Why You Feel Bad After Talking to Someone

AVAlexander Volchek

Many people know this feeling very well: you spend time talking with someone and feel terrible afterward. So terrible that you don't understand what is happening. You arrived feeling good, feeling great, talked with the person, and now you are exhausted and empty, as though you spent the whole day unloading potatoes. This applies to business partners, employees, colleagues, bosses, friends, neighbors, wives, husbands, and children. It applies to parents too, mothers and fathers. There are a great many aspects here. How do you avoid falling into a bad state when you are with other people? How do you learn to keep your balance here? I think this is an important skill for a modern person, both in the social, material world and, of course, in the spiritual world. It is a very important skill in perceiving what is actually there. There are three reasons. There are reasons this happens. First, you arrive and another person has an amount of energy you cannot handle, while—and this is very important; pay attention to every aspect—they do not want to harm you. A simple example: if a bear appeared in this room now, or a bear appeared a hundred meters away... All right, not in this room; if it appeared in the room, there would be a problem. If it appeared a hundred meters away, I would very likely—we would very likely—be frightened of it.

Our state would change; we would feel tremendous alarm and fear. Most likely, we wouldn't control it or even understand what was happening. We would see the bear in the open, not through a window. Meanwhile, the bear would most likely look at us and keep going, paying us no attention. It didn't want to cause us any problems, but it has a certain state, a certain energy, that would make us afraid. There is another situation: we meet another person who has very powerful energy and wants to harm us, and does harm us. If the bear ended up here, it would very likely start attacking us. Very likely. And of course it would harm us. Our state would change too, of course. We would very likely die; we wouldn't survive. Then there is a third, the most unpleasant, possibility: you meet someone, and the cause of your state is not the person you met but you yourself. Meeting that person brings about a particular negative state inside you, and you start feeling very bad.

Many people may notice, for example, that looking at different celebrities brings up negativity or aggression. Reading about rich people brings up envy, anger, or indignation. Simply seeing a wealthy person makes you irritated with them. But that person has nothing to do with you. They don't even see you. People watch YouTube videos and something irritates them. Clearly, very often the problem isn't the other person, though not always. People often transmit bad energy. But I am talking now about cases where you generate it yourself. The feelings in all three cases can be very similar: fear, fatigue, emptiness, irritation, a sense of loss. Yet, again, the causes are radically different. I would point out that the third situation also strongly affects you on your own. You can be sitting there, calm one moment and unsettled the next. You think, "Wait a second. Ten minutes ago I was calm, and now I'm not. Nothing in the room has changed. I'm disconnected from the internet; nothing is going on. But for some reason I felt good ten minutes ago, and now I feel bad. Whose fault is it? Which bastard around here is to blame?"

You start looking for someone to blame. But no one here is to blame. You yourself are to blame for what happened. You are to blame for the state that is arising. You are to blame for it, for its having happened at all. Let's examine the first situation, to help you find a solution and interact calmly with different people in life. People who want to develop will encounter situations where they need to reach an agreement about money with partners, managers, or colleagues, or build relationships. That is not even to mention family or children. There are difficult situations involving not just one other person but, say, ten. So, the first case: you feel bad not because the other person is directing negative energy at you, but because they have a very large amount of energy. What do you do about that? How do you acknowledge, at a certain moment, that you are standing beside an elephant, that the other person simply has an enormous amount of energy and doesn't want to do anything bad to you? A particular atmosphere simply arises, and that atmosphere sets off a trigger.

You need to watch for the trigger that activates your state, right? This relates to that first example. Here is a situation: people periodically say to me, "Sasha, I'm talking with you, and now I'm in tears." They use their tears to put pressure on me, thinking I caused the problem that made them cry. But they cried because I was talking about a certain energy or certain things that triggered tears in them. I am not to blame for the tears; on the contrary, I brought a particular state to their attention. They can notice it, because in the vast majority of cases—99.999999 percent—tears are an ego structure: ego, resentment. You can see an incredible amount of resentment. The person starts crying and leaves, wrapped up in that resentment. Someone else says, "Look what you've done. You brought them to tears. She cried because of you," or "He cried because of you." I didn't do anything at all. I was just standing there, like the bear that stands there and frightens a child. But the child wasn't frightened because the bear attacked them; the bear was simply there. You come to the office, see your boss, and start shaking.

