Emotions become more overwhelming when we extend them into the past or future. –
“Why did this have to happen” – “If only she had told me..” – “This pain will NEVER go away” – “Things will NEVER be the same again” and so on.
Each time we think in this way we increase our distress because we feel overwhelmed by the vastness of time.
We may not realise that a lot of our thoughts are related to the fear of these physical symptoms and when we sit Mindfully in a SPECIFIC way (see next page) with these feelings we discover that we CAN actually cope with them.
Mindfulness practice helps us see that actually we only need to deal with one moment at a time.
This helps to bring our distress down and in the long term we have less fear of lifes problems because we know we have an incrediblypowerful coping mechanism.