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50. Jealousy or Envy: Which One is Sabotaging Your Life after Divorce · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, this is Dawn and you're listening to Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the post-divorce life and you, the woman who lives it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We cover everything from trauma during and after divorce to feeling like a stranger in your own life and the new frontier of life as a single woman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: We're cozy in for the conversations we've been longing to have about this new life.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, full disclosure.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I am a little hyper today and we're gonna talk about jealousy on the pod, but first I have gossip.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So this is my first episode back since we were in Times Square on Spring Break and if you follow me on Instagram and you watch my stories, you saw that we had a billboard.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Actually, we had at 1.3 billboards in Times Square on Easter weekend and we went for Spring Break and we did a photo shoot and, oh my goodness, there will be so much to come about that, but it was just a really exciting time, really surreal.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: There is definitely a photo of me ugly crying the first time I saw the billboard of the podcast in Times Square.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for being here, because without you, love yes, you like literally you without you there is no podcast and there is no billboard and there is no Dear Divorce Diary.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You are it, you are us, we.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So the other thing we have to gossip about is again, if you watch my Instagram stories, before we left, i ordered these really beautiful pink pens that say Dear Divorce Diary on them and I asked you all to vote on which pen I should order, and all of that right.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So we ended up ordering 700 pens and on the trip in the airports, handed out 500 of them.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: So and this is a this is turning into a thing So you may be coming to the pod because you found a pen or I don't know, but I will tell you I loved handing them out.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: We were in the airports and went to a lot of the restaurants and bars and gave pens to people who really need them, like bartenders and servers and gate agents at the airport, and it felt so good to give somebody something that they could use, and hopefully, somebody who could use the podcast finds the pen right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So that was really joyful.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: And if you found the pen, hit me up on Instagram.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I want to know.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: So that was super fun.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here on the adventure.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: All right, jealousy.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Oh man, how have we not covered this topic before?
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: right, such a good topic.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: But first, before we really dig into jealousy, we have to break down the difference between envy and jealousy, because there are there are two different shades of a similar sensation, and so I really learned this difference via Brené Brown's book Atlas of the Heart, and until I read her breakdown of jealousy versus envy, i didn't know there was a difference.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And she didn't know there was a difference until she did the research and she got all of her research data back on all the various emotions and really understood that there was a striking difference between the two.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So here we go.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Jealousy is the experience of a third party coming in between your relationship with another person, and that third party could be literally another person.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So you may have experienced this pre-divorce right Jealousy in your relationship, and maybe it was an affair, or maybe it was his phone or his job or his mom or I don't know right.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: But jealousy is the function of a third party coming in between your relationship.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Envy is the experience of somebody having something you want and you don't have it right.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So just feel how those two things feel a little different.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Now what's fun is that the jealousy that you felt during your marriage inevitably rears its ugly head again in a post divorce life.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I've seen it happen time and time again, especially when you start dating.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Because when you start dating you don't know where you stand, you don't have all that lived history, you struggle to trust yourself and your intuition and you're still struggling to trust other people.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And so, from an insecure or mixed up attachment style, when someone you're dating has other interests and and other responsibilities and other places where they like to spend their time, it is very easy for you to fall into that jealousy trap like is this coming between us or do I have it twisted right?
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So that's a really interesting thing to take a look at.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But I think that jealousy is really common.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I think that when, especially when we have an insecure attachment style, it is easy to feel jealous of how mom treats you and your sister differently, or when your kids start dating and their time is taken doing X, y or Z, or, you know, when your best friend goes on a trip with somebody else and you couldn't go right Like.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Jealousy is just such a common visceral human emotion that's super primal and it has this feeling like somebody is in your territory and listen, territorial conflict is huge.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: There is a whole school of thought that says that a lot of the root cause of heart attacks is territorial conflict.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Right, so, so territorial conflict is so powerful it can potentially initiate a heart attack like, goodness, gracious, and it makes sense, right, the heart, our love center, where we feel love or experience relationships.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So know that literally, jealousy can become life or death.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Wow that all of a sudden this got really heavy.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk more about dealing with jealousy, but let's also take a look at envy, because envy is the thing that you're probably experiencing in the very acute post divorce phase.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Because so often I hear women say, don, he's moving on and he looks happy, and I hate it, and so much of that is probably envy.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Now, what's interesting about that is he probably isn't as happy as you think he is.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: He could be right, and we're not really here to judge or assess that, but things aren't.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Things are rarely what they seem.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Love like period in life Just put that feather in your cap.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Things are rarely what they seem for anyone anywhere, right?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So don't hang too much on your observation of what his post-averse life is.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: But either which way what you're seeing is kicking up this thing that he has something that you want and it's not fair and it sucks that he has it and you don't have it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: But the thing about envy is it's coming from a place of scarcity.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It's coming from like deep down, if you peel back the layers of what's going on inside of you.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: It's coming from a place where you are afraid you can't have the thing, because if you had the thing that you perceive he has, i don't think you'd be feeling this way at all.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And so just notice where you have a really limiting negative belief there about maybe it's not in the cards for you or maybe it's not fair that he has it first.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And I need you to pivot away from that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I need you to get to the root whether you use journaling or EFT tapping or EMDR or any number of tools right To get to the root of what is it underneath your envy that he has something that you want?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: What is it underneath there that you are disbelieving it is available to you?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Because envy is absolutely a vote against yourself.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: It is a vote against your personal power.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: If we take it to the furthest place, it is a vote in favor of victimhood on a certain level.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Right, i can't.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: What if I can't?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And so love you can.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You can do anything You want to do.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: May it take some rolling up your sleeves and getting to like hard work, for sure.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: But if you want it, bad enough, love it's yours.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: And once you set that intention and you get your beliefs in order that you can, then it's just a matter of managing your vibration and following the clues right.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Following the clues And PS, this podcast is one of your clues So I want you to notice is what you're struggling with right now More jealousy or more envy?
