Seeing Oneself in the Picture

It can be a helpful exercise to really see what's happening inside of oneself and to take it for what it is, rather than trying to sugar coat it in some ways. I am thinking about the expression "self-befriending" as an act of totally and completely understanding one's emotional states but with a full and complete awareness.  Why is this act of self-befriending so difficult? I suspect it's because people miss the awareness part and jump directly to simply reacting to what's happening within. I see some situation that feels painful to me and automatically, I feel as though that situation itself were a multiple choice test: choose the correct answer and the person will stop suffering. But it isn't so easy and this and sometimes the awareness of the situation is enough to know how to deal with it.
    What would it be like if, instead of indulging one's impulses or trying to suppress them, one were to simply observe the inner pain that these impulses arise from? To observe the pain, in other words, without trying to react to the situations that give rise to that pain. This requires a certain mindset of not straying into theories about why certain pain arises or what one can do about it, but actually to learn to be fully clear about the pain itself without needing to escape it.