Question: How do you begin to be open, when the pain and anger is so strong? How do I support my loved ones when I feel so cold inside? Is it fear that is keeping me locked up in this pain?

Answer: It may seem difficult to understand at first, but we must come to a new understanding that there are parts of ourselves that sit in direct opposition to our wish to be happy, whole, and loving human beings. In this instance, any fear that we have of expressing what we really feel towards another (as long as we are not being cruel, or otherwise just venting vicious states) is really the fear of somehow losing ourselves.

Let me briefly explain this idea: to begin with, we all know (more or less) that there lives within us an unconscious violence — a kind of untamed rage that given its leash would run away with us, and run over whomever else is in its way. So we swallow our anger and frustration in the face of relationships with others that ignite it. We don’t want to lose control of ourselves, or have other people see us as being out of control. As a result, we resist the pressure of our own negative states until they finally can no longer be suppressed, at which point we finally explode, producing the very unwanted result we had hoped to avoid. Clearly this approach of suppressing one’s negative states doesn’t work.

On the so-called “positive” side of this equation, we also fear (at times) expressing the depth and breadth of our love for someone; we sense (and often properly so) that telling someone we just can’t live without them will give them license to do toward us whatever they feel like doing because we told them the extent of our dependency upon them. So again, we fear losing ourselves to a situation that seems greater than our ability to deal with.

What’s the solution to this seeming dual edged sword upon which we dance? If we see the truth of our interior state, then there is only one action we can take: we must do what we fear doing. In this instance, we must ask ourselves what’s more important to us? Do we want to be someone who remains outside of a relationship and a captive of it at the same time — for fear of what may happen should we speak our heart (no matter how poorly this may be done, by the way)… or do we want to be free of these love limiting, resentment producing fear states, regardless the cost? This is a question you must answer for yourself.