Acceptance of Thoughts and Emotions
Foundational CBTWe talked about thoughts, things that you try to do to get rid of your jealousy, like, you know, to ruminate so I can maybe figure out what's going on, you know, check with him, ask him questions, you know, see what he's doing. Get the answers. Get all the answers. And And we talked about how the jealousy thoughts sort of hijack you and that you think you have to do something when you have them. And then I suggested, do you chase the ambulance down the street when you hear that? When you hear background noise in the city, do you stop and listen to it all the time.
You got it took you a while to get used to it. And so Yeah. If we think about the goal, the goal is not to get rid of the jealousy. It's to make room for it and to have a less less impact on you. That'd be great. Why would that be helpful if you could accept some jealousy, do you think? Well, from the standpoint of, it's never gonna go away. Because when we talked last, you said that and that's a good way for me to think about it is that the reason why I have these feelings is because I love him so much.
And so as long as I have such strong feelings for him in that way, then probably the jealousy will always be there. Right. Yeah. It's difficult. So how do we think about those thoughts? So we have the pure mind that black and white have to get rid of all those painful and negative thoughts. But what if we thought about your mind and your soul as a symphony, like a mozart symphony or a beethoven symphony with so many different notes and different movements.
And the jealousy notes are in there, but it's all there. Symphony, all the notes are important. The jealousy notes are just some of the notes. It's a good way to think about it. Are they like the the trombones? They could. I know it could be any any instrument. The percussion. I don't know. But if if it were just, like, some of the notes in the symphony, what is the larger symphony that makes up you and Rick.
Susan and Rick Symphony, by Mozart, it's, it's love, it's care, it's compassion, It's, laughter, it's joy. It's often sometimes it's sadness if one is sad, the other can lift the other person up. Uhm, it's peace. So when you talked about-- you focus on the jealousy. I gotta get rid of that. But what if we put it into the context of this large symphony that goes on for an hour has different movements ups and downs slow, you know, e flat and f sharp or, you know, everything is there.
All of it's true. All of its trip. All of its necessary. I see that. I see that. I just I I I don't like the way I feel when I'm feeling the jealousy. So I don't I don't wanna feel like that feeling is necessary. So how can I make that feeling? How can I experience that feeling in a way that feels like a symphony less like a trumpet solo, you know?
Because you're going into a different movement. And the different movement could be love and tenderness, could be other things that are a part of your life. But what happens when you have an intense emotion? Is you get fixed on it. It's almost like you, you get trapped by it. What if you saw, okay, this is the jealousy movement, and then we're gonna go into some other movements the love movement, the dance, the up movement, the joy. You know, this is just one of the movements. How can I do that on my own?
Well, I think first to say, this is part of the symphony, and I'm the symphony. I am music, That's who you are. Right? You're and you're not just one note. You're not just the, you know, one one little note. Like, oh, that's the one. Oh, yeah. I know her. She's one note. Uh-huh. No. She's an entire symphony.
It's just one part of who we are to each other. Yeah. That's really beautiful. It's a beautiful metaphor. Helpful. It will be helpful for me to think of that symphony in those situations for sure. Why would that help, you think? Because then maybe I can focus on some of the other parts that even if he's not there, I can think about the love or think about the tenderness or think about the passion instead of focusing on that one sound or that one ambulance. It's not just one sound. It's all the sounds together, and they're all trim.