You say, "My boss is so mean." But are they actually mean? Or do you simply not understand how that energy works, when there is no malice there at all? Strength can manifest in different ways. If we see someone with twenty automatic rifles, obviously we will be afraid. Obviously you will be afraid. But that doesn't mean they are going to do anything. They may simply be protecting an area. If everyone is told from childhood that these people are simply protecting the area, you won't be afraid of them at all. There will be no reason for fear, because you will have been shown that, yes, having a weapon is power, but this person does not intend to use that power against you. They have no intention of doing it. It is like crossing at a crosswalk: you understand that the car will most likely stop. It does stop. It is automatic; your automatic response is working. If you don't know that, you'll stand there without crossing and say, "Go ahead." If you were once hit at a crosswalk, you will say, "Please go ahead. I'll wait for you, then cross." But the other person is not to blame for that. It is very important to learn to recognize this, because it harms your development and the actions taking place. It does harm; it does a great deal of harm to the situation.

Here is another example. Children start making noise, and adults start getting angry. They start getting angry. The children haven't created any problems. The adults get angry simply because someone is making noise. It is always interesting to see people who are intensely irritated by that noise. They start reacting to the children and saying things to them. You sit there, and it doesn't irritate you at all. You think, "Why is he getting worked up? Everything is fine. The child is just running around." Each person has their own circumstances that prompt a reaction. If you spit on the rug now, it will probably provoke a certain reaction in me. If you spit at me, it will provoke a completely different reaction. If you hit me, it will provoke another reaction. But if you and I had agreed that spitting here was normal, I might pay no attention to it at all. It is the same simple action, and this needs to be understood. Of course, everyone always looks for example number two. What happens when you meet people who really do want to cause harm? What do you do with them? How do you handle being around them? How do you handle being around people who want to cause harm and are transmitting a particular negative reaction?

You meet someone who really does want to harm you, when people around you create this negative atmosphere, deliberately create this negative atmosphere. Here, by the way, is your favorite question, the one you keep asking: are they creating harm deliberately or not? If they aren't doing it deliberately, what does that mean? Should you accept it, accept that blow? First, you probably need to learn to be in a st—

Learn to be in a state where you don't lose your footing. I want to tell you that one of the biggest problems in a person's development is immediately latching onto someone else and trying to change them instead of trying to understand yourself. Suppose you come to work and see your manager, or meet your partner, or, if you have your own business, an employee, and that person is trying to make you lose your temper. The first thing to do is learn not to react. Often, during meetings, a manager starts shouting. I tell many people: if it concerns you, say, "Excuse me, please. I'm suddenly feeling very unwell. I need to go to the bathroom." Go to the bathroom and return, and the manager is already discussing a different subject. They have forgotten who you are altogether. Learn to stop the situation. If you can't work through it, leave it carefully and calmly. Try to leave peacefully. You see a conflict at home with your child, with your husband or wife, with your mother or father, with a passerby, a neighbor on the street, anyone. Try not to create this problem. Just try.

That is the first thing to do: don't create the situation. Someone once told me this about a dog: there are certain situations you shouldn't create for the dog. Don't leave food on the table. You want the dog to stop eating food off the table? Okay. But first stop leaving it there. Teach the dog many other things, and as it learns gradually, it will reach a point where you can begin training it not to eat off the table. It is the same with a small child. You have had a baby, and the baby is crawling on the floor. Don't immediately try to make sure that, on the very first day, the child won't set off a grenade. If you have a grenade lying on the floor, put it away. Put the knives away. The child will learn; teach the child to use those knives. First, you need to find and enter a state of awareness. Learn to remain a calm observer around people who lose their temper. There is an important nuance here: calm observation means—and this may surprise you—that there is no manipulation of the other person. Your first task should be to say, "First I will understand how my reaction arises. That is my problem. The reaction arises because I lack the strength. It is my problem; I lack the strength."

