The Buddha taught us to recognise our suffering – just to fully acknowledge it without reacting. When we bathe our suffering in mindful awareness, we discover there is a refuge in us, one that has resources we could not imagine, which can gradually dissolve whatever it is facing. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, the ‘practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness.’
IFS (internal family systems) can help with this because it helps YOU recognise and understand the barriers to mindful awareness – all the habitual reactions that are attempting to bury your suffering – listening to them, understanding what they are on about, making sense of them, means you begin to identify the reactions rather than be identified with them, then there is space for mindful awareness to do its work….