Jealousy has a mind of its own. When we are jealous, we are often hijacked by thoughts and feelings that make us think that we are unraveling, that our world is falling apart, and that something needs to be done immediately. We think we need the answer right now, that our feelings will escalate unless we get rid of them immediately, and that our partner will betray us unless we control things right now. The alarms are going off, blaring, driving us mad. We are hijacked by the thoughts and feelings of the jealous mind.
All our emotions have evolved to tell us about our needs and any threats to our welfare. As described in chapter 1, jealousy is an evolved and complex emotion that has been maintained because it ties into our need to protect our genetic investment, and to ensure that offspring have the best protection and support that they can have. But when our thoughts and feelings are intense, we are not reflecting on this—or even on the facts. We are responding to the primitive, and powerful, alarm in our head. We are hijacked.
When we are jealous, our threat-detection system is activated. We look for any sign that our partner might be interested in someone else—or that someone else is interested in him or her. We view other people as imminent threats, and our partner’s thoughts and feelings become potential signs of betrayal. Our minds are determined to find clues—no matter how small and subtle they might be.
In this chapter, we will explore how our minds operate when we are in Jealousy Mode, which is a combination of thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strategies, and communications that often operate together. Jealousy Mode is triggered by our threat-detection system when it determines that something might be going on. Once we are caught up in the Jealousy Mode, we have a difficult time stepping away from it. Our emotions escalate. When Jealousy Mode is activated and running the show, it has dramatic effects, including taking things personally, mindreading, predicting catastrophes, applying impossible standards and rules to our relationship, activating worry as a way to cope with the unknown, and dwelling on all the negatives—imaginary or real—that our mind can dredge up. As a result, we become anxious, agitated, angry, and depressed. In this chapter, we’ll consider how our predispositions may escalate our jealousy, maintain it, and lead us to take actions that we might regret later.
There are four parts of the jealous mind: core beliefs, rule-books, biased thinking, and worry and rumination.25 Each component reinforces the others, keeping us locked into a system that does the following: maintains, and elaborates on, initial threat detection; magnifies the importance of events; directs us to confirm our fears; and keeps us stuck imagining what could happen or what we think has happened. Let’s take a closer look at each of these components.
We have core beliefs about ourselves and others that direct our jealous thinking. Core beliefs are generalities that describe how we think about things. They create habitual biases that we often are not aware of. For example, a core belief about the self might be, “I am unlovable”—not interesting, attractive, desirable, or able to maintain the love of other people. This core belief is the lens through which you see the world, but you seldom realize that you are wearing a lens. Imagine wearing dark sunglasses all the time, which make everything seem dimmer and darker than they are. If you don’t realize that you have these glasses on, you end up thinking that the world is always dark. That is what a core belief does. It’s a lens that biases the way you see things.
You may have put on your jealousy lens. You see everything through that lens, and very little lightness or positivity can get through to you. You are locked into your own perspective.
We can mistake our beliefs and thoughts for facts. It happens frequently. Here’s a scenario that shows how this works. Say you are in a strange city and it’s late at night. You are alone, walking back to your hotel. There is no one else on the street. Suddenly, you hear two men walking at a fast pace behind you. You think, “These guys are going to mug me—they might even kill me.” Your thought of danger leads you to become extremely anxious and afraid, you walk faster, and worry that you might not make it.
But wait. What if you had a different thought? What if you thought, “Those are two guys from the conference. They are probably heading back to the same hotel.” You don’t feel anxious, you might even feel relieved. You take your time.
In both cases, the initial facts are the same—being on the street, late at night, with two strangers walking more quickly behind you. What differs is your interpretation of the facts, whether it is dangerous or not dangerous. Our interpretations can be true or false.
When we are anxious, angry, or sad we often treat our thoughts as if they are facts. The thoughts appear in your head and you then reach conclusions: your partner must be interested in someone else, he or she will betray you, you are no longer loved or special. But not all thoughts are true, and you won’t know until you check out the facts.
Imagine if I said to you, “I think I am a zebra.” You would look at me in disbelief, thinking I am insane. I then insist: “I believe, 100 percent, that I am a zebra.” How do we figure out whether my confidence is merited? We look at the facts. I look in the mirror and I am astounded to see I don’t have any stripes. I don’t look like a horse.