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: In some ways, envy, i think, is a little easier to tackle because it's I haven't really thought this through far enough to know if what I just said is absolutely true, but envy is like it's like okay, we got to identify your negative belief, we got to switch it to a positive belief and then we got to keep you on track, right, you just got to stay tapped into your personal power and into your belief that you can, and then you just got to keep going.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Like that's how we tackle envy.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Jealousy, on the other hand, has a lot of more complicated stuff woven into it, your stuff around attachment style, your stuff around trust, the anxiety that you chronically experience, the difficulty knowing whether or not you're tapped into your intuition or if you're really wrapped up in your thoughts and your feelings and they're running the show.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Because jealousy it's definitely a beautiful sign that something is out of alignment.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: So in your marriage when you were experiencing jealousy, it was a sign right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: It was like something's out of alignment.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Here I need something that I'm not receiving Now the hows and the whys and the wins of it all like we're not going to do that whole autopsy right here from when you were married.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But it was definitely a flag that something out of alignment When you feel it in your friendships or in your family relationships or in your dating of relationships, the what that's out of alignment is an interesting inquiry, because it isn't your attachment style that's not in alignment.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Is it your difficulty trusting yourself or others that's out of alignment?
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Is it that you're disconnected from your intuition and that's what's out of alignment?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: You see love, because when we're disconnected from our intuition, then you end up relying on your thoughts and your emotions to tell you which thing to do next.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But our thoughts and our emotions, well, they are useful and they provide us a lot of guidance, and we often give them too much weight.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Too often we think that our thoughts are truth and we think that our feelings are truth, and most of the time literally most of the time our thoughts and our feelings are not true.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And so this is your call that, if you are experiencing a lot of jealousy, to know that in many ways, jealousy is a form of anxiety or insecurity, and what it's primarily calling you to do, it could be calling you to set different boundaries or to make certain requests.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: In your relationship, whether it's with your bestie or your mom or the person you're dating or whatever right, you may be needing to ask for more, and maybe that is a very reasonable request.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But if you don't feel clear about if that's coming from intuition or anxiety, or if you have not found a more secure attachment style, if you have not created a more secure attachment style where you can tolerate the people who you love, whom you are closest to, you can tolerate some healthy separation from them, then it may not yet be time to make the relationship request or to change a boundary right.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: So much of this work, love.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So much of our healing work is about self with self And then, of course, a lot of that.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Then, once we've done the really kind of foundational work to getting really grounded in the truth of who we are, then we can start setting healthier boundaries with the people around us.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes we get ourselves even more worked up because I feel jealous, so I set a boundary, or I think I set a boundary, but what I've really done is I've made a request and then you don't listen to my request, and then it feels like you violated my boundary.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Well, i probably didn't even right, because there's a difference between a request and a boundary.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And if we don't know that, if we don't understand the difference between a request and a boundary, right, and so now I'm mad at you that you violated my boundary, which probably wasn't even a boundary.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: You know, and and and now I'm in this rabbit hole of upsetness.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Right now my amygdala, the part of my brain that's a little almond size, part of my brain that gets triggered.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: You know, when I'm feeling kind of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, whatever, i'm super upset and I'm in this rabbit hole of what you're doing to hurt me versus kind of side stepping all of that and saying, oh, i feel jealous.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I need to take a look at where I am struggling with the negative belief that I'm not enough, that I'm not worth it, that I've, that I should have done something different or I should have done something better, or that I can't trust myself or others.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Right, so which one of those negative beliefs I just listed off?
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: which one of those like just lit up like a mega watt light bulb for you right now?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: right And so then?
