Abiding With An Uncomfortable Mind

There are a lot of parallels between meditation and what is called "exposure therapy", but I am afraid that the latter is a little bit like shock treatment. When I took undergraduate psychology at York University, I learned about different variations, such as re-exposing a person to a feared element, such as a snake, in order to reprogram the mind to develop different associations with the snake. In a sense, meditation could potentially offer a similar kind of practice, in the sense that one is asked not to react to one's thoughts or emotions, but to abide in discomfort--to know that the discomfort itself is one wave in the ocean of mind. One approach here is to say that the wave is passing by and therefore impermanent. The other way is to know that the wave is a manifestation of the ocean (mind) and therefore one needn't wait for the wave to pass in order to know the true mind.  I think this second version is more to the point than the first.
    That being said, from what I have read about exposure therapy, all it's trying to do essentially do is replace a 'negative reaction' with a positive one, by substituting a more relaxing stimulus that allows the mind to be still. I actually like this approach, in that it reminds me of samatha, the notion of calming the mind. But something else somehow needs to happen if I am to really gain insight into the phenomena. I have to see that the phenomena is driven by awareness. It's like this: when I have a flashlight, I can take the flashlight and pinpoint it on anything, and then it becomes illuminated. If the light is somewhere else, something else is illuminated. This is a tricky concept, because I am in the habit of thinking that what I see in front of me has its own awareness- so I start "having a conversation" with it as though it exists independently of awareness. The previous thought and present thought interact. If they didn't, would there be any vexations?
   If I don't get to this point of realization, I spend most of my time just trying to make myself comfortable by substituting one thing for the other, and suffering arises as a result. I still don't know that what is 'in front of me' is really totality of mind. The mind cannot form craving or aversions if there is no sense of I and 'something else'; in fact, this split is the original mistake that gives rise to craving and aversions. But without a method, there is no way I can break that habit of subject-object, hence huatou, or the practice of questioning the duality to know what is mind. Until I can do this, an expedient means is to learn to simply abide in discomfort and to know through a kind of faith or confidence that even the deepest and most troubling disturbance is a reflection of true mind, like a wave in an ocean. There is no need to change the disturbance or 'wait for it to go away'. Rather, it is to know in a deep way that discomfort is true mind.