Break Free From The Identity Of Jealousy EP 91

Hey Topselfers! I have so much to share with you starting today and over the next couple weeks. So I'm really excited about that. 

 Right now, where I am in Indiana, the leaves are changing into the fall colors. It's so beautiful out. There's a chill in the air and this is probably my favorite kind of weather. The sweatshirt or light jacket weather, pumpkin spice flavored everything. And time to start pulling out those boots. That's my favorite part. When I can start pulling down my boots from the top shelf of my closet and pull those out to wear on a daily basis. That's what kind of weather it is right now in Indiana. 

And it's just really apparent that there's a new season coming, a kind of turning of the tides. and it really goes along with the episode topic today, and that's identity and your future self.

If you've caught yourself saying I'm just a jealous person or I just can't help it. I've always been insecure in relationships. Well, today you and I are going to dive into why that identity might be keeping you stuck. And more importantly, what do we do about it.

Today, we're really going to challenge how you're referring to yourself today compared to how you want to be. So stay with me. We're talking about your future self.

I have said this so much, and I think it's like probably one of the biggest initial breakthroughs when someone starts working on jealousy, certainly when I started working on it, was that jealousy isn't who you are. It feels like it, cause it's so big and it's so consuming. It feels like this is who I am and we get really hyper focused on it, but it's just a protective pattern.

And what if you could start experiencing relationship confidence today? Not someday in the distant future but take actions today to start doing that.

I see this all the time in my coaching practice where jealousy sufferers will come to me saying, Oh, I'm such a jealous person. Like this is what I struggle with the most. I am a jealous person. And we say that as if it's written. Into our DNA. And I used to think that too, that was really one of my biggest things.

I really used to think, well, this is just who I am. It's the way that I was made and there's nothing I can do about it. Especially when I had been trying for years to make it go away and to make changes, and I really thought I was working on it and nothing was happening. Nothing was changing. It certainly reinforced that idea of.

Okay, there's no hope, like it really felt hopeless, and I felt doomed, and I felt like I was broken, like something's broken with me and this is just who I am. But the truth is, jealousy is not your identity. It is just a symptom. It's a response to fear. So, think about it. When you say, I'm jealous, you're really locking yourself into that experience and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Every time that your partner talks to another woman or is late responding to your text, do you think, see? I'm jealous. This is just who I am. but what's really happening underneath that jealousy, fear of not being enough, fear of being abandoned, fear of being replaced, fear of not being truly loved, fear of being hurt again, fear of betrayal.

I mean, there's so much to it. And beneath all of that is a deep need for safety. Your brain is trying to protect you by staying hyper vigilant, by controlling situations, by reading into every single little thing. And it's so wild when you start to come on the other side of it and you realize how much energy you're putting into controlling all the situations.

And that part about reading into every little thing, it's almost like every single thing that your partner says, or every move they make, or every phone call they get, or every time they leave work. It feels like an event. It feels like thing that you have to analyze and try to connect the pieces together.

It's so incredibly stressful. We get in such a habit of doing this that we don't even realize how much energy. And how habitual this becomes. Let me, I'll share some examples, um, that I see in my coaching practice. Um, there was someone who was really used to checking her boyfriend's location every hour.And as you all know, that was my big thing for a long time. 

And She'd say, you know, I'm just such an anxious person. I need to know where he is at all times. And when we dug a little bit deeper, we discovered it wasn't really about being anxious. Like you're not, just built an anxious person.

No, it was her brilliant mind trying to create safety through control. And we have this wild thing where we know. I'm not really, like, I'm not really able to control the outcome of situations, or I'm not really able to, to know for sure that this is going to keep me safe. But we try all of these tactics to try to make that happen.

If I can control who my boyfriend or my girlfriend is talking to or who they're around or who they see, then I can control any threat. I can control having to worry about losing them. But you know that that's not true. We still worry, and you logically know, because you're smart, that they are seeing people in the world all the time, and you cannot control everything that happens.

 So we think, oh my gosh, you know, I'm this anxious person. I'm this jealous person, but, it's really, that isn't who you are. It is these habits that you've formed, and these programs based on fear.

 I had another person who would spiral every single time that our partner took too long to text her back. And I have felt that way before. I remember thinking I would be at work and if I text and I didn't hear back, even though we didn't get into an argument. Nothing happened. 

I left for work.He left for work. It was fine. But if I text and I didn't hear back, I would literally, I would actually start thinking. Oh my gosh, did something happen? Is he mad at me? Did something change? Like, did he find somebody else today? Did he meet someone this morning that he now is liking better? I actually thought that this person who I shared a home with would have left at 6:30 in the morning, met someone by 11 a.m. and were ready to leave me.

And I, you know, I'm, I'm laughing about it and kind of making fun because that's, for me, that's, that's how I kind of deal with things and how I also try to find the humor and things to share it a little bit, but it doesn't feel funny in the moment. It feels very, very real.

So I get that whole, like, this is who I am. and this spiraling, you know, what really happened is her nervous system was trained to interpret silence as abandonment. Same with me. Immediately, I would go to, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be abandoned.

