: Now we’re starting to work with it, right?

Ally Iseman: So I mentioned earlier, my jealousy growth method, G-R-O-W-T-H. This is backed by neurological research, the physiology of jealousy, right? What’s physically happening, psychology, right? What are the stories and also the sociology? What are we being told culturally on how and what it means and what we should do, right? So G right there is ground. What’s happening in my body? When we get triggered, boom, right up into story, right? This is happening, it must mean this. And now I have to do that. And that’s actually still us avoiding the actual thing. That’s us trying to get out of discomfort as quickly as possible. It often happens when people are first triggered is what I call the green-eyed gaze. And this process, the growth method helps us get out of that. So the green-eyed gaze is the three ways that we direct jealousy, the green-eyed monster, right? To avoid actually dealing with it. One is we direct the gaze inward with blame, right? Like I’m a bad person, I shouldn’t be feeling this way, there’s something wrong with me. That’s not us actually dealing with it. That’s us just punishing ourselves on top of it. Or we don’t wanna feel any of that. So we’re just gonna direct it outward at our partner with blame, you’ve made me feel this way, you’re in the wrong and you need to make me feel better. This is your fault, right? That’s us taking the discomfort and throwing it up to somebody else. Not effective, still avoiding it. Or the third option is we just close our eyes entirely. I don’t feel jealous. I’m not a jealous person, that’s my favorite one. There’s no such thing. I’m not a jealous person, I don’t feel that way. That’s us squashing it down, right? This is denial. For another glass of wine. It’s great. Yeah, exactly. Whatever that is, I don’t wanna feel this. I assure you, as uncomfortable as it is, and believe me, it is uncomfortable. I’m not gonna beat around the bush. Jealousy is a wildly uncomfortable emotional experience, and physical experience. But I assure you that pushing it down doesn’t get rid of it. If anything, it’s gonna make it bigger and it’s going to come out one way or another and probably in the least convenient damaging way possible. So learning how to work with it is valuable. So let’s say, okay, I’ve noticed the green-eyed gaze, I tend to direct it inward on blame, I tend to direct it out, whatever that is. I don’t wanna do that anymore. I wanna actually use jealousy for my own personal and relational growth. So G is ground. Where is it in my body? I’m not gonna get in that story right now. I’m gonna get in my body. Where do I feel this physically? For me, it’s in my stomach. It’s really tight. Kind of can sometimes get a little bubbly. Or sometimes I’ll get it up the back of my spine. It’ll be this heat flush. Where is it in my body? Is it in my fist? Is it in my face? Where am I feeling the sensation of jealousy and what are the qualities that it has? Now I’m actually identifying it. It’s not this faceless

Ally Iseman: archetype that’s taking over the show. I’m actually grounding it in my body. It’s my body, my experience. I’m now in a process. I’ve got the reins. So once we’ve understand where is it? What does it feel like? We’re gonna go into R, reflect. Which type of jealousy am I dealing with? Which type of romantic jealousy? Is it distrust? Am I in comparison or competition? So it’s highlighting maybe an insecurity I have about myself. Is it worth me actually working on?

Ally Iseman: Is there something in my life that actually had a chain? Like did I have to move something in my calendar? What are the facts? Reflect on the facts. What are the things that actually happened? Not the story, not the assumptions, not the projections. What are the things that actually happened that I can measure and I can write down and I can point to? So ground, reflect, and now we’re in open up. And that can look like talking to your partner, but not necessarily right away. We can open up into a journal. We can write to the jealousy. We can write to the version of ourselves who’s dealing with this beautifully, who might not be the version of you now. We can write to our partner in the journal. We can write to the jealousy. We can write to the version of ourself on the other side of this. We can talk to a friend. We can get professional support, but it’s about taking the experience of jealousy out of just the silo of self and really making it a relational experience. And I do want a caveat. If we are opening up to a friend, this is where discernment comes in that we talked about before. Is this a friend that we’ve seen just say like, “Yeah, no matter what, like, yeah, he’s a total jerk.” Like, “Or are they somebody who’s like actually gonna invite reflection?” But then you’d be like, “Oh, tell me more. Like I want to understand, where do you think?” Is this somebody that you’re safe to talk to who you know will reflect honestly, right? Or is somebody who is self-aware enough to be like, you know, what kind of support do you need right now? Do you just want me to listen? Do you want a problem solved? Like discernment, again, we get to practice it when we’re actually working with jealousy. And then at some point we come to our partner, ideally, right? And again, we talked about this earlier. This isn’t the opportunity to be all blame, right? We’re not in the green-eyed gaze going, “You did this. This is your fault. Change it.” We’re saying, “This is what’s happening for me right now. This is what I’m doing actively to take care of myself. And these are the sorts of things I could use as support.” You know, words of affirmation, more cuddling, you know, “Are you available for that?” That, “Are you available for that?” is part of it. Because we have to see where they’re at. Maybe they’re like, “You know what? I want to sit here and cuddle you. I can’t right now, but can we do this in an hour? I’ve got to finish this work.” Or whatever it is, right? So this way you’re actually inviting them into the process with you. So they’re not just like, “What is happening? My partner’s pulling away. I don’t know what’s going on.” Right? You’re saying, “Hey, this is what’s happening. I want to invite you into that.” And that may just be how you support me in it. And that may be us looking at something in the relationship that we need to work on.

