Identify your emotional styleWe each have our own style, that unique combination of hopes, fears, values and behavior that make us human.Each style has a primary emotional issue that defines it. The question is if our issues keep us from reaching our potential, if these issues have reached that self-sabotage level. They can create problems if we do not face them.RULE TO REMEMBER: Not confronting your issues will open the door for self-sabotage.The process of facing these issues (and your emotional style) will help you build strength and understand yourself more completely:Admit your emotional styleRecognize your triggers and your responses to themCreate new thoughts and feelings based on the factsHave those available when triggers ariseTara Bennett-Goleman's "Emotional Alchemy" is a great source of information on these 10 emotional styles. She provides much detail. These are just brief descriptions to help you get started:Emotional StylesAbandonmentEntitlementSubjugationExclusionMistrustFailureUnlovabilityPerfectionismDeprivationVulnerability Emotional AlchemyThe following is an article by Tara Bennett-Goleman (author of the book by the same name) in which she describes how the transforming power of mindfulness can be applied to our painful emotional patterns. (The article is taken from the Shambhala Sun, March 2001).Each thing has to transform itself into something better, and acquire a new destiny," Paulo Coelho writes in his novel The Alchemist. Coelho describes the world as only the visible aspect of God, with invisible spiritual forces at play that remain largely unknown to us. Alchemy occurs when the spiritual plane comes into contact with the material plane.I was given Coelho's book by a client, who told me, "This reminds me of our work together." Indeed, alchemy offers an apt metaphor for the process of working with emotions I will describe. Alchemists, the tales go, sought to use a magical philosopher's stone to transmute lead into gold. But lead and gold, in the more philosophical school of alchemy, were metaphors for internal states: the alchemist's discipline was one of psychological and spiritual transformation. Alchemists realized that the mystery they sought to solve was not outside themselves but in the psyche.Some alchemical schools liken our ordinary state of mind to a lump of coal and compare clear awareness to a diamond. There could seem to be no greater contrast in the material world than that between coal and a diamond; and yet the two are but different arrangements of the identical molecules of carbon. Just as a diamond is coal transformed, so clear awareness can arise from our confusion. What intrigues me about the metaphor of alchemy is the importance it places on the process of transformation. One client, an acupuncturist who has studied Chinese medicine, told me that the word "alchemy," better than any other word, describes the process of integrating the practice of mindfulness meditation with emotional work: "Alchemy is accepting everything in the pot without trying to reject or correct itseeing that even the negative is part of the learning and healing."Mindfulness means seeing things as they are, without trying to change them. The point is to dissolve our reactions to disturbing emotions, being careful not to reject the emotion itself. Mindfulness