Dear Sandra,

I get angry a lot, and I feel the pain of how I throw my hurt all the way around the planet, disturbing lifeforms everywhere. I have this crummy feeling that I have contributed to other people's pain when I've been reactive and angry with them.

I just feel like such a criminal in this moment and I am crying away this pain as I write. I see that I could kill myself with anger.

I've been told to have more softness and care for myself and yet my job (I run a small business) triggers my anger daily. I often feel people are out to get me, and I don't trust them.

I am ready for change. I want to break the patterns of anger and self blame I get into. I want to stop hurting other people.

I feel so badly about how I've felt about a particular person I am going to the ocean today to slip a little something into the water that is going to have her name all over it and it is going travel to her and be so charged with the power of love.

M.

Dear M.,

I feel a strong line of sincerity in what you say - a pull to change how you are with people, a pull to look at your stuff.

In what you write it appears you have a sentimental way of manipulating your feelings, and a kind of self inflation, a belief that you have enormous power over others.

For me sentimentality is the flip side of suppressed feeling. By 'feeling' I mean the place of connection, the gentle inner place where everything is sensed. Emotion has little to do with feeling - it is drama, something to 'show'. True feeling can actually be overwhelming; there is so much to 'sense' that if we really connect with this place we think we will go mad. Instead, we shut down. Expressing emotion can be a way to make up for shutting down this very alive, feeling place.

Sentimentality is usually not as dramatic as emotion, it's a further twisting of emotion so it 'looks nice'; and it's a dissociation. For example, we feel 'sorry for all the homeless children' - we feel righteously angry that they are homeless, so terribly sad for them. Now I'm not saying that the plight of homeless children should not concern us. I am saying that the projection of our own hurts on to the children is dissociation. We don't want to feel our own hurts. It's easier to be emotional and sentimental about other people's hurts.

Self inflation - this is flip side of low self esteem. When I have identified with being a 'bad person' of some kind, I want to deny this, and the way to do this is to inflate myself - make myself important, powerful, wonderful.

Usually what we believe about ourselves we believe about others - so perhaps if you believe you have such a powerful effect on others, you believe that others have a similar effect on you. I think we all do affect each other, but I'm sensing a very volatile, unsafe world that you have created for yourself, with yourself at the center. It's a world where other people have enormous power over you, a world where they can hurt you badly. It's a world where you believe you hurt others terribly, and consequently you feel bad about yourself, angry with yourself. You also feel others hurt you, and again you feel angry. You feel bad you got angry, because this hurts others, and so it goes on.

The cycle of emotion can be quite addictive. Literally. Dramatic emotions send chemicals into the body, and the body gets used to these. It makes us feel 'alive', larger than life almost, and yet further blocks out the far more sensitive inner place of feeling, where true aliveness exists.

If you want to live a different way, breaking the addictive cycle begins with acknowledging that you are actually in an addictive cycle. There is nothing to 'do'; other than to bring your awareness each time your anger is triggered, each time you sense a pull into creating emotion. Just notice. And be gentle with yourself, not, perhaps, in a sentimental way, but a simple allowing for what is going on, without judgement.

Experiment with letting whatever feeling or emotion you experience flow fully through the body, without 'doing' anything with it. This can take a bit of practice - it's very uncomfortable at first not to 'do' something when a strong feeling state manifests in the body. We want to 'dump' the feeling somewhere, even it's just hammering at a pillow.

Instead, experiment with bring your attention to your breathing, your skin, and the sensations inside your belly. If your mind starts up a cycle of blaming others or self-blame, gently bring your attention back to the body. Don't hold onto the sensations, just notice them. Breathe. Go for a slow walk, if it helps. Include in your awareness the trees, the sky, the sensation underneath your feet.

In time your body will discover new ways of experiencing feelings, and become less attached to the chemicals of dramatic emotion. Actually, your feeling state will become richer, more attuned to subtlety. There will be less of a swing from a 'high' state to a 'low' state, you will find yourself more responsive and less reactive, more joyful in each moment, and you will truly discover who you are. There will be no need to make yourself more than or less than, it wont be part of the equation any more.

Go slowly.

Sandra