Just wanted to write down my process I used to transform obstacles into something useful.

Background: I suffered from undiagnosed anxiety since childhood. Rather than get help, I spent three decades trying to prove that I wasn’t just a 'pussyhole' by being routinely aggressive, starting fights and generally pretending to be the big man I was not. Inside I was the same scared six year old whose family had suddenly broken to pieces.

For years, I was the anguish and pain. I was hopelessly scared. I would shake with fear at the slightest provocation and try to hide it. Shaking with anger worked instead, doing stupid dares worked instead, drink and drugs worked instead. Inside I was till screaming though and it is quite debilitating. I just couldn’t get any real success with being in denial about my problem.

The breakthrough came in the form of insight and awareness meditation. It wasn’t until I was at rock in London that I first began listening- more so in Thailand where I began to take the idea seriously.

Meditation demands first and foremost that you be honest with yourself. Nobody else can see how honest you are about your introspection. It’s the easiest thing in the world to lie about as nobody can see the difference between ‘doing nothing’ and doing nothing. Learning not to lie to myself became the first and most important step towards an honest life.

Initially I used visualisation, counting and awareness of the breath to gain more control over my thoughts. The result was that people started to come closer to me. I realised one day that someone had just come over and sat down next to me on a bench- mainly it seems because I wasn’t trying to stare them down. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was a shock when it happened. I hadn’t considered how my semi-conscious actions were affecting those in the immediate vicinity. It was this small breakthrough which really gave me some faith in the process- some much-needed hope.

The next stage was being able to disassociate from my thoughts and feelings. The writings of Erkhart Tolle were instrumental in this. His idea of the Pain Body where all feelings reside, the mind where all thoughts happen were illuminating.

Most of all, the idea of ‘the observer’, a name for the conscious awareness- ‘I’ that sits behind it all. Just writing this sentence does not describe consciousness well. I cannot think of the right words and I suspect you can’t do it justice.

Still, this ‘I’ was separate from the anxiety and the thoughts. Here was a place of peace which I could observe them from. The most interesting part of the pain body experience was the way I could disidentify from my anxiety. It was an elephant tusk shape, the base in my stomach- curving upwards to stick up out of the top of my neck and under my chin. Just heavy, it felt like some kind of tumour and I hated it. Still, at least it was not me. I was no longer anxious- I had a feeling of anxiety inside me.

Next stage was ‘meta’ or to give it the more fluffy name ‘loving kindness’. The feelings inside your body are your history. They represent you and your pain. Giving your pain energy in the form of anger and hatred only makes it bigger. ‘Meta’ allows you to do the opposite: not only accepting your past pain, but sitting with it and, after some time, becoming sympathetic and attending to it in a loving manner. After many months, the tusk began to grow thinner, became lighter.

So there is the process: Anger, noticing, disassociation, acceptance, love- and that is how I got there.

Perhaps that seems familiar to some of you. It does seem similar to the Kübler ross grief cycle. It seems like the way people realise the red pill- beginning with frustration and venting and leading to self mastery. It seems similar to the way people react to the #quarrantine. It happens all of the time for me.

Nowadays this even works when I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep: Relax, notice, accept, befriend, let go. Often, I quickly fall asleep again- and, if I don’t, then I’m already in the next best state- deep relaxation.

Terrible shit happens to people all the time. Experience leaves marks on you. There are many ways of using pain to master ourselves- in fact it’s probably true that self-development and self-actualisation only happen as a result of being brave enough to face up to your pain and responsibility, wherever it comes from.

It still seems kind of perverse to say that ‘the obstacle is the way’ or ‘you should welcome the pain’- but it is true in my experience. Learning how to deal with your pain is learning how to find and slay the dragon. Learning how to transmute negative energy is making the phoenix rise from the ashes. These are things which are realised along the path and make it well worth walking.

And for me it all began with being honest for a change. These days, my inability to deal with anxiety is gone. Most importantly, the elephant tusk isn’t there anymore. It has changed my life, left me free and put me on a different level.

Tip NormalAndy for their post.