When we are angry or anxious, we often treat our thoughts as if they are true. Our confidence that we are correct becomes the proof. But believing something to be true doesn’t make it so, and our confidence is not really evidence.
Identify the core beliefs floating around in your mind that contribute to jealousy. Then look at facts and logic to determine the truth. You may be right—maybe your partner is planning on cheating—or you may not be right.
Core beliefs that contribute to jealousy are negative thoughts that we treat as absolutely true. Here are some common ones.
We can also have core beliefs about other people. One core belief is that people are judgmental. This can lead to jealousy because you believe that any negative judgment your partner may have will threaten the relationship. You hold the impossible standard that your partner has to like everything about you. In addition, this focus may lead you to believe that your partner—and other people—are constantly thinking that you are inferior. With a core belief about the harshness of others, your self-esteem becomes fragile as you assume that if someone doesn’t like something about you, then you must be inferior or undesirable. Your self-esteem goes up and down, depending on how you think other people are evaluating you in any given moment.
A consequence of core beliefs is a confirmation bias.26 This is our automatic tendency to seek out information that confirms our preexisting beliefs. We are seldom conscious of this bias—it’s our minds on autopilot, searching the environment for information that proves we are right.
So if you have the core belief that you are boring, then you will automatically see evidence of it when someone yawns. If someone changes the topic, it means that what you’re saying has nothing valuable to contribute. You only see information consistent with your current belief.
Memory is also directed toward information that confirms our core beliefs. When people are depressed, they selectively recall failure, rejection, and disappointment. Their memories are directed by current moods and negative beliefs about themselves. The same is true with our core beliefs about ourselves—we selectively remember information that is consistent with an idea that we are not lovable or interesting or able to maintain relationships. It’s not that we want to suffer—this happens simply because our mind is running in automatic mode. Later in the book, you’ll learn techniques that you can use to slow down your thinking and examine the full range of evidence in a less biased way.
The same confirmation bias operates when we think of other people. For example, if you think that others are untrustworthy, you selectively notice and recall information that confirms that other people lie, cheat, and manipulate. I have heard both men and women express core beliefs that “Men can’t be trusted” and “Women can’t be trusted.” Of course you can find evidence of both men and women to confirm your negative belief, but you can also find a lot of evidence that argues against it.
The problem is that we tend to focus on whatever confirms our preexisting beliefs. Core beliefs are overly general (men can’t be trusted), rigid (they are applied relentlessly), and directed by confirmation bias (seeking out information consistent with the belief). Consider this simple example of confirmation bias in jealousy. Let’s say you have a core belief that people can’t be trusted and your mind is off and running to confirm this. You can engage in mindreading (“My wife is lying,” “She is interested in someone else,” or “She finds me boring”). You have selective attention to the slightest detail of possibility: the yoga mat is at home, therefore she is lying. Then you might notice that she is looking at her boss and infer, through more mindreading, that she is interested in having an affair with him. You start predicting the future with almost no evidence, while discounting any signs that she is committed to you, because that is not consistent with your core belief that she—like others—cannot be trusted.
| Core Belief: |
People are not trustworthy. |
|---|---|
| Look for Clues: |
“My wife said she was at yoga, but I saw her mat at home.” |
| Discount Anything Positive About the Relationship: |
“She kisses me goodnight, and every night I wonder who else she’s kissed that day.” |
| Magnify Negatives: |
“I can’t stop thinking about the way my wife was looking at her boss.” |
What happens when a core belief comes up against information that is not consistent with the belief? For example, you find that you can trust your female doctor. You will discount the new evidence by thinking something like, “There are always exceptions to the rule, but everyone knows that women can’t be trusted.”
We further maintain our core beliefs by relying on anecdotes. Anecdotes are memorable—we pay attention to them, we remember them. “Don’t you recall how our friend Susan’s husband cheated on her?” These anecdotes are often quite vivid. You can form a picture in your mind, you might know the person, and your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But one anecdote is not evidence for the whole world, is it?
Our minds did not evolve to think about percentages or base rates—that is, the percentage of people who are faithful and trustworthy. We put much more emphasis on information that has a story and a picture. That’s why the news loves to show dramatic videos of things happening. Who wants to look at a graph when you can watch a car crashing into a wall?