Ally Iseman: But this is where we open that up, right? So we’ve got G, we’ve got R, we’ve got O, and that takes us to W, witness. But this is actually often the hardest one for folks. Witness. I’m experiencing jealousy. Not I’m jealous, not I’m a jealous person. Jealousy is not a character trait. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not a personality type. It’s an emotion. And every single one of us has the capacity to feel it. Right? We may have never felt it. I never felt jealousy at all in my life until it was well into my thirties. I thought I wasn’t a jealous person. But the research shows us that jealousy can show up at different times in our life, in different relationships, at a different point in the same relationship. There’s so many variables that

Ally Iseman: bring it up. It’s not a personality type. So we’re witnessing it. We’re witnessing it as an experience that we are currently having that is temporary and that will move through us. And that’s the W. It’s so, so, so important. We’re not identifying with it. Then we get into the T. And this was probably the most powerful one I would say. T is timeout. You know, the universal sign, timeout. Right? Timeout can look like, okay, I did G. I’m in my body. I cannot talk to anyone right now. Like I can’t reflect on it. I’m still, like, it’s so uncomfortable. I need to just like take a bath. Right? So it’s, I’m gonna time out. I don’t need to go through the whole growth process. Bunch of bath right away. Right? It can be a timeout when you’re already in O. Maybe you’re talking to your partner and you both, you know, have never done this before. So your skills aren’t really there. You’re not getting anywhere. It’s starting to turn into a fight. You’re not really getting anywhere. Timeout. The important factor of a timeout is it’s a specific time. It’s not, we can’t talk about this right now. That’s not a timeout. That’s a deflection. Right? I can’t talk about this right now. We can’t talk about this. Let’s take 10 minutes. Let’s take 20 minutes, whatever it is. We’re gonna each go and actively take care of ourselves. We’re not gonna scroll on our phone. We’re still in the experience. We’re just not in it together right now. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go take a bath. I’m gonna get whatever it is. We’re gonna make ourselves some tea, but we’re gonna go take care of ourselves and we’re gonna come back in 10 minutes. And it can look like you come back in 10 minutes and you know what, actually another 10 minutes. Great. But these are specific measures of time so that we’re actually coming back, we’re agreeing, and we’re still in the experience. We’re taking care of ourselves in the moment so that we can come back into that conversation from a place that’s more in integrity. So that takes us all the way through to H. This is probably my favorite one. So H is humanized. So jealousy we talked about has a rival, a perceived rival, right? The coworker of the ex, the whatever it is. This perceived rival, I want you to picture them really clearly, clear as you can. And you’re gonna picture them on the toilet having a poop.

(Laughing)

Ally Iseman: Stay with me. Okay, I’m here.

Ally Iseman: So you’re humanizing them. When we’re in this activated state of jealousy, right? All of our senses are overwhelmed. It’s so intense. It’s so easy to make this other person, this perceived rival into this Disney villain larger than life. They’re just better than me in every way. Obviously my partner will choose that villain in the blank. So we’re gonna picture them doing something that every single person on this planet does. And that is having a poop.

