Am I being paranoid?

I came to Zen with my Adlerian analysis under my belt and with years of training in psychoanalytic therapy. I had these tools for dealing with my self-doubts. Zen gave me some new ways.

“Let it go or go with it” is the generic version of a very basic Zen meditation instruction. Sitting on your cushion each day, you are supposed to be counting your exhalations, one to ten, over and over again. That’s the basic beginner’s practice. As you meditate, you notice that your mind has wandered. You’re thinking about something. Might be important. Might be trivial. What do you do? You let the thought go and return to your breath.

I was still a new meditator, still distracted by knee pain. I brought my pain to Jishu. What should I do? “Let it go,” she said. “Return to your breath.”

I tried, but sometimes the pain was too much. What should I do? Jishu understood. “Then, become the pain,” she said. When you can’t let it go, go with it. Plunge into the pain. Let go of all the stories. I had plenty of stories, imagining all the irreparable damage I was doing to my knee and all activities I’d no longer be able to engage in. Would I ever even walk again? Jishu wasn’t telling me to analyze my stories. She was telling me to be the pain.

Suspicion, distrust – maybe you call it “paranoia” – is a form of pain. Notice it; let it go. I can’t let it go. She doesn’t like me. She hates me. She thinks I’m a threat. She’s going to get me fired. She’s going to kill me. The stories keep coming, on my cushion and throughout the day. They’re keeping me awake at night. I’m trying to let them go, but I can’t. What do I do? Become the suspicion. How do you become suspicious?

There was a iconic moment. I was in a team meeting, the treatment team on a psych inpatient unit, and I was a junior social worker, the lowest guy on that totem pole, and Cy, the unit chief, kept putting me down. At least, it seemed that way to me. I was getting freaked. “Just ignore it; it’s probably nothing,” wasn’t working at all.

It just happened then. I don’t know how or why. Instead of making up stories, I asked, “Cy, are you angry at me?” I don’t know where the nerve to say that came from.

“No, of course not,” he said, but I could hear that he was shaken by my challenge. Was he angry? I don’t know. Was I being paranoid? Don’t know that either, but Cy stopped picking on me. After that, we developed a good working relationship. We worked together for three years.

Suspicious? Can’t let it go? So be suspicious. Not in your head. Don’t go all introspective. Be suspicious. Be a detective. Check out your suspicions. Sometimes suspicions and fears dissolve when we let them go, and sometimes they dissolve when we plunge in. What keeps the fears from dissolving are the stories we make up about them.