As with a person, one visit is not enough to establish a friendship and a working relationship
. You must choose to come back to the emotion many times - not to become overwhelmed or identified, not to become lost in thinking about the emotion and worrying, but to come back to the emotion and sit with it yet again - as a friend. Each time you touch the emotion with mindfulness and compassion it will soften and become malleable and begin to change. You are creating the ideal conditions in which suffering can heal, and it will heal by itself if allowed to change, just as ignorance and reactivity will prevent it changing.