Like a beautiful expensive pearl necklace, jealousy is a human trait that we would love to shed but given it’s magical powers, often fail to do so.

Nowhere has this trait been displayed more often in film with full Peacock regalia than the ballet industry.

Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” presents a portrait of a young ballerina, who’s committed, obsessed, neurotic, and paranoid.

Oh, one more thing. She’s extremely jealous too.

In the 1977 masterpiece “The Turning Point” where Shirley MacClaine and Ann Bancroft constantly hover between love and outrage rage for one another as ballerinas who did and didn’t.

The ballerina shoes are barely able to tip toe around the hardwood jealousy floors.

So let’s please all admit it. We’re never going to completely rid ourselves of our pearls of jealousy. Can we reduce it? Can we control it? Can we get the best of it?

In the extremely competitive women’s wrestling industry it would enhance our relationships if we could.

Let’s see what some experts have to say about attempting to get our natural trait in remission.

The noted author Karen Kleinschmidt from Demand Media offers some solutions.

 

Jealousy Is Counterproductive

Step 1

Accept that you feel jealous of your friend. Acknowledge this feeling within yourself and pinpoint what it is that makes you feel this way. Do your best to avoid pushing your jealous feelings away as your friend will likely pick up on your jealousy through facial expressions and/or your actions. Admitting this feeling to yourself will allow you to explore ways to overcome your jealousy.

Step 2

Take action by telling your friends you are proud of them when they accomplish a goal or something of importance. Face-to-face interaction might be too difficult at first, so a phone call, text or email might be a better route if you fear your jealousy will show.

Step 3

Force yourself to congratulate your friend despite your jealous feelings. Raghunathan said in his article that forcing yourself to act as though you are happy for your friend will help you overcome your feelings of jealousy. It works in the same way as forcing a smile when you are less than happy.

Getting Specific

Step 1

Focus on your positive attributes, skills and belongings. If, for example, you are jealous of your friend’s bigger house, Jan Yager, friendship coach and author of “When Friendship Hurts,” points out that it is not impossible to attain. It is much easier, however, to focus on and accept your life and share what is positive about you with your friend.

Step 2

Avoid comparing children. If you can’t help but feel jealous of your friend’s seemingly perfect parenting skills and well-behaved children, Irene Levine, clinical psychologist and author of “Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup With Your Best Friend,” encourages women to remind themselves that families often look perfect to outsiders. If you find this too difficult, do activities together without the children until your feelings are less intense.

Step 3

Love your body. Comparing your body to your friend’s will only bring you down and create more jealousy inside. Susan Shapiro Barash, author of “Toxic Friends,” advises focusing on what you love about your body, accept your shape and body type and make a plan to lose weight or tone up if necessary.

Thanks Karen. Excellent suggestions all.

Perhaps we can consider another source.

The widely known and respected Dr. Phil speaks to jealousy in relationships.

Is your jealousy tearing your relationship apart? Are you jealous of every person in your spouse’s life that came before you? Do you have a hard time trusting your partner because of your past history of being betrayed? Dr. Phil has advice if jealousy is threatening your future.

• Ask yourself why you are choosing this behavior. Everybody has a way of being in the world. Is your way being jealous, accusatory, highly monitoring and smothering? Why are you choosing that?
• Is it because you have a history of being cheated on? There’s an expression: “What I fear, I create.” Are you testing your partner until he just finally fails? If you fear that somebody is going to cheat on you, you may just push him to a point where someone else may grab his attention. Imagine if someone else treated your partner with dignity and respect, didn’t challenge his integrity every minute of every hour, but was in fact accepting and peaceful and harmonious. These are things that really matter. You need to worry about what you’re creating. Ask yourself: Are you responsible for the previous relationships in which you were betrayed? Did you run those previous partners off with your jealous behavior?
• Jealousy is a poorly disguised need for power and control. Jealous people are tyrannical, controlling, domineering and completely insensitive to the impact of their actions on their partner. Are you getting a power trip off of this? Is the payoff that you keep your partner on a short leash and completely under your control?
• Choose to respect your partner and make some different choices. You have more power in your love, respect, personality and magnetism than you do in control. You can’t make him come home, but you can make him want to come home.

Advice for partners of jealous people:

• You teach people how to treat you. It may be working for your partner to be jealous because you are paying him/her off. They get a control fix every time you reassure them, every time you answer the phone to report on your whereabouts. If he/she calls you 10 times to check in on you, answer the phone once to offer information, then turn it off. Stop reinforcing their behavior.
• Although you don’t want to pay your partner off for insecure or controlling behavior, you should be an open book. People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Respect your partner enough to let him/her know where you are, when you will be back, and what you’re doing.

Like laughter, sorrow, love, hate and happiness; jealousy will always be with us. By applying some of the suggestions above, at least we place ourselves in a position to temporarily unclasp the pearls around our neck.

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Sources: brainyquote.com, Wikipedia, fciwomenswrestling.com, fciwomenswrestling2.com, FCI Elite Competitor, https://femcompetitor.com, photos thank you Wikimedia Commons.

http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/343

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/overcome-jealousy-within-friendships-7801.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Swan-Mindaugas_Urbonas.jpg#/media/File:Black_Swan-Mindaugas_Urbonas.jpg

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