We also rely on biased information—information that is memorable, has an anecdote, and seems personally relevant to us. It’s like googling the word “accident” and up comes 418,000,000 results. So we conclude that we should be strapped to our chairs with helmets and never leave our houses. We don’t google “safety” or “likelihood of an accident.” So our results will bias us toward the belief that the world is dangerous. The same thing happens with our jealousy and our core beliefs. We keep proving ourselves right.
Most of our core beliefs about ourselves are established during childhood. Here are some common ones that fuel jealousy.
Think about your core beliefs about yourself and other people. Are there any significant patterns? Can you recall how your childhood experiences, or experiences across the entire span of your life, may have reinforced certain beliefs about yourself and other people? Here’s an example.
Gwen’s father was usually busy at work—even when he was at home—and he had little time for her. As a child, she didn’t realize that her father really loved her and thought she was smart and creative. But he was compulsive about work, dedicated to his research, and anxious that he was falling behind. As a result, she found herself reliving this scene with others, seeking out approval from men who were unavailable, ungiving, and often secretive.
Reflecting on your core beliefs about yourself and others may help you understand which factors can fuel your jealousy at times. Consider the following questions in terms of your childhood and significant adult relationships.
We all have vulnerabilities, we all have imperfect childhoods and imperfect parents, and we all have imperfect relationships. But some of us become more hurt, disappointed, or simply confused about things. These painful experiences can leave a mark on us. They linger on in the jealous mind.
The second part of the jealous mind is having rule-books. These are rules, ideas, and assumptions that we have about ourselves and other people. They are often framed this way: “If this happens, then that needs to happen.” For example, I have a rule so I don’t get wet when it rains. If there is a high probability of rain, then I carry an umbrella.
Rule-books seem to operate automatically, almost like a thinking reflex that leads us to immediately believe something before we have time to look at the facts. Rule-books might be lying under the surface, but we can reflect on patterns of anxiety, anger, and sadness to see whether we have rules that contribute to jealousy.
Your rules may make you think that, if you follow these guidelines, then you will be able to predict and control what will happen. They may seem important to you because you assume that they will protect you. You may think that your rules are realistic, ensuring that you won’t be duped, that you can predict what will happen, that you will be able to control things, and that you might be able to get out of a situation before it’s too late. But your rules may also lead you to overreact, jump to conclusions, and undermine yourself.
These rules apply to other people, ourselves, and our relationships. We can have them about how people should relate to us, think about us, and feel about us. They can tell us what we think we need to do. And they can fuel jealousy. Let’s take a closer look at some of the implicit rules and assumptions that can reside in the jealous mind. Consider the following rules we commonly have, and see whether any apply to you.
What are the consequences of these rules? Let’s look at this one: “If my partner really loved me, he or she would never find anyone else interesting or attractive.” Here are some questions to ponder to assess how realistic this rule is.
No one will live up to the expectations behind this rule. So having it will guarantee that you will feel disappointed, insecure, and jealous. How about a different thought, one that might be more realistic and adaptive: “There are many people who are also attractive and interesting, but that doesn’t mean my partner doesn’t love me or that he or she will betray me.” Consider the advantages of this new thought. Is it realistic?
Let’s look at this rule: “I need to have a relationship in order to be happy.” What are the consequences of this rule for you?
As much as we may love our partner and derive great satisfaction from our relationship, is it really essential that we have this particular relationship? We may think and feel it is essential, but it is very likely that you have had meaning, satisfaction, and happiness before this relationship. Therefore, it is likely that even if this relationship didn’t work out, you would be able to thrive again.
Let’s consider the consequences for another rule: “I should always know exactly where my partner is, what he or she is doing, and who he or she is with.”
Here are questions to ask about one more rule: “My partner should tell me everything that he or she is thinking and feeling.”
If your rules demand perfection, absolute certainty, total happiness, and satisfaction all the time—then you are dooming yourself to frustration, misery, and jealousy. Reflect on your pattern of jealousy and frustration. Ask yourself what rules you are using. Would you be better off with more acceptance, less perfectionism, and more flexibility? Do you know people who have less demanding and intrusive rules? Are they always miserable?
A third part of our thinking style includes common biases in thinking that can lead to distortions. These are thoughts that come to you automatically—spontaneously—as if they are thinking reflexes biased toward distrust and jealousy.
