All Wrong

I wrapped my hands around his bicep, laid my cheek on his shoulder, held him close and tender.

"You've been doing it all wrong!"

A gentle tone, a playful assertion,

"isn't that just the best news?"

We were talking about managing frustration and other unpleasant emotional experiences.

He was frustrated with frustration.

"I know I should sit with it, but in that moment I can't."

"‘Sitting with it’ is already denying the frustration. It's imposing a right way to be, a right response, over the wrongness of the frustration. What does it mean to really BE frustrated in your body, in that moment?"

I reminded him, we did this earlier.

He had come into the kitchen, explained the situation, ran out of words for it, so I pushed him into the bedroom, onto the bed, climbed on top of him and told him to fight.

I held my weight on his hips, hands on his wrists, hooked my feet behind his knees, and he exerted his muscles, trying to throw me off.

Frustration loves to fight. If you don't give it something to fight, it will fight with its own existence—a battle with tenacious endurance.

"I've been trying so long!" he lamented.

"You've been doing it all wrong," I offered, as comfort.

What you've been trying were not the effective techniques.

You have not tried something worthy and failed.

You attempted something which would never have solved this problem, and now you have *only just* learned a tool that might be a real solution.

Yes, it feels as though you have been trying for so long.

You have.

Trying is a pleasant word for doing it wrong.

Now you have the opportunity to DO rather than try.

If you learned you’d been simply doing it wrong,

wouldn’t that be just the best news?