See what happens if instead of 'I am afraid', you say 'Part of me is afraid'If instead of 'I am unsure', 'Part of me is unsure'Instead of 'I am angry', 'Part of me is angry'By allowing yourself the understanding that you are a being of many parts, rather than a single, monolithic self, you open up these possibilities:Firstly, coming to understand emotions as something you have rather than what defines you ...
... It really is quite different to know yourself this way - there is much more agency in having rather than being had by what you feel.
Secondly, remembering that there are always parts of you that are feeling something different to what's most apparent to you ...
... parts that are settled when you're experiencing anxiety, parts that love when you're feeling irritated, parts that are courageous and able to take action when other parts of you are paralysed with fear.
And thirdly, discovering that the same is true of others ...
... so that when you're bewildered by her rage you can remember that there is still a part of her that is kindness; when you're supporting him in his uncertainty you can call on the part of him that has clarity; and when you're struggling with his self-centredness you can remember the part of him that still, even in the midst of all the difficulty, cares deeply about all of it.
There are parts of us we know well - those that are in close - and parts of ourselves we know less well - the more hidden, invisible parts. Sometimes, simply giving a part its appropriate name allows us to see it and to interact with it more skilfully. The inner critic is one such part. Seeing it, naming it, entering into a different kind of relationship and conversation with it - all of these can be powerful moves in having it take up a more helpful and life-giving place in the constellation of entities each of us calls 'I'.But there are also parts of each of us that we have disowned or split off and that we barely see as part of ourselves at all. These may be parts of ourselves that we dislike, or judge, or abhor. Or they can parts we long for, but do not feel are available or appropriate for us. But parts of us they are, and since we can't bear to identify our experience of them with ourselves, we readily project them into others.So often, when we find ourselves disliking other people, when we get irritated by them, feel judgment or scorn or disdain or even hate towards them, we're seeing in them what we most dislike or scorn or are irritated about in ourselves. A simple way of saying this is that what we encounter in them reminds us so strongly of what we're trying to get away from in ourselves, that we try get away from it in them too.The very same process can also be in play with those we are drawn to, admire, or put on a pedestal. In this case perhaps we're seeing in the other, first, a reminder of split-off parts of ourselves that we deeply long to be reunited with but do not consciously know as our own. We feel drawn to the other person, or good about ourselves around them, precisely because of the feeling of wholeness and re-unification it brings about it in us.Perhaps it becomes obvious when described this way that the work for us to do with people who irritate us is not to try to change them (which in any case does not address the primary source of our irritation or anger or frustration) but to find out what it is about ourselves that we dislike so much and work with some effort and diligence to understand, turn towards, and accept it.And with people we love and admire the inner work for us to do is much the same if we want to love and admire them for who they are rather than because a hole or an emptiness or a longing gets filled when we're around them.Then, we can find, it's more and more possible to be around a wider range of people with openness and warmth and genuine regard. And it's also more possible to be close and compassionate with those we love most, who are so often the very people with whom we have the most difficulty because it's in them we find parts of ourselves most readily reflected. 
I remember the moment with gratitude, though it was tough at the time."You have no idea how self-judgemental you are", Andy had said to me. And it had cut like a knife. But he was right. I was thirty-five years old and had over many years become seasoned to the harshness of the world.I didn't know it as harshness to be so filled with self-doubt and such worry about how I was doing all the time. It was just the way the world was. Unquestionable. Invisible. And I had no idea that it wasn't so much the world that was harsh but my own inner experience.Andy's carefully timed observation was one of those moments when what had been in the background for so long came crashing into the foreground - when what I had been swimming in for so long was made apparent to me.It was a doorway into a profoundly new world in which I began to see that most of what I thought others were thinking about me was actually what I was thinking about myself. And that I no longer had to believe everything I thought so completely.Eleven years later, I'm still sometimes out-foxed by the shape-shifting cleverness of my inner critic. But I am more often, and more quickly, able to spot it and see through its ways of holding me back and of pulling me apart.And, more and more, in the space that envelops me when it steps aside, I'm able to feel a quiet and genuine kind of joy.