Ally Iseman: There’s a whole book about it, right? Everybody poops. So this is to just make them a person so that you remember, oh, right. We are all people in this situation to varying degrees of success with our jealousy practice and our communication skills and what have you. And even if some people are acting out of integrity, these are people, right? So we can talk to each other and we can figure out what ways we want to move forward or change things or agreement. They’re not some Disney villain that we have no power over. We are our own person. They are their own person. And we can speak to each other from that place. That’s the process of the jealousy growth method of how we start learning to work with jealousy so that we’re able to look at, oh, what is the conversation it’s trying to get me to have? What is the thing? Is there something in me that I haven’t actually looked at that I could actually start taking better care of so that I show up better in this relationship? This is the value that jealousy really has for us.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for explaining that process. That’s very helpful. And I like to be more thoughtful about it and tools to deescalate, calm down.

Dr. Lisa: And I think in my experience, the hardest part for people is that reality step. What is actually happening? Because, I’ll give you an example.

Dr. Lisa: A woman has a husband who has a history of infidelity and now they’re out and about, and she notices him checking out other women.

Dr. Lisa: And so what happens to her is this flood of, am I safe? He’s told me that he’s not doing this anymore, but is what I’m seeing a precursor to him acting out again, which would then threaten the stability of my family. Or

Dr. Lisa: it is also true that even people in happy, healthy relationships do actually develop attractions to other people,

Dr. Lisa: emotional bonds, closeness, and

Dr. Lisa: sometimes those attractions are acted on. And so another example might be somebody at a party who sees their partner laughing really hard at somebody’s jokes, touching and whatever,

Dr. Lisa: and they are then trying to interpret, I think the level of

Dr. Lisa: actual risk of, what’s happening right now? Do I need to do something? Am I safe? Because I think that jealousy fear, what it tells you is you are not safe. Of course, sometimes that’s related to our own history, but sometimes it is actually reality-based. Do you have any thoughts about how

Dr. Lisa: people can start to

Dr. Lisa: use that discernment?

Dr. Lisa: Do I have an actual problem? Or am I having a feeling?

Ally Iseman: Absolutely, those are actually great examples too. And you said it beautifully because there’s a couple of things happening, right? So what often happens, okay, I’ve seen this thing, the partner is chatting, touching, whatever it is, they have a history, whatever that is. Now I’m gonna go into a whole conversation story about what it means, et cetera, et cetera, rather than have the actual conversation with my partner.

Ally Iseman: The thing that happened is they talked with this person, there was arm touching, whatever. That’s what happened. Right now, everything else is story. Maybe they have a history, that happened 100%. That’s in the past, we have to deal with what’s happening now. So the conversation is, hey, I noticed

Ally Iseman: this,

Ally Iseman: you’re being attracted to other people, it happens. Acting on that attraction is a different thing. So is this something you’re interested in acting on? Can you imagine what would be available if you actually met your partner with curiosity in that moment, instead of a diagnosis? Well, I’ve seen that you did that thing, therefore, I know that you’re no longer committed to me, you’re gonna be acting on it if you haven’t already, therefore our family is not safe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Ally Iseman: Right, we have filled in all those blanks before we even had a conversation. Hey, I know that this is the reflect, right? Reality is pretty good too, I might have to steal that one from you. For the R.

Dr. Lisa: Oh, I thought that was it, what the R was for, okay, whatever. You’re welcome.

Ally Iseman: That’s kind of both. Because you’re looking at the measurements and you’re also looking at what type, but that’s what the R is. What actually happened? Oh, they said they were gonna come home by 10 and they didn’t, they came home at 1130. That’s what happened, right? That’s all we know right now. Everything else we fill in the blanks, right? So we have to have that conversation. And again, we’re not coming in with blame because that’s not a useful, that’s not gonna be a conversation quite frankly, that’s an accusation, right? I forgot, you did this and that means X, Y, Z. I’m gonna take care of myself because I’m preparing for the worst that might be, and you know what the worst might be? It might happen, it might be the case that they’re no longer interested in this relationship or whatever, but even being interested in somebody else is not a synonym for no longer being interested in you. Yeah, really, really dialing in.

Dr. Lisa: Two pieces of this related to

Dr. Lisa: what if your partner is attracted to someone else? What does that mean? What do we do with it? But also what to do if in the conversations you don’t believe what your partner is telling you because that’s a different animal. And in my experience as a marriage counselor is pretty common. So,

Dr. Lisa: okay, so let’s go into that first one. You said something that I thought was so interesting. Just because your partner is actually attracted to someone else doesn’t mean they’re not also interested in maintaining a relationship with you. Maybe it’s not binary. What are we talking about right now?

