How do we recover balance and well being, when we are suffering?
 
We become so engrossed in our personal dramas, that we no longer know what to trust. If we begin to recognise what is going on in our mind, to identify rather than be the identified, then we can deconstruct our drama and see how we got into the present situation. In terms of internal family systems therapy, this involves beginning to tune into a habitual defence, rather like turning the dial on an old fashioned radio, so that we can begin to understand what it is trying to achieve. As we do this, the defensive part of us actually feels relieved that we are beginning to understand why it is working so hard. Then it may begin to soften up enough to reveal what it has been trying to protect in us.
At this point, we are no longer seeing through the lens of a defence, and we begin to trust the perceptions of the natural Mind.
 In Buddhist thought, this is the moment when we are no longer reacting emotionally and volitionally, but are beginning to be with, and to see clearly what is actually going on. Then it is possible, to just see, to just hear, and to just know a memory as a memory. This is the true potential of mindfulness – where we are no longer living inside our own personal reaction to Life, and we can see the chain of interdependent causation for what it is, rather than being whirled around by it.