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Hi, my name is Dr. Sheila Campbell and I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor with Thriveworks in Decatur, Georgia. Thank you for this opportunity to answer a question posed by a community member. The question that I’m answering today is, “How do I stop being jealous and insecure in my relationship?”

To understand this, we have to understand that a root cause of jealousy and insecurity is not feeling good about oneself. Jealousy and insecurity can rear its ugly head in any relationship and our friendships and yes, even in our professional relationships.

But sticking to the question in our relationships, we need to take a moment to understand that some of the jealousy and insecurity may be for a valid reason, but if we’re looking at it from the standpoint about us not feeling good about ourselves, we have to take a moment to sort of peel back the layers of the onion in some of the jealousy and insecurity coming from previous relationships, baggage, so to speak, that I would say that we are carrying, that we’re projecting into an otherwise healthy relationship.

Sometimes we need to be able to communicate to our partners and to our friendships about how we’re feeling. Sometimes we need to be able to talk with a professional or someone to help us to understand how previous experiences are affecting an otherwise healthy relationship. But I think a big, big aspect of this is what are you doing to feel good about yourself?

We often compare ourselves to other people, other relationships, and even unrealistically the things that we see on television. It’s like chasing the wind. It’s unrealistic to think that everything that everyone else does, we’re going to be able to do. We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. We all have failures, but many times we focus on the failures and forget about the things that we do well. It’s important that if you want to be better, that you focus on what are those things that you do well?

Let’s understand. Failure serves a purpose. Yes, we can grow from those failures. We can learn to be better. We can learn to be better in a specific task at our jobs, whatever it is, but we can’t focus on allowing one thing that has happened to help us or to contribute to us feeling bad. What are those things that you do well? How do we take those failures or take those lemons so to speak and turn them into lemonade?

We continually are inundated with what this is the right thing to do. This is the new color. This is the size that we should be. But remember, you all are very unique individuals. You are not an accident. Of course we all have things that we can tweak and we can improve on, but we need to take a moment to take a deep breath and remember that as unique individuals that I am not and you are not meant to be like other people.

Of course we have similarities, but understand even identical twins have differences. You have your own goals, your own inspirations for things that are important to you. Many times we get so caught up in our relationships that we forget ourselves. We need to have a more balanced and healthier life with the end, the relationship.

So I encourage you, take a deep breath. Remember your positive qualities, improve on those things that you can improve on, but also don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not meant to be like Jane or John. You are uniquely you, and that is a wonderful thing. We are here to assist you in being the best version of yourself. Please reach out to us and let us know what we’re able to do to help. Thank you for your time and for this opportunity.