Ally Iseman: We’re talking about human nature.

Ally Iseman: We’re talking about the basics of attraction, right? It’s actually a wonderful sign if your partner is

Ally Iseman: finding other people attractive, is being found attractive by other people. That means that part of their psychology and their physiology is still alive and well and being injured. Now, depending on the agreements you have in your relationship, let’s say we’ve agreed to be sexually and emotionally exclusive. That’s about actions, right? I have agreed, we have agreed that sexual acts, which we define as XYZ, because we’ve talked about it thoroughly, we haven’t assumed that we both have the same definition, we’ve actually defined them together. We’ve decided that sexual acts are just for us. That’s not attraction. In the same way that we don’t control our feelings, we don’t control attraction, we control our actions, right? So even if, let’s go all the way, right? Even if they’ve developed a work romance, feelings-wise, right? They’ve noticed they have a crush on a coworker. They really love talking to them. It’s exciting for them. But they know the agreements that you guys have made, we’re not gonna go on dates, we’re not gonna have like one-on-one, I’m not developing this beyond that. Imagine the power and the freedom that comes from having a relationship that’s so safe and secure, that they can share this thing with you about how they’re feeling, because it’s still within the agreements, it has nothing to do with feeling less for you because love and attraction are not a zero-sum game, right?

Dr. Lisa: They’re different things, love and attraction are different things.

Ally Iseman: And they’re not finite. It’s not like, okay, we’re married, so I’ve given my 100 love points to you, and so you have my 100 love points. So if I have love for anyone else, I’m gonna have to take those love points, five of those love points from you, and that’s not how it works. Our relationship is an agreement structure that we create together. I would love to know if my partner is having a fun, flirty time with somebody because it makes him feel good, as long as he’s within our agreements. We’re not sleeping with other people, we’re not wooing other people, whatever those agreements are, I would much rather him feel safe enough to talk to me about those things. So I have to reflect, am I a safe person for them to come to with this? That’s a huge part of it. We talked about it a little differently earlier. How do I show up on either side of this conversation?

Dr. Lisa: Totally, and I think it also requires a

Dr. Lisa: thing that I think is really hard for a lot of people to wrap their brains around, which is that experiences of attraction are simply part of life and they happen to everyone, and they’re going to happen in every relationship. And it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about their commitment to you. But I think that many people really don’t like that, the idea that their partner might be attracted to somebody else. Because it’s scary.

Ally Iseman: It’s scary because we’re again, we’re conflating, this is where I see it show up so often, the difference between fantasy and desire. Exactly what we’re talking about here, right? Literate fantasy is just in your head. That’s the only place it lives, that’s where you want it to stay, it’s just in your head. Desire is when you want to take something out into the real world and actually do it. We can want something, we can want something to be excited by something and not actually want to take it into our real life. I am excited at the idea of skydiving off topic. Really? It sounds amazing, the freedom and the rush and all that stuff. I get vertigo. So I’m not going to want, I don’t really want to actually skydive because it’s not going to be a pleasant experience. But I like the idea.

Dr. Lisa: I kind of wish I could. It’s interesting to think about, got it. Okay, so there’s a category of things that are interesting to think about and then there’s stuff like in the, would actually consider doing column, right?

Ally Iseman: And this is also part of like, if we have a little bit of time, we don’t have to deep dive, but there is an erotic potential to jealousy as well. And really the process is about facing the thing. Whatever the fear, you know, if my partner fill in the blank, is attracted to somebody else, has feelings for somebody else, whatever it is, that means they’re going to leave. It’s the process of us facing that thing and then we’re going to have this conversation where you tell me about this crush you have at work. You know, we’re going to take 15 minutes, it’s going to be very clear. We’re creating this container together and then we’re going to close it out and we’re going to have sex. Like we’re going to take that, it’s called, oh no, it’s called a, not arousal transference. I think it might be arousal transference. Sorry, my brain just lost the term, but it’s when we have an arousal, which is not necessarily sexual, just an aroused experience, right? Our system gets aroused and we transfer it onto something beneficial. So this is the healthy version, not the like, F you and you’re in a fight and then you have makeup sex and it’s so intense. That’s a mess. That’s a mess. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Talking about a specific container where we face the thing where my partner’s going to tell me, you know, or we’re going to make it up. Maybe they don’t have the crush and they’re not attracted to anyone, but we’re going to make somebody up and they do and they’re going to say it and then they’re still there. So our fear gets triggered. Okay, if this, then my partner’s going to leave, but this happened and my partner’s still here and is actually giving me everything I need. And now I’m building new neuro pathways, which is how we develop trust and safety.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the process, not avoiding it. To create the kind of relationship where it’s okay for people to have all kinds of different feelings versus the relationship where terrible things would happen if that were true. And so then people hide and conceal things. Now, just out of curiosity, does any of this change in the context of an open relationship where the agreements are different and when your primary partner is actually falling in love with somebody else that they’re seeing and they are going out and having experiences, sex is involved and this is part of the negotiated truth of the relationship.

