Elisabeth McKay

And very often parents end up pushing their kids into the things that they like or the things that they think their kids should be doing.

Then you build up this whole external validation loop where they're doing something ultimately for you to get your attention.

And of course, we're actually breeding this whole process.

Whereas if you could take your kid's lead, which often ends up budding in those toddler to early childhood years, and you kind of take their lead and teach them how to commit and drive toward a goal, you end up helping them build true, secure identity rather than that identity being built on some sort of external validation loop.

When we're looking at the emotional addiction cycle behind jealousy, it is very important for us to remind ourselves that jealousy is extremely chemically addicted.

The person develops an emotional fixation around comparison, suspicion, checking on things, right?

Like scanning phones, looking at social media, monitoring, resentment, victimhood, emotional escalation.

And it's because these things actually help justify and build the biochemical intensity.

The nervous system is actually very much patterned to be addicted to outrage, insecurity, obsession, and hypervigilance.

So they are constantly monitoring and checking and measuring.

One of the things that I will say as a just common theme that I see in the relationship space would be a potentially, and this is not always true because everyone knows how I feel about how ridiculous it is that we blame gender for things that are really caused by brain patterns, but a common theme that I do see in my practice is a

An insecure woman who experiences jealousy, who's constantly comparing and checking devices, and the husband may be very secure, maybe he's got a lot going on and he's not maybe overly communicative, and he just expects, like, I haven't done anything wrong, therefore you should trust me, right?

Well, if somebody's jealous, they're going to be looking for things, and what often ends up happening is

Is that you're experiencing confirmation bias and you're actually pushing and looking for things.

And eventually I have seen the boyfriend in said scenario be like, I'm already getting blamed for it.

So like, what, what is, what is the point of this relationship?

I'm always in trouble anyways for something I'm not doing.

So like, what do I do with that?

So in this way, if somebody is already operating from that insecurity and jealousy and they're checking, the jealousy itself will create confirmation bias.

You're going to have completely distorted perceptions.