Bitterness, Hate, Resentment, Disdain

[unhappyfarang]

I am currently sick to the soul with these negative emotions and am harbouring feelings of deep ill-feeling towards the people in my life. Family, friends and co - workers, even the public at large.

I am living in the UK with a Thai wife of 6 years who has a very pleasant, calm personality. It is almost impossibe to have any bad feeling towards her so she is exempt from my negativity. It is my fellow Countryman/woman I am having problems with, also my circumstances.

At the moment I have even gone so far as to consider cutting family and "friends" out of my life for good. I have a whole range of physical symtoms stemming from extremley powerful ,negative, almost evil feelings. I am trapped in an incredibly stressful job, have mounting debt, marital problems (occasionally), and live within the socio-economic class/area, due to my limited resources, that I was born into, and I abhor with all my heart and soul.

It feels like I am in hel_l. My fellow Countryman seem S/ficial, t/surface, greedy and out for themselves. In traffic I look at the visable unhappiness and "ugliness" of others - A reflection of myself prehaps? I have noticed that friends haven't been in touch with me for a long time - which suits me down to the ground, but no doubt my negativity and cynical/caustic attitude is the reason. My resenting them is causing them to distance themselves from me? This MUST be Karma.

My siblings insecurity, dysfunction and their limited world view. People that have never been to Thailand and don't have the "Thailand thing". People embrassing proffessional sports, pleasure seekers, cars, fashions, sham/pretence, selfishness, godlessness, spiritually dead consumer minded work zombies - The ignorant w-class, the prentencious middle-class, people that don't stop and aknoweldge their pointless existence, people that have no apppreciation for natures handiwork.

My father was a spritually enlightened man - or so everybody thought. He took his life when I was 23. I have a raging depression, a mind out of control, nobody to talk to (that makes any sense) and a refusual to return to my "family" home to see my mother and insecure sister/s that can't seem to prize themselves from her side.

I have a 23 year old white-trash, slutty, fashion concious, binge drinking kid sister who is still living at home, being waited on hand and foot by my ageing mother who is reaping the benefits of staying as a child but at the same time is adult enoughto be "ravaged" in her teddy bear-filled F*** Den by her nethanderal, "bodybuilder" boyfriend. This makes me sick. So sick I can't even be in the same room as the ignorant little B***h and listen to the gibbersih, unenlightened talk that spills out of her mouth.

I could go on and on. I am really not liking Westeners ( In the real sense) at all at the moment. My wife seems on the whole unaffected and tells me to have compassion. But Western/ers are sometimes difficult for her too.

I need something. What would a Buddist recommend - peace, love, tranqulity are feeling that I just can't seem to create - unless in a room, prehaps on my own. I spend most of my spare time wondering in Nature "wondering about the madness I see all around me" then I see a dog walker who can barley be bothered to aknowledge me and I'm reminded why I don't like my fellow countrymen very much.

Phew!

[markwhite]

Given the depth of your feelings, I would recommend counselling first.

Meditation might bring you to the places where you seem to want to end up one day, but in the process you'll dig up a lot of difficult feelings and it sounds like you have enough difficulty dealing with them now.

The 'Phew!' at the end of your message seems to say you felt a sense of release when you got that lot off your chest. Counselling would offer an environment where you could do exactly that, safely.

[camerata]

I need something. What would a Buddist recommend -

From your posts elsewhere, it seems you've had a lousy childhood and a string of medical problems. Briefly, I'd say Buddhism could help, but it would take time and effort. It certainly isn't a quick fix for the type of problems you have. It may help to have a framework (i.e. Buddhist teachings) with which to look at life.

[rockyysdt]

Also I recommend that you glide through life observing yourself.

Observe yourself "observing others and condemning them".

You then have to ask yourself:

That's their issue, why do I let their conduct affect me?

Observe them and feel sorry for the prison they have placed themselves in, but why do I get angry?

I find myself locked in a life I hate, why do I stay? Is it the money, possessions, status? Why can't I walk away?

Also seek medical advice incase you are suffering from clinical depression.

It's a very subtle state. You may not realize you are depressed and your life can be severely coloured by it.

Buddhism is a life long way of life and can lead you to your lifes purpose, but first you must remove psychological in balance.

Good luck with your life.

[chutai]

Hi mate

you ask whether Buddhism can help you overcome negativity in your life ? Well the resounding answer is yes.

