Dear Michael:

The key sentence in your last share, to me, is “its ok to sit with the pain”. This is what it takes to break the habit of withdrawing from pain, distracting yourself from pain by engaging in those or that activity that is harmful to you.

Sitting with the pain means to endure it, to believe that you can endure it, not collapsing, not losing control, not dying. The pain may be great sadness.

Once you sit with it, and do so repeatedly, the pain, the great sadness if it is what it is, gets the attention it demands. That calms it down, like a child throwing tantrums, screaming louder and louder. If the child is really listened to, empathetically, attentively, reliablythe tantrums will cease.

anita