From your description of your practice it sounds like you started with the friend category and skipped the self category. This might account for your heart centre feeling drained and emotionally disturbed. When we try to give love to others without first establishing love toward ourselves it can leave us feeling hollowed out. An analogy might be a hungry waiter serving food to lots of people but not eating himself. Seeing everybody else eat while he remains hungry will make the hunger a lot worse.

My recommendation is to take that sinking, dark feeling in your chest as the object for metta practice. Send the metta directly toward the emotional pain in your heart. During this process it is also likely that psychological material will surface. You might start remembering old regrets and wounds. It can be helpful to create space for these parts of yourself to voice their concerns, this can be done in therapy or just on your own by consciously allowing these parts to express how they're feeling. Don't get sucked into arguing with them or analyzing what they say. Just listen attentively, and continue giving metta, in most cases all that a hurt part really wants to be heard and to be loved.

More detail on using metta and other concentration states to to heal emotional wounds here.

Best of luck, let us know how things go.

Avi Craimer

I don't know if this might sound familiar to you or not, but I would say that much of the anxiety I experience in my daily life has to do with a kind of "slippery slope" feeling where I feel like I failed in my practice. Similar to what you describe, there is kind of a let down that is centered in the chest/solar plexus area. I suppose this might be called letting go, but it is a difficult letting go if that is what it truly is.


Best,

ADR