But what are the conditions of this negativity ? Firstly, we all get them, it's a condition of life. Secondly, that it's nothing 'out there' or anybody else that's causing or creating your attitude to things that are sweeping you along like an ill wind . It's inside ourselves - our own attitude that allows these fundamental darknesses to dominate our lives if we let them. It's sometimes easier to accommodate the devil we know. Lastly, it's only in recognising negativity for what it is and in taking steps to overcome it that can we win on a daily basis. That is, by Buddhist practice.

I honestly think that you may get benefit from reading a Buddhist novel , set in London, that explains these things in a language that most people can relate to. It can be picked up fairly cheaply on Amazon/UK.

The Buddha, Geoff and Me: A Modern Story by Edward Canfor-Dumas

Good luck - you've taken the first good step in posing this question and sharing your unhappiness on a Buddhist forum.

In compassion

[sabaijai]

RESEARCH: Lotus Therapy

New York Times

by BENEDICT CAREY

Published: May 27, 2008

The patient sat with his eyes closed, submerged in the rhythm of his own breathing, and after a while noticed that he was thinking about his troubled relationship with his father.

“I was able to be there, present for the pain,” he said, when the meditation session ended. “To just let it be what it was, without thinking it through.”

The therapist nodded.

“Acceptance is what it was,” he continued. “Just letting it be. Not trying to change anything.”

“That’s it,” the therapist said. “That’s it, and that’s big.”

This exercise in focused awareness and mental catch-and-release of emotions has become perhaps the most popular new psychotherapy technique of the past decade. Mindfulness meditation, as it is called, is rooted in the teachings of a fifth-century B.C. Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha. It is catching the attention of talk therapists of all stripes, including academic researchers, Freudian analysts in private practice and skeptics who see all the hallmarks of another fad.

For years, psychotherapists have worked to relieve suffering by reframing the content of patients’ thoughts, directly altering behavior or helping people gain insight into the subconscious sources of their despair and anxiety. The promise of mindfulness meditation is that it can help patients endure flash floods of emotion during the therapeutic process — and ultimately alter reactions to daily experience at a level that words cannot reach. “The interest in this has just taken off,” said Zindel Segal, a psychologist at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where the above group therapy session was taped. “And I think a big part of it is that more and more therapists are practicing some form of contemplation themselves and want to bring that into therapy.”

At workshops and conferences across the country, students, counselors and psychologists in private practice throng lectures on mindfulness. The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness techniques, up from 3 in 2000, to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, lift despair and reduce hot flashes.

Some proponents say Buddha’s arrival in psychotherapy signals a broader opening in the culture at large — a way to access deeper healing, a hidden path revealed.

Yet so far, the evidence that mindfulness meditation helps relieve psychiatric symptoms is thin, and in some cases, it may make people worse, some studies suggest. Many researchers now worry that the enthusiasm for Buddhist practice will run so far ahead of the science that this promising psychological tool could turn into another fad.

“I’m very open to the possibility that this approach could be effective, and it certainly should be studied,” said Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory. “What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”

Buddhist meditation came to psychotherapy from mainstream academic medicine. In the 1970s, a graduate student in molecular biology, Jon Kabat-Zinn, intrigued by Buddhist ideas, adapted a version of its meditative practice that could be easily learned and studied. It was by design a secular version, extracted like a gemstone from the many-layered foundation of Buddhist teaching, which has sprouted a wide variety of sects and spiritual practices and attracted 350 million adherents worldwide.

In transcendental meditation and other types of meditation, practitioners seek to transcend or “lose” themselves. The goal of mindfulness meditation was different, to foster an awareness of every sensation as it unfolds in the moment.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn taught the practice to people suffering from chronic pain at the University of Massachusetts medical school. In the 1980s he published a series of studies demonstrating that two-hour courses, given once a week for eight weeks, reduced chronic pain more effectively than treatment as usual.

Word spread, discreetly at first. “I think that back then, other researchers had to be very careful when they talked about this, because they didn’t want to be seen as New Age weirdos,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn, now a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, said in an interview. “So they didn’t call it mindfulness or meditation. “After a while, we put enough studies out there that people became more comfortable with it.”

One person who noticed early on was Marsha Linehan, a psychologist at the University of Washington who was trying to treat deeply troubled patients with histories of suicidal behavior. “Trying to treat these patients with some change-based behavior therapy just made them worse, not better,” Dr. Linehan said in an interview. “With the really hard stuff, you need something else, something that allows people to tolerate these very strong emotions.”

In the 1990s, Dr. Linehan published a series of studies finding that a therapy that incorporated Zen Buddhist mindfulness, “radical acceptance,” practiced by therapist and patient significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and suicide attempts in the high-risk patients.