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: so then we have to do our bilateral stimulation or our EFT, tapping on that negative belief.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And we got to switch it to a positive.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: We got to desensitize all of those programs that you have running that keep reinforcing your belief that you're not good enough or you're not worth it, or you can't trust, or you should have done something better.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: It's all garbage.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: All of that's garbage.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: They're the stories you keep telling yourself.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And then we got to get you really grounded in the belief that you are enough, you've done enough, that you are absolutely lovable, that you can learn to trust.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: And then, once those things feel really solid, then we take another look at it and we say, okay, now what requests do we need to make or what boundaries do we need to set, and if that sounds like it's a journey and it doesn't happen overnight, yep, yep, and what I love about about the way that I work with clients in particular, is that that it shortcuts that journey so much, because so much of when the journey feels too heavy and too long, we lose momentum, right?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: If you've been listening for a while, maybe you've heard me talk about how I've been on the Noom app lately, right, and it's.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I hate to call it a weight loss app, because that's not exactly what I'm using it for, but we'll call it like a mind body wellness app that helps me track my meals, so it helps me understand more about what I'm eating and which types of foods I need to eat more or less of, or whatever right, so that I can have holistic health.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And so Noom was created by psychologists, and so they use a lot of psychology to help me stay motivated and engaged and to understand that motivation comes with surges and slumps, and so, love, in this healing recovery journey, you're going to have surges where you feel super motivated, and you're going to have slumps, and that's normal, and it's it's.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: This process really is about, yes, being able to see that it's a long haul.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Right, consistency is queen, always, always, always, consistency is queen You're going to.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: You know, i tell people all the time if you came to see me once a month at the end of the year, you would be 10x better than going to, than going to different therapists who doesn't use EMDR, eft, tapping and homeopathy and all the other things.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: You could go to that therapist every week for a year and not make the same progress as you do with me coming once a month.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Because it's about having the right strategy that actually moves the needle.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And so we understand that when we get bogged down in a process where it's overwhelming, then it's hard for us to stay in the surges.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Right, we we have more slumps than surges, and so if jealousy is a hop and topic for you, really, really, really, this is your call to action to get really strategic about the strategy you're using to clear up your self worth, because your self worth is what's really contributing to your difficulty managing the jealousy.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Now, as a quick tip to get clearer about that, i want you to think about when do you feel most grounded?
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: When do you feel most at peace?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: When do you feel most clear and not bogged down by anxiety or monkey mind, right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And so when you think about as you're hearing me talk about this the times in your life or in your day where you feel best So for me that would be sitting outside or in the shower, typically either of those places I can get pretty clear Or after working out, right, like getting off the peloton or after lifting weights with Colleen.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So in those moments of clarity, if I revisit a pain point, it's easier for me to be in solution.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: So I want you to think about the moments in your day where you're the most grounded and then take a look at okay, what do I need to do next to tackle jealousy?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: What is my intuition saying to me about tackling this?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Is my intuition saying that it's a them thing Or it's a me thing, or both?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So that's the like, if we take it really stripped down, right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Ask yourself this question When you're most grounded is this something where you need to make a request or set a boundary with them, or you need to address self-esteem in a deeper, more meaningful way, or both?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: And if you can just get clear on that piece intuitively, then you know what your next step is, or your next steps, right?
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: So Jealousy can cause us to do really wild things.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: You know Some of you out there that went to high school with me.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You know that we did some of those late night drive-bys on our boyfriend's houses, right.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And why did we do that?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: We did it out of jealousy.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: There was this deep insecurity and we would drive by and where are they?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Who are they with, you know?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: are there other girls around?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: What are they doing?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And where do I rank in any of this, right?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So for me, this was a process that started unfolding really early.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: There was even this time oh gosh, for some of you, if you're listening to this, you know where we would leave a voicemail right On the answering machine and then say, oh god, can I break in and delete it?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: There's got to be a movie about that, right?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Like, can I break in and delete the the answering machine message before he gets it?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Because jealousy can make us say and do crazy things.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And so if you're experiencing that with your ex and you're noticing that you're circling the drain about Envy actually him living his best life post divorce, or, you know, really struggling with jealousy in the world of post divorce dating, i would encourage you to really pump the brakes, like Slow it all down and breathe deeply and get grounded before you act on feelings of envy or jealousy, because It's probably going to be a toxic Behavior that you use.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Probably right, i can't say absolutely, but Because it's not coming from a place of grounded self-worth, it's coming from a place of buying into disempowerment, codependency and and Functioning from a nervous system that is dysregulated.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Because when we feel really triggered about a thing, triggered about a thing, we're not in a regulated place, we're in that fight flight, freeze fawn space.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want you to respond to jealousy or envy with fight flight, freeze fawn, because none of those are going to solve the problem, they're only going to make it bigger and they're only going to delay your internal peace.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So Your homework is to get grounded and ask yourself those questions Is it them, is it me, or is it both?
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and then to do some journaling, some eft tapping Around what is the negative belief about yourself That is driving this jealousy or this envy?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And then to recommit to your healing journey, because when you're committed to your healing journey, noom asks me to recommit to my big y all the time, every, every, i think, once a week they asked me to revisit my goal and to recommit to it.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And it's an interesting, powerful process, right?
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Because it says, okay, reek, and then you got to click a button that says I commit.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, i just made a deal with myself.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Am I going to be true to myself Or am I going to betray my own commitments, right?
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: All right, so you have your homework.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Go find a pen, write in your journal about it.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Peace, deer.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachJohn.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: You can find more at MyCoachJohncom.