It may be that your thought turns out to be true—maybe your partner is thinking about someone else and, it’s possible, that your partner might cheat on you. But the important thing to notice here is that you may be biased toward these threats, even when they are not accurate. Here are twelve common biases in thinking that might contribute to your jealousy. Take a look and see whether any are familiar to you.
These automatic, negative thoughts feed your rules or assumptions: “If she likes someone else, then she will betray me.” This confirms a core belief: “I am unlovable.”
Here’s how this might work. It is possible to have an accurate thought that your partner is thinking of another man that she finds attractive. Because you have a rule that “If my partner finds other men attractive, then she will betray me,” you get anxious and angry. Your accurate thought may feed into a core belief about yourself: that you are inadequate, less attractive, boring, or defective in some way. You become depressed and self-protective.
Kevin is planning on going to a party with Stacey, his girlfriend, and her ex-boyfriend will be there. He thinks:
You can see how Kevin goes through a cascade of negative thoughts that lead him to conclude that she might dump him and go back to Allen, and that if this happened his life would not be worth living. Look closely at how your negative, biased thoughts may contribute to your jealousy.
A fourth aspect of jealous thinking is relying on negative predictions about the future (worry) and dwelling on negatives from the past or present (rumination). Worry and rumination are similar processes and involve getting stuck on a negative thought.27 This is when we get hijacked by our thoughts—the thought appears and we are taken along for a ride.
You might have the negative thought, “He finds that other woman attractive,” and you could respond by dismissing the thought as irrelevant, or you might accept the idea that we all find many people attractive. With these responses, you don’t get stuck on the thought—you let it go. But if you worry about it, your mind spins around like a wheel stuck in the mud—the more you think about what might happen, the more negatives come up. You begin thinking about how your partner might be more interested in someone else, you get more anxious and angry, and you can’t get the thought out of your head. If you ruminate, you recall a negative in the past—“I remember that at a party last month he was talking to Angie a lot”—and you dwell on it, continually bringing it up in your head.
Because we generally feel much worse when we worry or ruminate, why do we do it? We worry because we think it might help us.28 Worry is usually about “What if?” while rumination is often about “Why?” When we are jealous, we think, “I need to worry about the future in order to be prepared and not get caught off guard.” Or we believe we need to ruminate because we will be able to figure things out and solve the problem. In this way, worry and rumination seem like strategies for coping with threats of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment. Jealousy can even be thought of as angry, agitated worry.29
The problem with repetitive worry is that it eventually leads to more anxiety and depression. It’s like opening a file cabinet filled with the worst things that you can imagine and then rummaging through it for hours. You are partnering with negatives, aligning your thoughts with them. It’s like your moods, your thoughts, and your reality are all the same. You have a hard time stepping back, observing that a thought is just a thought or a mood that will pass. You are not only likely to feel much worse, but you are also likely to miss out on the positives in your life at the present moment. You can’t enjoy your present life when you focus on imaginary negatives.
Another problem is that you often worry because you cannot accept uncertainty—not knowing for sure really bothers you. You think uncertainty means that something bad will happen, that it is a sign of something being hidden from you. Perhaps most importantly, you think that it’s possible to get certainty.30 You might believe that, if you keep thinking about it, then you will gain absolute certainty.
But there is no certainty in an uncertain world. It is a fruitless and impossible quest that locks you into a repetitive, negative cycle. Each time you come up with the idea “I think I can trust him,” you ask another question: “But can I be absolutely sure?” Then you reject any positives and go back to worry. In chapters 6, 7, and 8, we will look at a number of powerful techniques that you can use immediately to set aside these worries and get on with your life.
Rumination, or dwelling on the negative, is similar to worry but tends to focus on past events or asking yourself questions that never seem to have an answer, such as “Why is this happening?” or “When will I ever feel better?” People who ruminate are more likely to get depressed and stay depressed. When we ruminate, we often believe we can figure things out, get all the information, make sense of everything, and get the complete picture.31 We keep spinning around, asking ourselves—or our partner—unanswerable questions, then rejecting any answers we get as incomplete, unsatisfying, and even deceptive. Ruminating prevents us from participating in our lives: we do not enjoy what is going on right in front of us, we are seldom in the present moment where life is happening, and we are dredging up negative, unanswerable questions.32
I began this chapter by describing the Jealousy Mode, and the jealous mind is one part of that mode. The other parts—which we will soon discuss—include your emotions, your behaviors, the ways you communicate, and your coping strategies. So let’s put all aspects of the jealous mind together to help you understand the way you think first.
