You don't need to exorcise "the thing" that drives you nuts?

"What if this is not to be gotten rid of?" 

This is the question I asked myself when a familiar stressor reappeared in my life and I felt the sickening agitation of anxiety. 

"What if this is to be worked with?"

That's what came next. This realization has be hard won, mind you. I have spent years, perhaps decades in the mindset of "If I could just get rid of this one part of me or my experience, then I would be ok." I could see that as time lost. Or a time in which I simply had not realized an important truth yet.

My Pocket Pema Chodron tells me:

"Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. You can leave your marriage, you can quit your job, you can only go where people are going to praise you, you can manipulate your world until you're blue in the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you. Then those same demons will appear as friendly, warmhearted companions on the path."

I don't know about "friendly warm-hearted companions" but certainly TEACHERS! 

So I ask you: what if that THING - you know, the thing that you hate, that you wish would just disappear, the one you would trade with someone else because you could handle someone else's issues, but your own just feels so icky - what if that thing didn't need to be gotten rid of? What if, instead, it was to be worked with? What if it is your teacher? Perhaps one of your most important teachers?