Ally Iseman: What do you do with that?

Ally Iseman: This is such an important question. I think it’s a big misconception that folks in, whatever version of open relationships, polyamory, non-monogamy, swinging, what have you, they just don’t feel jealousy. That’s inaccurate, both experientially and, so like research based, like there’s no difference in the frequency or intensity of jealousy based on relationship structure alone. The difference is that this isn’t exclusive. It’s not like every open relationship handles jealousy well any more than every monogamous relationship doesn’t. Again, the quality of the relationship, right? Generally speaking, when you’re in a dynamic that isn’t a socially prescribed norm, you’ve already sort of had to build it the way you want to. You’ve already had to have a lot of these conversations of what are our agreements, where are our edges, et cetera, et cetera. So you’re already in that practice. When jealousy comes up, it’s just another tool, right? Because the same way, whether it’s open or closed relationship, this idea that them having feelings for somebody else, them spending time with somebody else equals them not having feelings for me or not wanting to spend time, those are two different things. They can want to spend time with somebody and want to spend time with you. Their agreements, the only finite resource really is time. So you do have to have those agreements. I’m like, okay, holidays are for us, or like whatever that is, but them having feelings for somebody else, them having sexual experiences with somebody else is about them and those other people, not you. So they can want to be with somebody else and want to be with you. And they can want to be with somebody else and not want to be with you, just like they can just not want to be with you. These are different conversations, right? These are different components. What I see happen so much, this might be my second book, TBD, but the completion of the understanding of exclusivity as a synonym for commitment. So what I see so often is, well, we’re together and I know we’re committed because we’re exclusive, but that has nothing to do with what you guys are doing. So you’re basing your entire relationship definition on what you are and are not doing with other people. That says nothing about what you’re actually committed to with each other. You could commit to exclusivity, 100%. The commitment is about showing up for something over, commitment’s really about consistency. What are you doing consistently in that relationship? If you’re defining your relationship by what you are and are not doing with other people and that’s it, you’re really not setting yourself up for success. What is your relationship actually about?

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, no, that’s a really good point. Like what are you committed to doing? Who are you committed to being? How are you committed to showing up for this other person and for the relationship that is a lot more than whether or not anybody is having dalliances with other people? And I see that a lot too. There’s yes, a commitment, but how people are actually treating each other within that can be

Dr. Lisa: hard.

Ally Iseman: Yeah, great point. I’ve worked with exclusive clients who aren’t committed to much. And I’ve worked with non-exclusive clients who are very committed to each other. It really is two different things.

Dr. Lisa: Give us an example of non-monogamous clients who are so committed to each other.

Ally Iseman: Well, it’s what are our agreements? What do we do together? Okay, it can be like, I think I mentioned, the holidays together, or we make sure that we always go on a quarterly vacation together or whatever those things are, that’s what we’re showing up for. So let’s say, most people aren’t spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week together. I hope your partner has hobbies and friends and work and other things that fill their life. So it’s about what you are doing together, right? So maybe we are committed to having a robust social life, but the difference is, okay, we commit to always going to this dance class together once a week. And if you go to another dance class with somebody else, that has nothing to do with this dance class that we’re committed to going to. Now, if we’ve committed to that, and now you’re coming in and you’re bringing somebody else into this dance class, now we’re encroaching on the agreements we have. This is not what we talked about. Or you don’t want me to come to the dance class anymore. You wanna bring somebody else. Nope, now we’re absolutely impacting what we committed to because of experiences with other people. That’s a different conversation. But if what we’re committed to is consistent and we’re showing up the way we said we would and it’s all within the agreements, then it’s groovy. The structure around that is really up to the people involved. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa: This is such an interesting conversation, Ally. And I’m so glad that we’re having it

Dr. Lisa: because I think it just opens up so many other dimensions.

