[brutusborn]

Thanks for posting, a great read.

I can relate a lot to the mechanism he mentions. I discovered Buddhist ideas after being recommended meditation by a psychologist. At first I saw meditation as a means of relieving anxiety, which meant I struggled with it because I was always "trying to relax". I also used meditation practice as a bandaid instead of addressing underlying issues that caused the difficult feelings. Learning some Buddhist philosophy helped me work past this; I learned to accept the anxiety and this helped me to get deeper into meditation since I wasn't struggling against my feelings. The acceptance of the feelings eventually helped me see the issues with the way I was dealing with things.