How to Stop Being Jealous and Insecure

Learning how to stop being jealous and insecure is important for your romantic relationship, but it's critical for your own happiness. After all, you might break up with your partner, but you gotta live with you for the rest of your life. 

This post may contain affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I'd receive a commission if you purchase through my link. Please read full disclosure here.

Are y’all ready for me to be way too honest again? Just remember that as awkward as it may be for me to give details about my own journey of learning how to stop being jealous and insecure, my oversharing serves a purpose. I figure you’ll either relate (maybe more than you want to admit) or you’ll feel better about yourself by comparison. 

Recently I wrote about the real reason women feel jealous and insecure, and I received so much feedback, I decided to write more on the topic. I thought it might be a good idea to share some practical tips that have helped me learn how to stop being jealous and insecure. (I highly suggest reading the first article just because it’s a good foundation for this one.)

Have a truthful conversation with yourself.

First things first, jealousy isn’t really about the other person or what that person has. It’s about what you feel like you don’t have. So, in my personal opinion, the most significant thing you can do is heal your own insecurities with a heavy dose of self love and brutal honesty.

We all have our own definitions of attractiveness, and we’re inspired to confidence in different ways. So, what is it that would make you feel more beautiful and confident?

Is it going to the gym and getting fit? Buying new clothes? Getting your hair done? Getting a boob job? Having a spray tan?

Now, let me be very clear about this. I am not saying that you should have to change in order to love or accept yourself.  However, I do believe there is a misconception out there that loving yourself means you won’t feel inspired to change anything. 

Read now: How to Love Your Body More || 5 Easy Ways

Do what makes you feel more confident, regardless of what other people think.

For me, learning to love myself made me want to exercise and eat well and meditate. Those things in turn helped me overcome my anxiety and to stop soothing my negative emotions with junk food and alcohol. 

For another person, learning to love herself might mean to stop obsessing over calories and to allow herself pizza more often.

One person’s self acceptance journey might lead her to embrace her crooked nose as a unique feature that helps her stand out. (I broke my nose playing softball as a kid and never had it corrected. High-five to the rest of you quirky-faced motherfuckers out there.)

Another woman may decide to get cosmetic work done to change her nose. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love herself enough. It means she’s doing what the fuck she wants to do, despite the potential judgment of other people. 

Neither path is wrong. We just have to find the path that suits us as individuals and stop judging someone else for making a different decision.

So, if losing weight or getting cosmetic work done genuinely makes you feel more attractive, then I say fuck yes, do it!

BUT - and this is a big but - do not do those things without lining up your energy and learning self love first. Because if you don’t, you’re going to end up really disappointed when you realize that losing weight won’t fix you. Instead, you’ll just keep chasing impossible standards and trying to fill that void with all the wrong things.

You need to have a truthful conversation with yourself about your body, but feel the difference in these two approaches.

“I hate you for this feature and I’m going to do something about it, because you disgust me.”

v.

“I love you. You do so many wonderful things for me. Thank you. I’m going to do some cool things for you, because I appreciate you and you deserve it.”

Learn how to stop feeling jealous and insecure by softening the emotion.

When jealousy strikes, the first thing you need to do is soften it. By that, I mean you need to learn to dull the intensity instead of letting it spiral.

Sometimes we need to stop trying to push through a negative emotion, and just back away from it instead. After all, if an angry bear showed up on your path, they say you're supposed to keep calm -not try to plow through it, right?

In my personal experience, jealousy and insecurity always seemed to show up in their most extreme forms, so if you only deal with a mild case, consider yourself lucky. 

For me, it was often a physical sensation, as dramatic as that sounds. My vision would get blurry, my chest would burn, my throat would tighten. And then most of the time I would torture myself with thoughts that lead to me crying or puking ...or both.

My advice is to do the opposite of that. 

Instead of going down the rabbit hole of thoughts that make you feel worse, back away from the dark tunnel. Find thoughts that bring you a sense of relief. 

An example would be, “Everyone feels a little jealous sometimes. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. Even this woman I’m jealous of probably feels insecure sometimes.”

or, "I know my partner loves me. His awareness of another attractive woman doesn't change that."

Even if it only takes the edge off, it’s a lot harder to stab yourself with a dull blade.

Compliment other women more often.

If you want to know how to stop being jealous and insecure, develop this new habit. Now, kinda like going to the gym, it’s probably going to be excruciating at first, but it’ll get easier the more you do it. And I promise you’ll be glad you stuck with it!

Here’s the thing. You will never be able to truly love your own body while hating someone else’s. As counterintuitive or difficult as it may seem, start finding ways to appreciate other women and believe it or not, you’ll start loving yourself more. Let that be your mantra: Being loving towards others helps me love myself.

