Beholding Fear/Anxiety

 Beholding the sense of one's fears and anxieties is not an easy thing to do, and it requires a lot of patience. How often does one's stories sound like, "if only this weren't true (xx or so and so), I would be happy? These kinds of narratives tend to shift to blaming modes rather than seeing that people are often caught in a multitude of different interconnecting factors and reasons.
  Actually, let's turn it around and say, most stories are neither all happy nor all sad. Even very painful situations have valuable learning opportunities embedded in them, while happiness comes at a price. Do you remember times when a happy experience felt like sand slipping through your fingers--a kind of nagging sense that this state of contentment won't last? This is the secret unhappiness that comes with happiness.
   "Beholding" means to simply "be with" rather than to try to push away. Fear and anxieties are simply one's griefs left unrecognized. They reflect deep fears of loss that need to be attended to with the utmost attentiveness, listening and empathy; a kind of fellow feeling. But to try to construct a counter narrative of "if only..then this won't be here", often doesn't help at all.