Step 3. Stop Jealous Self-Talk

Refuse to engage in the jealous self-talk.

If you worked through the above exercise involving identifying the irrational self-talk about the jealousy, you have probably identified some statements that occur frequently. Sometimes there may not be a clear statement, but instead, you may have images. Frequently, jealous people will have images of their loved one with another person. Images are often more powerful than the thoughts and can easily occur with great frequency.

Once you have identified the jealous self-talk or the jealous images, it is important to reduce the frequency of these thoughts. The more you allow these thoughts or images, the more you reinforce your belief in them and they appear more real to you. Images are especially powerful in this regard. So, for many people it is not enough to just identify the irrational thoughts and challenge their accuracy, it is also crucial to work on stopping the irrational thoughts and images.

The techniques that help do this are called "thought-stopping techniques" and they can take a variety of forms. You might try several different ones to determine what works best for you or you might develop one that works according to your best reinforcement style. For instance, a person who is strongly visual and is being distressed by images causing jealousy, may try to picture a stop sign or a big "X" whenever the images occur. This procedure can even be reinforced initially by using an actual picture of a stop sign that you look at whenever you have the images.

In addition, you could practice the thought-stopping by spending 20 minutes a day deliberately creating the images in your mind and then immediately stopping them by looking at the stop sign and visualizing it. So in a single practice session you could create the image a hundred times and stop it with the visual stop sign. The purpose of this exercise is that when the image should occur unexpectedly, you will be more prepared for it.

Another technique is to firmly tell yourself "Stop!" whenever a jealous thought occurs. Again, you could do similar practice sessions of deliberately creating the thought and telling yourself "Stop!" immediately afterward. If the "Stop!" isn't enough to disrupt the thought process, you may try saying it aloud during your practice sessions or pair it with a loud obnoxious noise like a whistle. The pairing will allow you to disrupt the thought so that eventually just thinking "Stop!" will be enough.

Another technique is the rubber band technique which involves wearing a rubber band on your wrist and snapping it whenever you have a jealous thought or image. All of these techniques are considered aversive conditioning techniques and the rubber band technique is the most aversive since it involves a mild pain stimulus. The purpose of aversive conditioning techniques is to teach your brain that is not okay to engage in the jealous thinking or images. Therefore, you prevent your brain from traveling down that automatic pathway of jealous thoughts and images. You are creating a choice for yourself.