We each start with some core beliefs about ourselves and other people. Let’s say my core beliefs are that I am not good enough to be lovable and that others cannot be trusted. This is then coupled with rule-books, which say that “I have to be perfect to be loved” and “My partner has to like everything about me.” The idea is that if I try to be perfect, then my basic unlovability will not emerge and lead to rejection. My rule-book about others says, “Other people are a threat to my relationship” or “If my partner finds someone else to be attractive or interesting, then she will betray me.” So I start looking for clues, discounting positives about my partner, and worrying about the future.
Because I start with the core belief that “I am not good enough to be lovable,” the assumption follows that “I must be perfect for my partner to stay with me.” So I selectively focus on my imperfections, exaggerate the importance of them, and assume that this means my relationship is in jeopardy. Then I engage in mindreading (“My partner thinks I am boring”), personalizing (“She yawned because she has lost interest”), and fortunetelling (“She will find someone else”). The Jealousy Mode keeps me locked into reinforcing my jealousy, testing my partner, doubting myself, and increasing my anxiety and anger. It’s like stepping on the gas pedal and acting surprised that I am accelerating off a cliff.
Another way of looking at our own jealous mind is to start with the negative, biased thinking—our automatic thoughts—and then work down to our core assumptions. So, let’s imagine that I think my partner is bored with me right now. Why would that bother me? (After all, all of us are boring some of the time.) Well, it bothers me because I then activate my rule-book, which says, “I must be perfect to keep my partner’s interest.” It is the rule-book and the assumption that give intensity and importance to the negative thought “I sound boring.” Perhaps if you didn’t have that rule-book, you could accept being boring some of the time.
It’s helpful to also look at why it would be so upsetting if my partner left me for someone else. Because I think I am unlovable—boring and unattractive—she would confirm those beliefs by leaving. Whereas if I thought I was interesting and attractive, I might instead think, “While it would be very unpleasant if she betrayed me, because I have qualities other women might want, I would find someone else.”
Once my core beliefs about myself and others are activated, my rule-books are also activated. This leads me to activate my threat detection—looking for clues (“She wasn’t actually at her mother’s house”), engaging in mindreading (“Who is she thinking about?”), or taking things personally (“She is silent because she is bored with me”). I then activate the coping strategies we will soon discuss—worry, rumination, interrogating, testing, provoking, withdrawing—to find out what is really going on. My partner withdraws further from me, becomes angry with me, and this fuels my belief that things are falling apart. All of the thoughts, rules, and beliefs lead me to coping strategies that only make matters worse. Jealousy Mode has taken over and I am at risk of ruining my relationship.
| Core Beliefs | Rule-Books | Biased Thinking |
|---|---|---|
|
Self: “I am unlovable.” |
“I must be perfect to be loved.” “My partner has to like everything about me.” |
I focus on my negatives. I discount any of my positives. |
|
Others: “I can’t trust people in intimate relationships.” |
“Other people are a threat to my relationship.” “If my partner finds someone else to be attractive or interesting, she will betray me.” |
Mindreading: “My partner finds him appealing.” Personalizing: “I must be losing my appeal.” Fortunetelling: “She will betray me.” |
Do you ever feel like Sarah? Her jealousy seems to overwhelm her at times.
“When Kent is gone on a business trip, I feel so lonely, so desperate, I just can’t stand it. I keep imagining that he is flirting with other women and then I feel this rush of anxiety, like I am going to go crazy. I don’t know what to do. It’s like this feeling comes over me, in the pit of my stomach, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I don’t have words to describe this feeling—it’s like a terror. My heart is beating so rapidly, I want to cry. Sometimes I cry. I feel that I am losing control.”
Sarah’s experience is not unusual. She feels overwhelmed with her feelings and realizes that she has so many different feelings. She thinks they are so intense that she will go insane. She fears that if she doesn’t get rid of these feelings, they will escalate, get worse, and lead her to lose control. She feels bewildered, helpless, and overwhelmed.