"My second task will be to work out how to resolve the issue with the other person, who is to blame for the problem because they are creating it deliberately. But first I will set aside the idea of 'deliberately,' set everything else aside, and try to understand the situation, if I can." Sometimes you need to leave a place for good. If there are bad people in a certain neighborhood, stop going through that neighborhood forever. That can happen. I gave this example: if your boss throws tomatoes at you and shouts obscenities, don't try to change your boss. They are your boss. They have the right to do that. I am not saying they have that right under the law of the universe. But if they work there and senior management has approved it, or if it is their company, it is their choice. Either accept it, try to accept it, or quit, but definitely don't fight it. If you keep endlessly talking about this boss, coming in and losing your footing again, coming in and losing it again, coming in and losing it again, try coming in and paying no attention to the swearing or the tomato throwing. View it as something positive, something neutral. Or see whether you can create a situation in which the boss won't throw tomatoes.

Can you create a situation where the child won't... This is important: remove the knife. Yes, that. Don't create the problematic situation. Something like this happened to me last week. I went outside, my dog looked at me, and ran away. We have a very large area here, with woods. I got in the car, drove off, found the dog, and brought him back. "Bad dog!" I scolded him and put him out on the balcony. He stayed there while I held a meeting. I came back and thought, "My dog doesn't run away from me. He has already understood that he shouldn't run away from me." I opened the door again and went outside with him. I turned around. He was walking quietly beside me, very obediently, looking at me: "Master, I understand everything. I've realized it all." I turned away to pick up a tennis net. I turned back, and the dog was gone. I got in the car, caught up with him, punished him severely, brought him back, put him outside, punished him thoroughly there, scolded him, and closed the door. Another four hours passed. My children and wife came back, and I told everyone the story of how I had opened the door.

They laughed at me over what had happened, and the dog was moving around somewhere. I thought, "Well, now he understands." I went outside with him. He looked at me and—whoosh—ran away. I brought him back, scolded him like crazy, put him outside, and stood there discussing it with my wife. She said, "Sasha, listen. You open the door for him, and he thinks, 'This idiot has opened the door for me again. I'll run away again.' So he runs away again. You scold him, and he thinks, 'He's scolding me again. How much longer is he going to scold me?'" The situation is very simple: don't open the door, and don't keep testing it. I was testing it, putting myself back in the same situation. I could have avoided ruining my day entirely, gone back for the dog, and said, "That's it. I understand." I forbid my children to do it. Look, no one in my family is allowed to take him out without a leash, because he might run away. It is a huge area; he might see an animal, a deer, and run off. I decided that because he doesn't run away with me, he shouldn't run away. He decided to calmly test whether it was allowed or not. So he hasn't yet learned certain things. Stop, close the door for a while, and test it in a different way.

Another aspect is not creating the conflict again. We come in, and the boss tells us, "Wear suits." We come in without a suit, and the boss scolds us. You think, "What a bastard of a boss!" The next day you come in wearing shorts again. The boss says, "Don't wear..." and swears again. You come in the next day in sneakers. The boss says, "Don't wear those! I told you not to wear them!" and scolds you again. You come in wearing a suit, and the boss says nothing. You say, "What an asshole. He isn't saying anything to me. I came in wearing a suit this time!" But he asked you to wear a suit from the very beginning. Very often, people start scolding you and creating a problem you can't handle. Again, we are looking at a situation where there is an elephant in front of you. You need to acknowledge that if being around another person makes you feel bad, you are the ant. For some reason, people think that if they feel bad around a manager or a subordinate, they themselves are the stronger one; the other person just put pressure on them somehow. But no! In the interaction between two people, if no one pulled out a weapon or resorted to social, material, or economic blackmail, if we are talking purely about your state, you were the one who couldn't remain aware.