Dr. Lisa: Because I think for so many people, experiencing jealousy can turn into this overwhelming compulsion to figure out the truth. And then it is figuring out, do I believe my thoughts and feelings? Or do I believe what this other person is saying? I don’t know what’s going on right now. Versus I think what you’re advising for everybody to calm down,

Dr. Lisa: understand that the feeling is happening. And then be more intentional in the choices that you make about how you’re communicating with the goal. I mean, I think this has to be the only goal, right? Of having an emotionally safe

Dr. Lisa: conversation where it is actually okay for your partner to say, yeah, I was looking at her boobs and I really attracted to her or whatever. Or yes, I was actually looking at porn or all these other things because then

Dr. Lisa: there isn’t concealment, there isn’t lying. And you can work with that, right? And it might be door number one is accepting the reality that attraction happens. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature, right? Or it could be a reality where

Dr. Lisa: there are things about this relationship that you need to know so that you can decide if it still makes sense for you to participate in the same way, but you can’t do that if you don’t really know what’s going on.

Dr. Lisa: Or the third path is to understand that you are actually experiencing residual relational trauma flare-ups. I mean, that’s the only way to describe it and that those need to be addressed

Dr. Lisa: as their own thing because unless they are, you will never feel safe in any relationship.

Ally Iseman: This is the value, right? Is there something for me to take? Is there a way that I’m not taking care of myself that I could be doing better at? Right? What are my values? What’s important to me? Is this a relationship that is showing patterns that are workable for me or not?

Ally Iseman: We’re so often trying again to get out of it, right? The practice is not about getting out of jealousy, avoiding, like getting rid of it. It’s not about making it feel good. It’s about actually being in it because then we’re not just doing everything we can to get out of it. We’re not using it as a way to control our partners, right? Well, if you want me to trust you, then you have to XYZ. Research shows us that rules diminish trust. Totally. They do not build trust quite the opposite. Yes. But we have to have discernment and we have to be able to have those conversations and be a receptive partner in those conversations, those uncomfortable conversations in order to build that. Right. If we want our partner to be trustworthy, we have to also show up in a way that they can trust, that they can be vulnerable, that they can say, I don’t know, that they can say, I’ve made them a state. What do we do so that we can lean in? Right, yeah.

Dr. Lisa: So good.

Dr. Lisa: I’ll also just add one other thing.

Dr. Lisa: And I don’t know if, well, this is a question. Ally, would you agree with this statement that

Dr. Lisa: if you’re trying to broach conversations with your partner and you do not believe what they’re telling you, that you feel persistently unsafe, even when your partner is telling you, there’s nothing to worry about. I think there are two options here. One is that maybe there is historical trauma, residual stuff, and the way to address this is to go and process whatever that is so that you feel safer on the inside and then you will have a more reality-based view of the relationship if you’re not having your own flare-ups. So that’s one truth. But the other part, and this is where I’m curious about your point of view, Ally, is that if

Dr. Lisa: even then you really don’t trust what your partner is saying, you should listen to that. Yeah.

Ally Iseman: This is the discernment. Is that true? This is the discernment I keep coming back to, practice jealousy effectively in a safe container. You have to have a high level of discernment. So if you’re coming, oh, this keeps, I keep having this pattern where I see all these things, like have you worked with a professional? Is there a trauma thing going on that’s unresolved, right? And showing up, that’s okay to acknowledge. We have to, we don’t get over it. We have to get through it. We actually have to work through it and look at it. And there’s nothing wrong with getting the support you need to help rebuild that bubble. But that really to me and your question, the difference between those two things has to come down.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, but that’s a different thing.

Ally Iseman: It is. Right, and so what there’s that– Do I have that sense of discernment? Yeah. Well, and so then– If I do,

(Laughs)

Ally Iseman: if I do, and that’s my instinct, and I’m seeing this, and I know I’m in practice, I’ve done the therapy I need, and I’ve got like, then I have to make a decision, which means I also need to trust that decision. It’s all about me. It can’t be about them, because if they’re reassuring you and they’re reassuring you and nothing’s helping, and you know that you’ve got your head on straight and whatever it is, actually regardless of whether or not they’re telling the truth, you need to make a decision for yourself on this isn’t working for me. Totally. Right?

