Tara Brach

Okay, another victim story.

This is a different kind of expression.

I wrote about this in Radical Compassion, in that book.

This was an executive I worked with who was really caught in anger.

And in the moments of anger he felt quite righteous and right.

But he also was out of control and he knew that it was causing suffering.

A lot of distance and tension with his wife and daughter and strain at work.

So here he was and deep down feeling isolated and a bad person, like he was a bad person.

So we practiced with RAIN, with meditation, and the R recognized was with the anger that would come up.

He had a situation that was making him angry.

the A, allow it to be there.

And then when he began investigating he found that under the anger there was this belief that whoever it was aimed at, you are not respecting me, you are trying to impede me, you should be different.

You should be different.

And with that a feeling of powerlessness and rage.

So that was the victim self.

And he found that it was, when I asked him, well, how old is that victim self?

He found that it was very, very young.

And that that's how he felt when his father, who was a very angry person, would blast at him.

He felt powerless, endangered, hurting.

So again, as I mentioned before, the only way through that wounding is to open to the reality of it.