There is a part of me that is tender, hurt, grieving and super-sensitive. He feels like something very young. Of all the parts that make up this mysterious something that I call ‘I’, he is among the smallest.Deeply loving, filled with emotion, he easily gets caught up in a story of abandonment. His fears are specific, and strongly predictive. ‘You’ll leave me’, he says. By ‘you’ he means just about anyone - friends, lovers, family, teachers - and bigger entities too - community, this country in which I live, life itself. And by ‘you’ he also means ‘me’ - the one of whom he is a part, the one who is his home.‘You will abandon me’, he says, ‘and I will not be able to tolerate the loss itself, nor my grief at the loss. And what’s more, I know when I get abandoned it will be my fault. I’ll cause it by my actions, or by my inaction. Or because I was not able to prevent it’.He’s onto something, of course. Loss is a given of any human life. He - as I, as you - will eventually lose everything and everyone that we love. And his grief and tenderness is real, and appropriate to the scale of the coming bereavement. But this part, so young and with such a small horizon, is scared to live in the world because the loss feels like it is now. The abandonment he fears, ever present.He has some quite sophisticated strategies to try to head off the losses that terrify him. He wants me to feel his fear, always, so that we won’t make a mis-step. He’ll do his best for me not to feel, nor let on to feeling, the grief that he holds, nor any feelings that might make me vulnerable. He holds on very tight, and sometimes as a result I hold on very tight too. And he’s a master at getting his abandonment in first, finding ways I can get resentful and abandon other people before they can abandon me. He’s done this many many times - I have done this many times in his name. In a way, he feels vindicated when people do actually leave, because it shows that his world view, and his deep fear, are justified.He wants us to live in a very narrow space of possibilities. He’s only open for being seen by others in a very particular way (only with love and appreciation, never with judgement) and if he doesn’t get seen this way he’s quickly wounded, withdrawn, sullen, quietly rageful or doing his best to manipulate others so that the world is back to the way he wants it.Because this part is in such difficulty, he grabs my attention frequently. And when he does I identify with him. I take him to be me, and me to be him. And this is the big mistake. When he is in the driver’s seat I forget that there are things to feel that are different to what he is feeling, ways of seeing that are different to what he’s seeing, and different ways to act. When I think I am him, I am at my smallest and most afraid.Over time I have come to see that my work is one of self-remembering. Remembering that I am vast. That I contain multitudes. That as well as this part, there are others. And that my work is not to turn away, not to run from this tiny scared part of me - it is so easy to push him away, to visit upon him the very abandonment that he fears - but to hold him close, to cradle him, to honour him and his gifts. It is my work to welcome him home. To say to him, “Yes, I see you. I have you. You are safe here. You cannot fall”.And my work too is to know that, just as I know he is held in the vast something called ‘I’, I too am held in and am part of something vast that has no given name but might best be called ‘life’. When I know myself this way, as one expression of a phenomenon which brings me into being and out of which I cannot fall, I am freed from being a prisoner of my fear and available. I am freed to love in the way I want to love, to create, speak out, be vulnerable and intimate and angry and truthful and real and to risk the risks that are required to be fully alive, the very risks that he is too afraid for me to take.
Dramas - the stories you spin into being, which although perhaps painful and frustrating and fearful, place you right in the centre of the action.Dramas - all your stories of how people are not paying you due attention, seeing you in the way you want to be seen; all the ways you are left out, overlooked, your needs and wishes unnoticed and unmet; all the ways in which others are conspiring against you or, at least, taking care only of themselves; how the world seems organised to particularly frustrate your personal hopes, your longings.Dramas - perhaps unsurprisingly - are a powerful way of generating some sense of self-esteem in the midst of a world that's confusing, contradictory, and chaotic; a world far beyond our understanding which does not obviously attend to our particular needs and wishes as quickly or as completely as we would wish.Once we start to see that our dramas are not the way the world 'is' but a purposeful activity on our part to make ourselves feel better, or to get seen, or to manipulate others to get our needs met, perhaps we can begin to loosen our grip on them a little.Because by placing ourselves in the centre of the world, our dramas seriously reduce our capacity to respond to the needs and longings of others. And in this way our collective commitment to keeping our dramas going brings about exactly the self-centred world we fear is excluding us in the first place.
We seem to live in uniquely difficult times.We face multiple, simultaneous, almost intractable difficulties. The widening inequality of our societies. Economic uncertainty, and the undoing of many of the assumptions upon which we have built our economy. The effect we're having on our climate. Billions living in slums. The rise of violent religious and political fundamentalism and populism. An uncertain energy future. Rapid population growth.It's understandable in such times that we should feel afraid. That in the face of all of this difficulty we should get caught up in protecting ourselves, before anyone else. That we sooth ourselves and numb ourselves with glowing screens, with our busyness. That we distract ourselves from the buzzing, whirling sensations in our bodies and emotions that try to show us that something is wrong. That we amass whatever we can for ourselves as we try to cling on. That we wait until we feel better before we step forward and make the contribution we're here to make.But as we do this, as we pretend we're fine while all the while feeling very afraid, we forget that the world has always been this way. Human life has always been perilous. We have always been faced by crises and by threats to our very existence. We have, most probably, always told ourselves that our own times are particularly troubled ones.Seeing this opens up two new paths.The first is that we stop adding to our very real difficulties with our stories about the uniqueness of our troubles. Those stories make us mute, frozen, self-obsessed. When we know that we human beings have, for millennia, found ways of responding creatively and with great resourcefulness to what life brought us, we can begin to trust our own faculties more. We can begin to turn towards one another and the world again, and ask ourselves what's needed, and what we can do.The second is that we remember that it's right in the middle of difficulty, when we are most uncertain, that our most noble and life-giving qualities can emerge. When there's trouble and we find ourselves turning towards our neighbours, towards people we hardly know, towards community, and towards the society in which we live, we remember that compassion, care for others and being in relationship are powerfully life-giving and meaningful activities.Which way we turn - towards defensive self-centredness or towards relationship and compassion - is not just a matter of choice but a matter of ongoing practice. In other words, we live lives in which through our actions we cultivate one path or another.Let's not wait until we feel safe and settled before we start to cultivate the second path, one that can bring great meaning - and great healing - to ourselves and those around us.
Many times
When you're talking with another person, remember that there are always more than two of you present.At the very least there's you, and them, and your 
It's clear that we human beings are deeply affected by the environment in which we find ourselves. We are in a constant exchange with what is around us, both shaping it and being shaped by it.And so it's worth remembering, because it's mostly so invisible to us, that we are each the environment for one another.Which means in turn that difficulties that occur for other people and with other people can often be addressed, first, by taking responsibility for what is ours, and how it's affecting those around us.