When it rains hard on the house, I feel a little stress.
A few years ago, the roof had problems and there were regular leaks inside.
That's fixed, but recently we discovered there was water seeping into a shared wall.
Rain is the anxiety of repairs we can't afford to make.
(This reminds me of that cartoon: a guy is woken up at night by a noise and finds a ghost in his living room. He's relieved it's a ghost and not repairs to do.)
When stress arises, I use meditation to place my attention on it. I make the knot in my stomach or the tension in my body the focus of my attention.
Usually, it goes away quickly. To pass, emotions—like ghosts—need to be lived, felt.
But this time, it took longer than expected.
As if I had stumbled upon a "pocket" of anxiety that had accumulated over years and needed to be drained.
A stress that seems superficial ("eh, it's nothing") but keeps coming back often has a deeper cause. On the surface, it looks like just another puddle, we don't pay attention to it. Except that you only need to step in it to realize you could easily sink.
The work to be done (on the house) will be all the easier to undertake once we've done the inner work to manage the anxiety.
Deal with the emotion before the action, always.
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