Dr. Lisa: Like that’s the important part. I feel fundamentally unsafe with this person, and maybe that’s good enough, and that whatever, you know, capital R reality is, you don’t feel safe with this person. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Lisa: This has been such an interesting conversation, Ally. And any last words before we glide to a stop here? And I’d love for you to share with people, you know, where they can keep track of you and your work, and your not one, but two books coming down the pipeline. I’m not sure.

Ally Iseman: Two of them. Let me get the first one out, hold on. That’s fine, we’ll come back. Yeah, yeah, we’ll be back, we’ll be back. Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway I’ve gotta say, and it’s my whole thesis for the book, it’s what really got me into this, was the two different messages that we get about jealousy and how they both can’t exist, you know, somehow proof of love, but also if you’re feeling it, there’s something wrong with you and something wrong with the relationship. How are those two things the same? Well, the truth is they’re not true, necessarily, inherently, so what I do want people to take away, get rid of those scripts that you’ve been given, and understand that jealousy is the single most misunderstood and underused emotional experience to deepen trust and intimacy in relationships.

Dr. Lisa: Okay, what do people not understand about jealousy? And

Dr. Lisa: just, I mean to say it explicitly,

Dr. Lisa: how does it increase trust and intimacy? So what do people not understand and how is it function?

Ally Iseman: So jealousy is fear, right? Jealousy inherently is inspired by fear, the fear of loss. Generally, if we’re talking about romantic relationships, the loss of our partner, but that fear is real, but we don’t know the trigger, right? If it’s, again, like that projection, that artifact in the past, like what’s going on? So the fear is real, but the fear can be telling us a number of different things, something we’re not doing to take care of ourselves that makes us feel more grounded, not developing our own discernment, not taking care of our bodies so we feel strong and healthy and active and show up the way that we want to, not taking care of our minds, so that we’re showing up as the partner we want to in our relationship. There’s so much information there. Maybe there is a fracture in the relationship and we haven’t talked about it. Maybe there wasn’t indiscretion in the past and we sort of brushed it under the rug and we’ve avoided having that conversation. Well, jealousy is gonna keep knocking on that door until you have that uncomfortable conversation with yourself and with your partner. That’s really what’s there. It’s trying to get you to have whatever that conversation is that you’ve been avoiding.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, amazing. I

Dr. Lisa: love it. We often talk about a variety of dark emotions. I do not call them negative emotions. I call them dark emotions. Well, really, the power and the wisdom.

Dr. Lisa: Jealousy has a place at that table. And so, Ally Iseman, thank you so much for coming here today and sharing all this great insight and perspective. And now tell us where people can keep in touch with you.

Ally Iseman: Absolutely. So I have a coaching practice at allyiseman.com and then I’ll be launching my relationships for couples. They’re basically small curated luxury experiences around the world for curious and cultured couples who are ready to have the conversations they can’t have anywhere else. And that’s at passport2pleasure.com. That’s the number two. And then I’m on all the social media. My main page is on Instagram at Ally Iseman, but then I’m also passport2pleasure on just about every platform you can think of from Substack, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all the things, very findable.

Dr. Lisa: Fantastic. And you guys, it’s A-L-L-Y, I-S-E-M-A-N. Ally Iseman. Ally Iseman. Ally Iseman, yeah.

Ally Iseman: Well, and I do wanna share it with your audience really quick just before we hop off. The specific conversation has come up for so many folks. It’s why I’m writing a book. If this conversation

Ally Iseman: brought something up for you, maybe you’re dealing with jealousy, you wanna know which kind of romantic jealousy am I dealing with? Is it envy or is it jealousy? Is it retroactive? Is it now? I created a free quiz that you guys can take and that’s just at thejealousyquiz.com to help you understand what type of jealousy you’re dealing with right now or most often or maybe your partner is and also what to do about it, what it might be trying to tell you.

Dr. Lisa: Amazing, thejealousyquiz.com, fantastic. Thank you for sharing that resource. My pleasure.

Dr. Lisa: Ally, thanks again so much and keep in touch with me. When your book comes out, we’ll have to do this again. Absolutely, we’d love to. What a fascinating conversation with Ally Iseman. That was great. I love the nuance and the perspective around jealousy, what it means, how to interpret it, but also what to do with it.