Finally, in 2000, a group of researchers including Dr. Segal in Toronto, J. Mark G. Williams at the University of Wales and John D. Teasdale at the Medical Research Council in England published a study that found that eight weekly sessions of mindfulness halved the rate of relapse in people with three or more episodes of depression.

With Dr. Kabat-Zinn, they wrote a popular book, “The Mindful Way Through Depression.” Psychotherapists’ curiosity about mindfulness, once tentative, turned into “this feeding frenzy, of sorts, that we have going on now,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn said.

Mindfulness meditation is easy to describe. Sit in a comfortable position, eyes closed, preferably with the back upright and unsupported. Relax and take note of body sensations, sounds and moods. Notice them without judgment. Let the mind settle into the rhythm of breathing. If it wanders (and it will), gently redirect attention to the breath. Stay with it for at least 10 minutes.

After mastering control of attention, some therapists say, a person can turn, mentally, to face a threatening or troubling thought — about, say, a strained relationship with a parent — and learn simply to endure the anger or sadness and let it pass, without lapsing into rumination or trying to change the feeling, a move that often backfires.

One woman, a doctor who had been in therapy for years to manage bouts of disabling anxiety, recently began seeing Gaea Logan, a therapist in Austin, Tex., who incorporates mindfulness meditation into her practice. This patient had plenty to worry about, including a mentally ill child, a divorce and what she described as a “harsh internal voice,” Ms. Logan said.

After practicing mindfulness meditation, she continued to feel anxious at times but told Ms. Logan, “I can stop and observe my feelings and thoughts and have compassion for myself.”

Steven Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada at Reno, has developed a talk therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy, or ACT, based on a similar, Buddha-like effort to move beyond language to change fundamental psychological processes.

“It’s a shift from having our mental health defined by the content of our thoughts,” Dr. Hayes said, “to having it defined by our relationship to that content — and changing that relationship by sitting with, noticing and becoming disentangled from our definition of ourselves.”

CONTINUED here

[orchis]

In my opinion it doesnt help to cut family out of your life,

I have severe problems with family members but I now manage

to say calmly and friendly what I dont like and then I just let them be.

I dont want to change them, I dont give them much space in my thoughts

rather i do 'loving kindness meditation' to express my love

and good wishes for them, I know it seems a far stretch but

instead of making me sick with anger it relieved me of a lot of pain.

I hope you will do well.

[jamesc2000]

You think you have many problems.

Its not yours, it belongs to someone you think is you.

Not one of your negative feelings belongs to you,

it just feels like it!

[garro]

I can only talk about my experience. I have reached some very low points in my life - including being a homeless drunk in my early twenties. Buddhism has certainly helped me and made my life better. For it to be most effective I needed a clear mind first. It also helped for me to think of Buddhism as a tool and not as my salvation. I think it helps to approach Buddhism with a critical mind.

[cophen]

You could start by buying (and reading on a regular basis) a book called 'Stop Thinking, Start Living' by Richard Carlson. It has a whiff of "The Pairs" from the Dhammapada but is easy for western folks to understand:

Mind is the forerunner of (all evil) states. Mind is chief; mind-made are they. If one speaks or acts with wicked mind, suffering follows one, even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draught-ox.

Mind is the forerunner of (all good) states. Mind is chief; mind-made are they. If one speaks or acts with pure mind, AFFECTION follows one, even as one's shadow that never leaves.

Edited June 6, 2008 by cophen

[PhilHarries]

First of all do not think that Buddhism will make all your problems go away, it won't.

Buddhism may show you the way to deal with those problems but only if you want to travel the middle path and accept life's afflictions as your own personal baggage.

I am not Buddhist by a long way but I like to think I now lead my life according to Buddhist principles. I used to have a lot of the same feelings you describe and, to an extent, still do. But these days I do my best to put a positive spin on the negative aspects and am also more self critical than I ever used to be. You must look inwards as much as you look out and try and see yourself as you would if you were another person.

So yes Buddhism can help but it is not a magical cure.

[IMA_FARANG]

I am currently sick to the soul with these negative emotions and am harbouring feelings of deep ill-feeling towards the people in my life. Family, friends and co - workers, even the public at large.

I am living in the UK with a Thai wife of 6 years who has a very pleasant, calm personality. It is almost impossibe to have any bad feeling towards her so she is exempt from my negativity. It is my fellow Countryman/woman I am having problems with, also my circumstances.

