An excerpt from How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (Second Edition). Copyright 2018 by Toni Bernhard. Excerpted with permission from Wisdom Publications.
The fifth way I cultivate compassion for myself is to consciously work on opening my heart to the intense emotions — and emotional swings — that accompany chronic illness. This practice began quite unexpectedly after my daughter’s family had come up from Los Angeles for Labor Day weekend. I was three months into a new treatment and was feeling optimistic about its prospects. My husband and I thought this might be the one, and indeed, I’d been able to spend more time than usual that weekend visiting with everyone. But the morning after they left, I awoke feeling like my old sick self.
As I lay in bed that day I began to fear that this treatment, like the others, was going to be a disappointment. The fear grew more and more intense, so I began to follow an instruction I learned early on in mindfulness practice: labeling thoughts and emotions. “Fear, fear — this is fear,” I silently repeated. Sometimes it’s difficult to label stressful mental states without falling prey to aversion, as in, “Fear; this is fear. It’s time to go away, fear. Get out of here now!” I’ve practiced labeling thoughts and emotions myriad times, both in and out of meditation, but this time something different happened. As I noted “fear . . . fear,” instead of passively waiting for it to pass on through, there was a shift in consciousness and I opened to it. Then the thought arose: “My heart is big enough to hold this fear.”
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