How to deal with jealousy or any uncomfortable emotion in 7 steps


letting go

Step 3
How to let go of ineffective coping strategies which conceal your innate healing power

Letting go is essential for true healing.

In the previous step in learning how to deal with jealousy, we focused on bringing more awareness to what is generally most on top and accessible within our conscious awareness when jealousy arises: our ineffective strategies to AVOID feeling jealousy and other strong emotions.

In this step we’re going deeper. We’re beginning to let go of those ineffective strategies. As you let go of the coping mechanisms which lie on the surface of your consciousness, your innate healing Presence, which lies beneath your mental strategies and coping mechanisms, is revealed.

This frees your inner healing Presence to work freely, without being obstructed. Then true healing can take place.

And we don’t have to figure out how to do this. We just need to let go into the healing power of aware Presence, our true Being.


As we go though this "let go step" together, I want to be very clear about a few things first:

  1. I’m not advocating putting yourself in an abusive situation and just saying, “That’s okay, you can treat me badly and I’m just going to take it.” No. Not at all.

    I highly encourage you to do what you need to do to take care of yourself when it is appropriate.

    Tune into the love you have for yourself like we did in Step 1.

    Trust your Heart. Listen to what it is telling you and follow it. As you begin to experience more inner peace while you're learning how to deal with jealousy using the processes in this series, your relationships will generally change or end, as they gradually reflect the peace you realize within.

  2. Regarding the list of what to let go of below, I’m not implying that any of what I’m recommending you let go of in this exercise is “bad.” You don’t have to “drop” your relationship. Unless, of course, your Inner Guidance is telling you to do that.

    What I AM recommending is to become consciously aware of the attachments which are causing you pain, and to play with letting go of them. Any attachment eventually keeps us stuck and in pain and obscures our awareness of the Peace WE are in the background of all experience.



True healing can only be accomplished by the reality of Beingness, which you already are in this moment


How do we consciously access the truth of Beingness? 

By letting go of everything else. EVERYTHING.

At first this can seem not only daunting, but even impossible. How can you let go of EVERYTHING?

The answer is simple: You only need to let of of everything in THIS moment.


Awareness, Consciousness, Beingness, Presence, or whatever name we use to describe reality, IS this moment. This present NOW. The very aliveness which is looking out of your eyes right now.

As we begin this step in learning how to deal with jealousy together…

Once again, to invite the energy of jealousy or whatever emotion you are working with to come up into your awareness:

  1. Think of a situation where you feel / felt jealousy. 

  2. Pretend the people involved are physically in the room with you now.

Letting go of the coping mechanisms which get in the way of healing in THIS moment

As we did in Step 2, check to see if any familiar (or new) coping mechanisms, habits that serve to distract you from what you are feeling, are arising right now in this moment. 

Then…


For just THIS moment...

Decline to follow any of the coping tendencies which are arising now as you bring up your jealousy situation in your mind. 

Decline to obey and follow what the old impulses are telling you to do.

Don’t panic!

I’m not saying that for the rest of your life you can never do those behaviors. That would be incredibly unrealistic and not even necessary.

We're just talking about THIS moment.

The truth is, there only ever IS this moment. We are only ever alive NOW. The events of our lives always move through THIS present moment.

The reality of who we are is the aliveness itself which is here right now – the aliveness you ARE already. Always here and always now.

So… for just THIS moment, in learning how to deal with jealousy, don’t follow the habitual coping impulse(s) you noticed in Step 2.

Play with how it feels to not do what the habit is telling you to do. Let it / them go for just this moment.

For instance, if you notice the urge to grab a cup of coffee when you think of a situation which triggered jealousy within you and you imagine the people involved in that situation are in the room with you right now, just for THIS moment, don’t go get the coffee. 

Are you struggling? I’m here to support you.

Are you struggling?
I’m here to support you.

You can get it later if you want, but for right NOW, feel the intensity of the energy which is here, uncovered, when you decline to avoid it with a habitual distraction. 

Even if you can only do this for a few seconds, it will still begin to bring more loving Consciousness to the inner pain beneath the coping mechanism. 

Your mind might tell you that you won’t be able to stand the intensity that arises if you don’t follow the old habit. However, I assure you, you can stand it for THIS moment. (I know this from my own experience, dealing with numerous addictions in exactly this way.)

Stay with the discomfort for as long as you can before heading toward the coffee pot.

You’ll find this is much easier to do if you don’t listen to your thoughts and instead keep your attention on the sensations within (you’ll learn more about how to do this in the next steps). 

The mind can perceive this as needing to “tough it out” or “grin and bear it” as you allow the intensity to arise without following the old habit.

However, you don’t need to do this from the mind, and actually can’t do it effectively from the mind. 

Instead, it is choosing to keep attention on what you’re experiencing rather than your thoughts ABOUT what you’re experiencing.

In the following steps we’ll focus more on bringing loving attention to the actual feelings and sensations arising.

But for now, we are just playing with the experience of how it feels to let go, to not be driven by our old, ineffective coping strategies as we gradually learn how to deal with jealousy.

How to let go

This short exercise will give you an energetic experience of what it’s like to let go, a kind of experiential reference point that is a direct parallel to the work we are doing together in this step in learning how to deal with jealousy. 


  1. Find a small, soft object that will fit into your hand to work with, such as a corner of a towel, your clothing, or a sock.

  2. Grasp the object tightly, enclosing your fist firmly around it. 

  3. Squeeze it as hard as you can.

  4. As you do that, notice the strain and tension in your hand and forearm. This will give you a small conscious experience of the even tighter “fists” of emotional energy most of us have within us (consciously, unconsciously, or semi-consciously) from emotional hurts.