I'm going to be left. And of course, you're not thinking those words per se, but that's the fear that's coming up. so then you're really operating from these protective patterns. You feel like or felt before like they were keeping you safe, but really they're just keeping you stuck. This isn't who you are.

It's what you're doing to feel safe. So let's really talk about what's going on when you feel jealous or insecure. It's not actually about your partner or that girl who liked their photo. It's really the feeling of unsafe, this feeling of unsafety. Often, we know that this comes from past experiences that taught you that love, is it reliable?

That's probably one of the biggest things is if, especially if you grew up in a, in a chaotic environment where sometimes your parent or parents or caregiver were loving and sometimes they weren't. So sometimes love felt good and sometimes love felt scary, which then of course we interpret as unreliable. We don't know if we're going to get that love or not get that love, or if it's going to be taken away. And that's where this fear comes from. 

It also can come from early relationships where you felt abandoned, situations where your trust was broken. Of course, we're going to feel maybe unsafe when our trust is broken. Here we are relying [00:12:00] on somebody, leaning into somebody, counting on somebody, and they break our trust. It could also be from times where you weren't chosen.

And I can just distinctly remember when I realized that my husband was for me and it was not the first time someone chose me, but it really did feel like the first time somebody was tempted to and had a very easy, offering to them and they turned it down. and picked me. And I just remember that feeling of like, oh my gosh, this is the first time that I can recall that I knew of that somebody I was with had a temptation offered to them and they didn't take it.

So those times where we're not chosen can really feel unsafe and it can really ramp up our, our feelings of insecurity. On a deeper level, your nervous system has one primary job, keeping you safe. And when it detects a pattern similar to past pain, it sounds the alarm. That's what we call triggering. So think of, you know, if you're walking down the street and you see a dog, if you've been bitten before, your system is going to go into high alert.

Your heart might start racing, your palms feel sweaty, you're ready to run. Is this dog actually dangerous? Maybe not. But your system doesn't want to wait to find out. It reacts based on your past experience. And the same thing happens in our relationships and probably even more so if our partner takes longer than usual to text us back.

Sometimes even that small thing can feel like a trigger and it's very interesting. I just went to Nashville, Tennessee with a great girlfriend of mine, one of my dearest friends, she moved to California when we were 18. And so we've actually had a friendship longer. Since she's lived in California than we did when she was living here in Indiana, but we took a girl's trip to Nashville and it's just so very interesting, you know, different relationships because her and her husband, they weren't necessarily chatting or talking on the phone as much as me and my husband do.

And she said, well, we just have a different relationship than you and not neither good nor bad. I just found it interesting that, you know, someone in my position previously would have been like, that would have been just such a huge deal if I wasn't in communication with my partner, I would have went into this, total freak out mode of, Oh my gosh, here, I'm out of town.

They're already finding somebody else. That's why I'm not hearing from them. But if you're someone who doesn't have those things, if that's not something that you have experienced in the past, you are not going to be triggered by those types of things. And like she wasn't, that was perfectly natural and normal because he felt like, no, this is your trip.

I'm not going to interfere with your trip or take away from your experience and you spending time with your friend. So that's just, they both have that understanding, neither one of them going anywhere, they just had that understanding and it works beautifully for them. So, if you're not someone who, you know, has to have that or, or would feel triggered by it, it's just a completely different way of life.

So there could be, you know, other people who get upset if someone likes their social media post of their partner, or if they mentioned a new coworker or any change. In their routine slightly, if they seem distracted in a conversation. I think as I was getting used to my husband's pretty quiet demeanor, It would freak me out sometimes because he's not a man of many words.

And I would be like, oh my gosh, he's not talking to me. He doesn't like me. He must not like me anymore. He doesn't have anything to say. He's already bored with me. If you have not ever thought, Oh my gosh, they're bored with me. Um, then. You probably don't need to be listening to this podcast because I think we all have thought that so many times.

Like, Oh my gosh, they're, they're so bored with me. I'm just old news and I'm not exciting to them anymore simply because maybe they're just not as conversational that day. So we are all different in potentially what triggers us. Now I know that, If you're listening to this podcast and you experience extreme jealousy, like I typically work with, then a lot of these things probably trigger you, but everybody is a little bit different.

Um, and to others, it might seem like minor things, but to your nervous system, there are potential threats because they match patterns of past pain. so your future self, which is what I really want to talk about today, Understand something crucial. True safety isn't about controlling external circumstances.

It's about trusting your ability to handle whatever comes to you. Knowing that your worth isn't determined by other people. Being able to regulate your nervous system, having clear, healthy boundaries, maintaining your sense of self. in relationships. This is why trying to be less jealous doesn't work. 

You're fighting your brain's safety system instead of reprogramming it and you're going to lose. That is why when I talked earlier about how I would just like get this idea that I was just born this way and I was doomed and there wasn't any change that could ever happen.