Dr. Lisa: And I think one of my main takeaways is the importance of being curious, first of all, the importance of slowing down and also the importance of having the

Dr. Lisa: emotional management skills so that you can have feelings of jealousy come up and not be mad at them, don’t be mad at yourself, but also not be really reactive because I will tell you that

Dr. Lisa: there are some emotions that have such a drive, such a force behind them that they can,

Dr. Lisa: I don’t wanna say make you lose control because that sounds so disempowering, but they can make us vulnerable to losing control. Let me say it that way. And so step number one, developing the emotional regulation skills so that you can have this experience of jealousy and not lose your mind or show up in a way that will be destructive to your relationship. And I will tell you just from many years of experience as a couples counselor, as a therapist, if people haven’t mastered that, it doesn’t matter what’s actually going on in a relationship or not, if people don’t have control over themselves and

Dr. Lisa: show up in a way that supports a healthy relationship, it will damage a relationship where there’s nothing going on. Honestly, it will create conflict fractures. Your partner will stop trusting you to be an emotionally safe person. And so that is absolutely step number one. And then step number two, the other big takeaway,

Dr. Lisa: is that it is frequently the case in my experience that when we are frequently plagued with feelings of jealousy, especially in ambiguous situations, right? Like maybe there’s a neutral interaction that we witness between our partner and somebody else, and we interpret it as being very threatening. That can be a sign that it is actually connected to some of our own betrayal trauma. And I will also tell you that there are really effective ways to work through that. Trauma is an experience that actually changes the way that your brain is wired for better or for worse. And so effective trauma treatments are working at that level where you are actually processing old experiences and transferring them from one part of your brain to another. I know it sounds wild, but that’s actually the way that it works. And at the end of this, we do not eradicate your previous life experiences, but we take a lot of the energy out of them so that when you are exposed to something that maybe reminds you of something that happened in the past, you are not flooded with fear and emotion and all these intrusive thoughts about how you’re not safe in your relationship. You might still have those,

Dr. Lisa: like a lower volume, right? But they’re not this big, huge eclipsing thing and you’ll be much better able to then

Dr. Lisa: have a more reality-based view of your relationship and also know, you know, I always feel this way in these moments. This is my stuff. I’d be able to decide if it is your stuff or something that you need to pay attention to. Oh, I think my partner might actually be attracted to another person or my relationship is feeling threatened. I need to do something with this.

Dr. Lisa: So that is another place to work. Then thirdly,

Dr. Lisa: we’re all in situations where our partners or us are experiencing attractions of one kind or another to people or other things. And by the way, I think that attraction that can destabilize a relationship isn’t always focused on a person. It could be a new hobby that’s taking up a ton of time. It could be new friends. It could be a job, right? Like this can come up with all kinds of things, but it requires an open conversation where we can talk about how we’re feeling, how this is impacting us and see if we need to renegotiate the relationship in some way and see what our partner is willing to do with us there. So all of these three things that I just mentioned, either emotional regulation, a trauma processing, or a relationship renegotiation, or even supporting the ability to have honest conversations where people are able to say, yeah, I’m having these feelings.

Dr. Lisa: And then what does that mean for us? Are all points where it can actually be really important to have a facilitator, a guide, somebody who can walk you through this process,

Dr. Lisa: emotional intelligence coaching, trauma processing work, the relationship,

Dr. Lisa: reality, conversational facilitation, for lack of a better word, are all things that we do in my practice growing self.

Dr. Lisa: I work with the most amazing group of clinicians, many of whom you’ve heard making appearances on this podcast, where that’s what we do. That is literally it. All therapists who are also board certified coaches, so they are not necessarily here to diagnose you, conceptualize what’s going on as dysfunctional or evidence of a psychiatric condition, but rather help you understand your own experiences, how they make sense, and then what we need to do on the inside so that you can show up in the way that you want to on the outside and ultimately create the reality that you want to live in. And that all starts with a consultation. You can come to growingself.com. It’s my website. I just tap on the get connected button. And the first step is just to schedule a consultation with a clinician on my team to talk about what’s going on and see if they’re the right person to help you or not. If they are, you can move on from there. And even if they’re not, they will always have some recommendations for what you could do instead. So take advantage of that, growingself.com. All right, you guys, that is it for today. So great to spend this time with you, and I’ll be back in touch real soon with another episode of Love, Happiness, and Success.