  5. Now, decide to let go of the object and simply let it go. Let it fall out of your hand.



How does that feel?

Notice that in order to let go you didn’t really have to DO anything. Actually, all you did was DECLINE to do what you’d already been doing.

You relaxed and let go. :-)


Now let’s apply this to letting go of avoidance strategies

Play with letting go of each experience in the list below for JUST THIS MOMENT and notice how you feel as you do it. 

Take  .  .  .  .  .  each .  .  .  .  .  one .  .  .  .  .  S   L   O   W   L   Y .  .  .  .  .

Don’t rush through this. Take time to FEEL the letting go. Do one at a time, taking at least 5 minutes (and more is better!) for each one and feeling the experience of letting go, one step at a time.

To really help you learn how to deal with jealousy, I even recommend focusing on each separate item below in one sitting of a half hour or so. Then  take a break for awhile and let the energy of the letting go continue in you.

Then when you're ready, move on to the next one.

1. Release your grasp on:

  • your partner

  • the way you feel when you’re with them

  • the feelings evoked when you feel important to them

  • mental concepts or pictures of your relationship with them

  • blaming or judging yourself or the people involved in the situation which evokes jealousy

2. Let go of the effort to control anything. 

The truth is, we aren’t in control of our lives, as much as we TRY to control it.

When you look at your life up to this point, were you able to control the way it has gone? Has it turned out the way you planned?

  • Let go of trying to protect or defend yourself.

  • Decline to try to make yourself feel larger instead of small. Allow yourself to feel diminished.

  • Rather than trying to keep everything together, let it all fall apart.

  • Decline to try to repair anything within yourself, your relationship, anyone involved, or the situation itself.

  • Let everything unresolved BE unresolved. 

  • Be willing to let all possible outcomes of your situation be unknown.

  • Let your entire experience of jealousy be as it is. Play with tuning into an inner “YES” to:
  • Everything you are personally experiencing

  • Everything related to your jealousy situation, including the people involved and everything that is happening

3. Notice and tune into any inner feelings of vulnerability and let them simply be here without trying to manage them in any way.


Again, I’m only recommending that you play and experiment with each one of these suggestions in THIS MOMENT.

Don’t tell yourself you have to do this forever, because then the mind starts to freak out and you leave the present moment which is the only place where you can effectively learn how to deal with jealousy.

True healing only occurs in the present moment.


As you do this step, it will probably bring up fear and resistance

Doing this step in learning how to deal with jealousy may feel quite strange at first because we’re so used to living our lives within the dictates of our tight coping mechanisms.

Most of us are so identified with our habits that even the very idea of letting them go can sound like WE are being threatened. The mind believes that we are a little “me” who all these coping mechanisms are designed to protect.

We generally have a tremendous amount of concepts about ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously, and our identification with those concepts comes more into awareness in this step. 

This is what produces the fear. Our identification with what we thought we actually ARE feels threatened.

Let them all go, just for THIS moment. None of it is who you actually are. The “me” the old habits are designed to protect is actually only a concept.

And YOU are not a concept. You are the Consciousness which sees them. You are the Aliveness shining through your eyes right now as you read this.




What will you get out of this practice?

If you stay with this step in learning how to deal with jealousy and practice it regularly, you’ll gradually begin to feel more free of your concepts, tight coping mechanisms, and fear.

Begin with just letting go (as described in the steps above) for just a few seconds. Then gradually extend the time, to one minute, then two… continuing to increase the time.

If fear and resistance arise, simply let them come up and don’t do anything with them other than just seeing it. Decline to follow your thoughts about them. In the next steps in learning how to deal with jealousy you’ll learn more about how to just let them be here as they are, and eventually they unwind on their own.

Decline to label it as “fear” or “resistance.” Then they are simply energy. Life force!

The more deeply you practice this letting go step, you’ll gradually begin to feel a loosening and unwinding of an old, tight sense of yourself, which is incredibly freeing.

What is actually happening is you’re becoming free of a CONCEPT of yourself. YOU are not a self-concept. You’re not a “good” self-concept or a “bad” one. 

You are the Awareness which sees them. You cannot be defined or  limited by ANY concept.


Please be patient with yourself

Chances are good that since the old familiar coping habits are either years old or lifetimes old, they are still going to arise for awhile as you're learning how to deal with jealousy.

In my experience healing isn’t a straight shot. It’s generally an up and down process. 


When we’re ready to heal, (and you're here, so you’re ready!) we open and let go to the extent that we can. Gradually we feel relief. 

Then the next layer of unconsciousness is triggered and revealed and it can feel “not so good” for awhile as you work with the letting go steps for THAT deeper layer.

Then you begin to feel relief. Then the next deeper layer of unconsciousness comes up…. and so it goes.


Eventually, the more you stay with this practice in learning how to deal with jealousy, the energy fueling the old habits dissipates and the ineffective coping habits do too because they are no longer necessary. 

The old ineffective coping practices that distract us from healing let go by themselves layer by layer as we begin to discover they aren’t needed.

If you broke your leg, you’d probably need a crutch for awhile. Then as your leg gradually healed you’d need the crutch less and less. Finally, at one point, you wouldn’t need it at all.

The same is true of our avoidance habit “crutches.”

In the organic healing process of letting go, gradually you’ll begin to experience the Peace which you already ARE which previously seemed covered up by the avoidance habits.

Consequently, you will cling to the coping habits less and less because they simply get in the way of your experience of yourself as Peace, Consciousness. 

And as I said before, us humans tend to repeat what feels good. :-)


acceptance

I'll see you in Step 4!
Learn how to open the doors of healing with acceptance  


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