It was just in my DNA. That's why I kept doing, you know, when I would fail, it just kept reinforcing that because I was trying to, trying to fight my brain's safety system instead of actually reprogramming it. I was trying to fight against it. I'm always going to lose that battle. You are always going to lose that battle if you're just trying to fight your brain safety system.

It's too powerful. Your future self, the confident woman that you want to be, she actually exists right now. And maybe that's the biggest misconception. And I feel like when I started thinking in this way, it was a complete mind shift of, okay, wait a second. I've got to stop fighting this thing and fighting my own brain's safety system.

And really change it to, hang on, this isn't how I made, this isn't permanent. I just have to reprogram to bring that out. Your future self, your, that person that you want to be, she's not waiting for anything to feel safe. She's not waiting for the perfect relationship. She's not waiting to feel complete trust or to have all the answers. Or for that external validation, she's creating safety from within.

That's how that change is made.

There has to be some reprogramming there. And you can start to access this now. How do you actually make this shift? How do you start being that confident person when everything inside of you is screaming, like, go check their phone, go see who they're texting, ask who's texting them, look at their location, go through their email when everything is telling you that, how do you pull out that confident person that actually exists in you? 

That person that has all the answers and knows exactly what to do, that person is there.So to help you really start this, because I do believe in not necessarily that, that saying a fake it till you make it. It's not that. That confident person, that person who exists within you, that's not fake. It's there. That secure person, that person that has all the answers, that knows exactly what to do, that is best for them, that person exists.

We just have to pull that out. We just got to do some reprogramming to do that. And so to help you, I have created this self-discovery workshop. It's coming up very soon and it's a free two day live virtual experience that's designed to help you identify your specific thought patterns.

There's a great acronym that I will share with you that digs into those thought patterns. You'll also understand your unique triggers, uncover your limiting beliefs that are really there driving everything. Those beliefs drive your actions. If we change the belief, we change the actions. I'm going to help you access your future self's wisdom, create new response patterns, and really start building confidence.

And guess what? It is all free. I wanted to do this for you to help jumpstart this because I, I remember that feeling of I don't even know where to begin. I feel like I've done all these things and nothing's worked. I don't know where else to turn. I don't know what else to do. And you start to feel like you want to give up.

So I'm offering this. We're going to go through all that. Plus you're going to be joining a community of people who get it. They're exactly like you. They understand that anxiety spiral and the constant need for reassurance. There'll be people who are ready to change the pattern just like you.

This isn't just another think positive workshop. This is deep transformational work that'll help you to start changing how you show up in your relationship. So if you're ready to stop waiting and start being that confident man or woman that you know you can be.

And one more thing that I want you to think about here. I actually heard this from Mimi Bouchard, who is the CEO and founder of Superhuman, but

You are actually more your future self version. That you're trying to get to that. That you're actually more that version.

Deep down. We're just gonna take off these layer. Layers that have been covering you up. Because think about it, even when it makes me think of a story, when my son was younger. We were over at my husband's parents' house and he turned on the, um, I can't remember what game it was, but. But where. It has the mat and it tells you what colors to step on and you're, you're dancing basically. 

And he was dancing in front of a room full of people and just having the best time we all had a great time. I was when I knew he was definitely coordinated. 

He ended up being a drummer in high school and he just, it was a blast. And do you know that not even a year later we tried to get him to do it again. He would not do it. Now he was embarrassed by it.

It really is the same when it comes to this. You weren't born a jealous person. You weren't born insecure about yourself. You didn't question gow you looked and if you were acceptable to someone else. But things happened that then start covering up who you really are. So I don't want you to think about this as such this, you know, Well, I have to become someone else. 

No. That future self is already in there. We're just going to start pulling the covers back, pulling those layers back to get back to who you really are. So that you can show up that way in the future.

So join me for the live virtual self-discovery workshop. It's free. It's two days, one hour. 

You can register using the link in the show notes, or you can go to topself.com/workshop and register there. Remember, this is a free workshop, but space is limited to ensure that everybody gets some personal attention. 

You have a choice right now. You can keep identifying with jealousy and insecurity and acting as if and operating as if that is who you are, or you can choose to start being the person that you want to become. You can start right now. Your future self isn't someone that you become someday. They're already there. 

She's someone, he's someone, you choose to be right now. You can do that. 

This two-day workshop is November 4th and November 5th. One hour, November 4th, one hour, November 5th. It will start to change your life. This is the step that you've been looking for. this is potentially where you're going to learn how to do things differently and feel really confident that it isn't just how I'm made. I do have some beliefs back there and some programs that maybe we've got to make some shifts to.

Your future self is really yourself right now. It's just, how do we bring that to the surface? How do we scrape off all that programming, get all of that out there? for that person that you really want to be. I know that it's miserable. It's miserable feeling doomed. It's miserable feeling like you have to check their phone, feeling like you have to check their location, feeling like, Oh my gosh, they didn't text back right away.What's going on? 

I know that you can't focus at work. I know that you're not present with your kids. I know how this is affecting your life. Your future self. 

Let's start getting there now. Until next time, take care. Remember, you're not alone and I'll see you in the workshop. See you there.