Very often, you simply couldn't remain in a state of awareness. That's all. It means you are the ant, and you need to acknowledge that the other person is the elephant. That is very important. You have acknowledged that you first need to watch your own behavior. You need to acknowledge that the other person is the elephant. And then, pay attention: acknowledge it and watch your behavior. In this situation—hear this again—you must not think that the other person is to blame. I will explain why. If you are not completely calm and in harmony during the conflict, and do not remain in that state, you cannot assess the situation reasonably or understand it. Then, of course, one powerful solution is to come and work it through, jointly determine how to act with this person going forward, whether to be with them and remain involved in these processes or not. Can you minimize the conflict? Or perhaps, once the situation is understood, the other person no longer wants to create any problems for you. If we look at wild animals, by the way—I apologize for using wild animals as examples today. I never comp—well, this isn't a comparison with people, but in general...

There is a rule. When you go into the woods here, we have mountain lions. The rule is: if you see a mountain lion, don't run away and don't get anxious. You need to respond in a particular way. If you run, the mountain lion might automatically react as though, for example, you want to attack it or do something, and it might respond to you that way. If you remain calm and then take certain actions, it will leave instead, because it will see that you are not displaying aggression of various kinds. It will also see your strength. So when you are calm around a strong elephant, the elephant starts wondering whether it needs to cause you problems, when you don't react and remain calm: "What's all the swearing about? Well, he's swearing. It happens." The elephant senses the different reactions of those who kick, try to bite or eat it, or attack it. It senses those things too and may act in a completely unreasonable way. Just like a bear. We all know that bears generally don't attack. Most bears, the main species, don't attack people. They attack—

They attack if they have already attacked other people, or if they think you are posing a threat to them or their cubs. You are posing a threat. Many bosses and many employees have an automatic response. I have known an enormous number of employees who immediately go on the defensive when you meet them. They go on the defensive, and you stand there thinking, "Why did he go on the defensive?" By doing that, he provokes an aggressive reaction in me. I start getting angry with him and scolding him. He says, "That asshole Volchek shouted at me again today." There is a situation we haven't examined: when you react like a mirror, when the problem seems to arise neither because of you nor because of the other person, but because a mirror is triggered inside you. You can keep that in mind too. Some people create a direct reverse reflection, a direct reverse reaction. You come in, and people are talking about something negative. The problem isn't directed at you, but you immerse yourself in that negativity and simply start living in it. Again, the solution to the whole situation is, first, to tell yourself, "I don't know what the problem is," and then bring yourself to a state where you remain in constant balance, constant balance.

Whatever happens, you remain in balance. I can say that there are certain people in my life—my mother, my wife, and some other situations—where I remember very clearly that I easily fall into a state where my perception narrows to the level of the mind and body's automatic responses, as with a bear, as with a bear or an elephant. At that moment, I know I have developed a kind of red warning light. The light comes on, a bell rings: "Sasha, you aren't being reasonable right now. The only thing you can do is stop drawing any further conclusions and put any disagreements on hold. You aren't being reasonable right now. Right now—not every time—right now, you aren't being reasonable." This technique has helped me resolve an enormous number of situations and issues. The more I observed myself being unreasonable, the less I actually entered that unreasonable state. The question is: how do you, as a person, acknowledge that this is an unreasonable situation? How do you choose to save the truth rather than yourself? How do you choose that? Because saving yourself will very often lead to death. You will charge at the bear, but you shouldn't charge at a bear. The bear will eat you. It didn't want to do that, but it will have to.

That is why it matters so much. It is very important not to try to prove that you are not an ant. Don't try to prove that you are not an ant. Decide what you need. Do you need money from this job, or is it important to show how great you are? Do you need money from this job, or for everyone to praise you? Do you need money from this job, or for your boss to praise you? Do you need money, or freedom to put your creative ideas into practice? Decide what you need with other people and what matters more to you: your own state, or discussing another person every day and plunging into the most intense negativity through it. Decide what you want. Do you want to judge the person and lose energy, or say nothing and at least stay balanced? What matters more to you: expressing your opinion or the truth about the world?