Jealousy ( Archived) (136)

I couldn't find a decent one, interestingly.

Jealousy appears to be in the domains of media and the popular.

You'd think it might be open to something a bit more substantial, seeing as its potentially so destructive.

Maybe it would scupper capitalism if were all a bit more self-aware.

Have learned a great deal about how bad jealousy is and its' negative impact on relationships but was more interested in why some people intentionally elicit it in their partners.

It's a form of fear, fundamentaly the fear of abandonment...a self preservation strategy with its roots in our childhood.
We all have the potential to feel jealousy when we are unable to face and deal with our insecurities.
It's a most unwelcome affliction.

Whilst I agree with you that its based upon fear, abandonment in our childhoods may have the opposite effect, that is, once abandonment has been surived, we have the coping strategies to deal with it. I mean, we can end up just not caring too much about it in our self-sufficiency.

Presumably, the opposite, that is non-abandonement in childhood might inspire a fear of other relationships not being as solid as our formative ones.

I think many factors may effect our jealousy response and those factors are likely to be interactive.

I'd say the least jealous, or spiteful person I've ever come across is my dad, but I also think he's about as autistic as you can get and still function in regular society. Whether I've inherited the gene, it was a learned response, or (most likely) both its difficult to say. Also there was a level of emotional detachment going on in our family dynamic from several sources, but I'm not overly familiar with the jealousy response.

I know I can emotionally detach myself rapidly if the need arises and I simply don't care that much for stuff which is commonly accepted as desirable.

Actually, thinking about your reply Bodey and Maus's, I wonder if a reaction I've had that I interpret as anxiety and confusion, other's might interpret as jealousy.

I consider jealousy as a response where you covet something that someone else has, so an object, or a certain interaction.

Whilst its not my tendency to wish to have something which would deprive another, I have been confused by having received, or not recieved in a way that I have perceived different to others.

No idea, no idea what it is. When I felt it for the first time it was a strange experience.
a bit of a shock, wtf? where did that come from? What is this?
As if one had been given a extra sense or a extra colour to one's vision. A emotion I never felt before.
Strange mixture of insecurity and wanting to control, possess, mine. An emotion that I find irrational intrusive and not my own

You pick up on a good point here jac. The wounds of too-muchness and not enoughness, engulfment or abandonment can play out in later life in much the same way. It's impossible to escape the wounding of this world, parent child encounters provide the vast majority of them and they are usually internalised as complexes.
The question is whether we have the wounds or they have us.
Consider two different types of childhood wounding, those of engulfment or abandonment. It might seem simplistic to say that the traumas of life fall into either of these two categories, the wound of two much or the wound of too little, but from each category one might unconsciously choose a coping behaviour that is diametrically opposed to the strategy chosen by someone else in the same situation.
Both engulfment and abandonment can leave the young child in a similar state of fear and confusion.

______________________________________________________________________

"Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principle cause of neurosis in their children.
Children are so deeply involved in the psychological attitude of their parents that it is no wonder that most nervous disturbances in childhood can be tracked back to a disturbed psychic atmosphere in the home."

Jung

not sure on this...but seems to me, it's probably for the same reasons folks get jealous. the person has a need/want that is not being met somehow, and rather than identify or develop an awareness of this need/want and express it in productive ways that identify and meet this need/want, they act out.

jmho

A rather astute gentleman that I know suggests that all fear boils down to a single fear, that of 'being alone'. All else comes from that fear and our socialized behaviors of needing to fix things. (acting as if we or another is broken, a coping strategy igniter?)

That learned need to fix things or make it better becomes rather tangential in behaviour depending on any number of individual factors. As you note a equivalent circumstance can produce totally different coping strategies in other people and most of those are environmentally learned and then reaffirmed and built upon.

The problem is lack of consideration for results as most people don't revisit their strategies to see if they serve them as well as they could. Of course if poor strategies attain wanted results even through destruction, there's apt to be continued use of that strategy.

The next biggest problem is addressing ourselves from a position of being broken, when the reality is that we can change (in time) with some attention to 'change' rather then brokenness.

In any event if this gentleman is right and I think he is, then the primary cause of being alone is this.
One carries the thought and fear of being alone, giving it constant presence (which manifests as jealousy, rejection etc.) so they also carry their future aloneness with them as a self fulfilling prophecy.

Might be better to just feel the aloneness and not give life to jealousy or rejection or whatever other tangential reaction comes of it.

Lightening the load of feeling alone, might be a better strategy than fixing what canot be fixed. We are alone when all is said and done, and the rest of life around us is just stimulus that we treat with our own learned definitions to give it some other meaning than being alone and afraid. That makes it easier to blame another but internalizing a stimulus always ends up shaking the one that draws it inward.

Good thing, bad thing? I don't know, life wants to feel all kinds of things and call it something other than alone.





Disturbed.

If it weren't for the connotation of words, the human race might actually have a chance. Words like disturbed and disease etc, giving reign to the belief that humans are broken
interminably, in one way or another.

I think back tracking is something that old world psychs do. I think it's time to stop back tracking and get in the now. Maybe that would be too disturbing though.