The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
Earlier this month we asked you what you thought the largest threat to friendships with other Black women was, and many of you said jealousy. So I wanted to dig a little deeper into where jealousy comes from and what we can do about it when it pops up in a friendship.
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Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for Session one seventeen of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. If you follow us on social media, then you know that all month long we've been celebrating a summer of sisterhood by having conversations each day about our relationships with other sisters. So if you miss them, then you definitely want to head on over to our social media pages to jump into those conversations. But something that has come up in the course of this month have been concerns around jealousy and friendships and how this undermines the ability to really make or sustain friendships. So I wanted to spend some time today talking about where jealousy comes from and what we can do about it when it pops up in a friendship. So, jealousy is the feeling that someone is trying to take something you have or you want, and it often comes from a place of scarcity, anger, feeling inadequate, are not confident in who we are and what we're capable of. And if we're talking about this in the confines of a friendship, it may be that we feel like a friend is living a life we could only dream of, or we feel like a friend gets opportunities that we just don't. So what do we do when these kinds of feelings pop up? Here are a few things that I'd like you to consider. Number One, Jealousy is not inherently a bad thing. You're not an evil person because you become jealous, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a bad friend. But it does mean that there's something going on internally that probably needs some attention. I think it's important that we start here because a lot of times what will happen is that we'll feel jealous about something that happens in our friend's life, and all of a sudden, we feel embarrassed, are ashamed that we felt this way, and we then might become very critical of ourselves or shut down towards these feelings, and then we start acting out in ways that are likely harmful to us and our friendship. So I think it's important to acknowledge when we have these feelings and then pay attention to what needs to happen in our lives for us to take care of these feelings. Number two, consider what in your own life you may need to do to feel more confident about your abilities or yourself. This might mean taking some classes or seeking the help of a mentor to further develop skills that need it, or the work might be with a therapist to get a better understanding of how the experiences in your life may have left you feeling less than even though there may be no evidence to support this belief. If your jealousy is driven by a feeling of inadequacy, disbelief probably came from somewhere, and working with a therapist might help you to figure out where it came from and then develop some strategies to lessen the impact that it has on your life. Because even though the jealousy may be showing up most clearly in your relationship with your friend. It's very likely that if you're struggling with feelings of inadequacy, it's probably showing up other places in your life as well. Number three, I want you to think about whether your jealousy is based on something real. So you may think that you know everything about your friend, but do you really so that new job that she's celebrating, What did it take for her to really get there? And yes, the pictures of her and her boo look beautiful on Instagram, but do you really know what's happening behind closed doors? Jealousy is often a part of a story that we've created in our heads that often isn't all the way true. So I want you to consider that you may be putting a lot of energy wishing for something that if you have the full picture, you might not want as much. And if we take it a step further, is her idea of joy and yours the same? Or do you see that it makes her happy and you think it would do the same for you. Sometimes the source of our jealousy is that we haven't tapped into what will make us happy in our own lives, and we need to spend some time doing some work there. Number four, is there any truth to the idea that there is a scarcity of whatever you're jealous about? Like I said earlier, sometimes jealousy develops out of a belief that there is only so much to go around. So she has a great job, you can have a great job too. There's not only one great job. She has a caring relationship. You can cultivate that in your life as well. It is simply not true that there is a finite source of joyful things in this world. So trying not to get so caught up in her joy that you miss out on your own. And I also want you to consider that this scarcity that often fuels our jealousy with others has often been manufactured by somebody else. So this idea that there can only be one black woman who's a tenure track professor in the political science department, is that a system we set up? Or is that a system we've been socialized to buy into that leaves us side eyeing and being snarky with the other sisters in our department. Just think about it. And number five, I wonder if we can create spaces in our friendships to actually talk about these things. I think that in relationship with one another there is a unique possibility for vulnerability, compassion, and healing if we can allow it to happen. So let's say that you feel some jealousy pop up after a friend announces that she's pregnant and you've been struggling to conceive. What might it be like for you and your friend to be able to create a space for one another where she's able to share her excitement and happiness while you also share your sadness and disappointment. Those things do not have to cancel one another out. There's a way for you to show up for her excitement in a way for her to show up in your sadness that can affirm and comfort both of you. But this requires a vulnerability and setting aside of ego to make this happen. But I wonder how much stronger could our relationships be if we're able to get to a point where we can create this. Do you think that this is something that you have in your friendships? So y'all know, I want to hear your thoughts about this. Tell me about your experiences with jealousy and friendships. Were you the one who was jealous or has a friend been jealous of you? And how were you able to resolve it? If you did, share your thoughts with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session. And please go ahead and share this episode with two of your girls right now, texted to them, d emmitt to them, whatever, so that we can continue this conversation. If you're searching for a therapist in your area, be sure to check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue this conversation with other sisters who listen to the podcast, come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective, which is our community where we really take a deep dive into the topics covered on the podcast and practice some new skills with one another. You can join us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y c C. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continue in this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care