Whenever you are in a situation where you feel that burst of jealousy — could be a picture you see online, a woman in a movie scene, a person who is mingling at a party with you, whatever — stop the mental attack you’ve made on her (or yourself) and compliment her in your mind instead. (You don’t have to say it aloud or anything, unless you just genuinely feel inspired to do so.)

She exudes confidence. I’d love to feel that confident some day.

Wow, she’s really pretty. I like to look at pretty things.

She must be committed to the gym and her fitness routine. That’s impressive.

What a nice laugh she has. It’s nice to be around happy people. 

It can help tremendously to start forming this habit of mentally complimenting people throughout your regular life, not just when you’re having a bout of jealousy. A nice bonus is that when you start seeing the best in others, you naturally start seeing yourself in a better light, too. 

Remind yourself that you ALSO find other people attractive.

I used to get really pissed at my partner for my own insecurities. If he happened to have an interaction with an attractive woman, I treated it like some sort of betrayal.

If you ever find yourself feeling like that, take a deep breath and remind yourself that it’s not personal. It doesn’t mean he suddenly doesn’t love you or find you attractive. 

Unless he’s dead, your partner is going to notice when other people are sexy, beautiful, smart, funny and whatever else. Maybe even after he's dead, to be honest. I'm half-convinced that ghosts are lurking around checking us out in the shower. 

I digress.

But be honest, would you want someone else policing your thoughts?

What’s funny about my own personal experience is that I’m a woman who happens to be in a relationship with a man, but I am bisexual. Sometimes I would get mad at my husband over a woman that he didn’t even notice, just because I personally found her striking. How fucked up is that? <insert upside down smiley face here>

Back to the point, we all notice other people. Not only is it a perfectly normal human experience, it’s part of the fun! Yup, even in a healthy, monogamous relationship.

Listen, I lived the life of trying to monitor every thought and move my partner made. It was awful for both of us. Do you know what’s better, what makes me happier and probably makes me a hell of a lot more attractive? Being confident enough that either one of us could acknowledge another person’s attractive trait and it not derail our relationship. 

Purge but don’t poke.

While I believe in looking on the bright side, I’m not a fan of toxic positivity. On this journey of how to stop being jealous and insecure, make sure you’re not suppressing those feelings.

Those emotions exist for a reason, to let you know something’s not quite right. You want to listen to them, to heal yourself - not ignore them. As Abraham Hicks frequently says, don’t use a smiley face sticker to cover an empty gas gauge. 

At the same time, you don’t want to amplify the negative emotions either. That’s just going to make you feel worse in the moment and it will invite future experiences just like it. 

Writing has always been a powerful outlet for me, so I understand that you might find some benefit in journaling or talking to someone about your struggles. I would just caution to pay attention to your delivery. 

One tactic I like to use is to write down what I don’t like about a given situation and then, across from it, write down what I’d prefer to feel instead. Then I turn my attention to the thing I want instead of continuing to hyper focus on what I don’t like. 

It’s one thing to purge yourself of the icky feelings, but you don’t want to poke an open wound too much or you’re just going to spread the infection.

You’ll know the difference by how you feel. Is there a sense of relief, have you soothed yourself? Or does it hurt more now? If you're making yourself feel worse then stop immediately and follow this next step:

DISTRACT YOURSELF. Sorry for yelling, but it's my favorite step on how to stop being jealous and insecure.

This part is so important and had such an impact on me when I was learning how to stop being jealous and insecure. It’s also a lot easier than you might think.

Stop dragging the situation out. You can’t help it if you had a knee jerk reaction to something, but you can stop yourself from continuing to obsess about it.

As I mentioned in the last point, I’m not telling you to suppress the feelings. But for the love of everything holy, just take a break.

Instead of overanalyzing the situation, go read a book. Watch a movie that you love. Take a walk. Call a friend and talk about something lighthearted. Make a cup of coffee and cuddle with the cat. Paint your toenails. Schedule yourself a massage. Get lost in your favorite hobby.

Do something that will distract you in a positive way. If you need to come back to the emotion later, you can at least deal with it when it feels less tender. 

It’s kinda like the equivalent of taking deep breaths and counting to ten when you’re angry. One moment you feel like you could actually hurl a piece of furniture against the wall, and just ten seconds later, you’ve calmed down enough to realize how overly-dramatic that would be.

Do that enough times with your jealousy and one day you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that giant green-eyed monster is actually just a cute little kitten. You’ll pat it on the head and smile that it ever seemed so monstrous and overwhelming to you.

Just one more thing...

You are where you are and it's okay. I try to keep these posts lighthearted because humor is a fantastic coping mechanism. Laugher is the best medicine and all that. But please know that I understand how heart-wrenching and painful it can be when you're trying to figure out how to stop being jealous and insecure. I hope that these tips that helped me on my own personal journey brought you some encouragement and showed you a light at the end of the tunnel.

Don't hide in the darkness. Come out here with me, feel the joy of sunshine on your face. 

Jealous and Insecure? Here's the Real Reason