At the moment I have even gone so far as to consider cutting family and "friends" out of my life for good. I have a whole range of physical symtoms stemming from extremley powerful ,negative, almost evil feelings. I am trapped in an incredibly stressful job, have mounting debt, marital problems (occasionally), and live within the socio-economic class/area, due to my limited resources, that I was born into, and I abhor with all my heart and soul.

It feels like I am in hel_l. My fellow Countryman seem S/ficial, t/surface, greedy and out for themselves. In traffic I look at the visable unhappiness and "ugliness" of others - A reflection of myself prehaps? I have noticed that friends haven't been in touch with me for a long time - which suits me down to the ground, but no doubt my negativity and cynical/caustic attitude is the reason. My resenting them is causing them to distance themselves from me? This MUST be Karma.

My siblings insecurity, dysfunction and their limited world view. People that have never been to Thailand and don't have the "Thailand thing". People embrassing proffessional sports, pleasure seekers, cars, fashions, sham/pretence, selfishness, godlessness, spiritually dead consumer minded work zombies - The ignorant w-class, the prentencious middle-class, people that don't stop and aknoweldge their pointless existence, people that have no apppreciation for natures handiwork.

My father was a spritually enlightened man - or so everybody thought. He took his life when I was 23. I have a raging depression, a mind out of control, nobody to talk to (that makes any sense) and a refusual to return to my "family" home to see my mother and insecure sister/s that can't seem to prize themselves from her side.

I have a 23 year old white-trash, slutty, fashion concious, binge drinking kid sister who is still living at home, being waited on hand and foot by my ageing mother who is reaping the benefits of staying as a child but at the same time is adult enoughto be "ravaged" in her teddy bear-filled F*** Den by her nethanderal, "bodybuilder" boyfriend. This makes me sick. So sick I can't even be in the same room as the ignorant little B***h and listen to the gibbersih, unenlightened talk that spills out of her mouth.

I could go on and on. I am really not liking Westeners ( In the real sense) at all at the moment. My wife seems on the whole unaffected and tells me to have compassion. But Western/ers are sometimes difficult for her too.

I need something. What would a Buddist recommend - peace, love, tranqulity are feeling that I just can't seem to create - unless in a room, prehaps on my own. I spend most of my spare time wondering in Nature "wondering about the madness I see all around me" then I see a dog walker who can barley be bothered to aknowledge me and I'm reminded why I don't like my fellow countrymen very much.

Phew!

You create your own problems in life, you can't possibly solve other people's problems for them. So learn to be calm, take care of your own life, and do not worry about other people and how they handle their lives. From a Buddhist standpoint, you are the master that creates the "aura" or feeling that surrounds you. So go out of your way not to criticize others, treat them with civility and compassion. If you create that friendly aura around yourself, others may respond the same way. if they don't, you lose nothing, it is their loss not yours.

Always criticisize your self first, not others. Treat people in a friendly courteous manner. Your anger is a poison, it poisons you first, then others you meet. Never poison yourself, only fools do that.

[chickencurry]

Not really a Buddhist comment or answer, but it seems to me you need to get out of the UK and move to Thailand or somewhere else in the real world? Any possibility of that?

[garro]

Not really a Buddhist comment or answer, but it seems to me you need to get out of the UK and move to Thailand or somewhere else in the real world? Any possibility of that?

The belief that changing location can fix us is a dangerous idea. It never works because life happens everywhere and we take ourselves wherever we go. You can see this quite easily when you observe some of the self-destructive behaviour of many ex-pats here.

[ariesram74]

Hi

Very frightening reading OP. You should seek immediate help - probably a psychiatrist. Your problems seem to be much deeper and complex than can be solved by meditation and reading books.

Good luck

[chutai]

The belief that changing location can fix us is a dangerous idea. It never works because life happens everywhere and we take ourselves wherever we go.

Absolutely so. When I hear or read comments like move and everything will be ok, I'm always reminded of the lyrics of a pop song around in the 1980's.

"Everywhere you go you always take the weather with you."

Moving away won't change anyones unhappy karma one iota. Only by making light of the heavy (karma) will effect that change.

[rockyysdt]

The belief that changing location can fix us is a dangerous idea. It never works because life happens everywhere and we take ourselves wherever we go.

Absolutely so. When I hear or read comments like move and everything will be ok, I'm always reminded of the lyrics of a pop song around in the 1980's.

"Everywhere you go you always take the weather with you."

Moving away won't change anyones unhappy karma one iota. Only by making light of the heavy (karma) will effect that change.

Also on a third party level:

"If you leave me, Can I come too?"

[sabaijai]

The OP seems busy working out his problems elsewhere on the forum. There's enough to chew on here, should he/she return. Closed for now.