Jealousy is not simply being plagued by a set of thoughts or assumptions. In fact, your thought “My partner is interested in someone else” may be only part of the struggle going on in your mind. It’s more likely you are bothered by all the emotions that go with the thoughts. These include:
These emotions may come to you in waves—one after another, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing, sometimes making you feel numb. You may think, at times, that you have no control over these emotions because they are so intense, so immediate, and so automatic. It’s hard to imagine that these emotions might be temporary, that a few hours from now your emotions might be different.
When you are in Jealous Mode, you feel carried away by these emotions—as if there is nothing that you can do except follow them, be captured by them, and surrender to them. It’s as if the present-moment emotion rules you. You may lash out, withdraw, threaten, or say things that you later regret. It is these emotions, you think, that have driven you to say and do things that you may later wish you had never said or done.
This experience is Emotional Hijacking, and it is frightening because you believe that you are a victim of overwhelming emotions. Sometimes it seems that your emotions don’t make any sense, that what provoked a jealous rage turns out to be so minor when the reality eventually emerges later. Sometimes you think that, if you don’t understand why your emotions are so intense, it means you are helpless: “What I don’t understand, I can’t control.” Plus, when you experience these emotions, you think that they will go on forever—they will escalate to overwhelm you. You respond by saying to yourself, “I can’t stand having these feelings,” and you think that you have to get rid of them—immediately. And this Emotional Hijacking of your mind and heart leads you to interrogate, attack, withdraw, and threaten. See whether any of these thoughts about emotions are familiar to you.
As you read these statements, try to be honest about how you think. They reflect a wide range of problematic beliefs about emotion, including beliefs that your emotions (like anger, anxiety, sadness, and helplessness) are out of control, will last indefinitely, are different from the emotions of other people, don’t make sense, and have to be eliminated immediately.
Your emotions are blasting like a fire alarm that signals a catastrophe.
But emotions are experiences that are going on inside you. The fire alarm is not the same thing as the fire. The emotions are crying out. Soon you will see how you can: acknowledge every emotion that you have; validate your right to have whatever feelings that you feel; accept them for the moment; and step back and examine your thoughts, your feelings, your relationship, the events that are occurring—or that you suspect to be occurring—and the options available to you.
For many of us, there is nothing so horrifying as Emotional Hijacking. You don’t want to feel that your heart and mind can be taken over, and that your emotions can override your daily experience. But you can’t eliminate your emotions and you can’t live without them. Certain things come with the territory. Where there is love, there is always the possibility of jealousy.
You have seen so far how jealousy has evolved, how it is universal, how we find it in babies and animals. You are not alone. These emotions are intense—but like all emotions, they subside with time. It doesn’t seem that way when you are hijacked. But what if you knew that whatever you feel in this moment, you will not feel at a later moment? What if you knew that the things provoking your jealousy, right now, will be things you will feel indifferent about at a later time? Reflecting on past experiences of this is hard to access in the middle of Emotional Hijacking, but take a moment now and try to recall things that bothered you a few years ago. Has the intensity of your feelings about them subsided?
In part III, we will review a wide range of valuable and powerful techniques that you can use to help you cope with the intensity of Emotional Hijacking. We will develop a plan so that you can identify the triggers, step away from the situation, and acknowledge that the feelings are in the present moment. Then you can consider options for disentangling yourself from the intensity and acting in your interest—not based on your emotions.
You can start by validating your jealousy—it is a painful, overwhelming, difficult experience. You are not alone. This book was written for you, to help you understand that these emotions are part of being human, and to help you see that another part of being human is being able to step away from emotion, not act on reflex, and keep options in front of you.
When you are hijacked by jealousy, you may think that you are on a roller coaster, terrified and screaming as you rush down into the depths of your emotions. You think that this will go on forever or that you are going to crash. It’s like a catastrophe is exploding in front of you. But there are three ways to ride a roller coaster: go along for the ride, slow it down, or get off. You have a choice.
In the next chapter, we will review some of the problematic things that you say or do when you have these jealous thoughts and feelings. I call them “strategies” because you may think that these responses to your jealousy will help you, or that you have no choice because you feel so overwhelmed. Then, in chapter 6, we will look at how you can step away for a moment, step back, accept the feelings for the present, and live alongside the feelings and thoughts that previously hijacked you and carried you away.
The emotions and thoughts will pass. But you will still be here.