“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” ~Seneca
Before I had a name for it, I had pain. A deep, chronic pain in my stomach and my back that medicine eased for a while and then did not.
For two months I was in and out of the hospital while doctors tried to find the cause. There were tests and then surgery, and afterward I believed it was finished.
It was not. The pain came back.
The answer arrived in an unexpected way. After a walk one day, small purple spots appeared on my skin. My doctor suspected what it might be and took a biopsy of the skin. Then in 2022 I finally had a diagnosis: an autoimmune condition.
And every time I compared my body to that past one, the comparison turned into worry. Why me and why now, with a young family? What if it gets worse, and what will it mean for my work, my children, and the years I had assumed I would have?
None of those thoughts were the illness. They were about the illness. And they were much louder than it was.
Looking for a Happiness That Stays
That series of events became the starting point of a search. I wanted to understand the mind, and I wanted to know whether there was a happiness that stays. Not the kind that arrives with good news and leaves with bad, but a steadier kind that does not depend on test results.
So I went looking. I read about the mind and the science of stress, went into the old traditions one after another, and listened to talk after talk by teachers I respected.
I found thousands of ways in and very little structure. Every teacher seemed to describe the same mountain from a different side, and I often finished a book or a talk more confused than when I started.
What I was really after was the essence: the part that actually works, laid out so that anyone could follow it step by step.
The Question That Changed It
What finally helped was a simple question I could ask in one second, anywhere: Where is my attention right now?
Not “what am I thinking about?” Where.
Every thought I had about my illness turned out to stand in one of a few places. “I used to be able to do anything without thinking about my body” was about the past, and it carried liking, which is exactly why it made the present feel worse.
“Why did this happen to me?” was about the past too, and it carried dislike. “What if it gets worse?” was about the future, and it carried fear, which is dislike pointed forward. “I hate that I have to live with this” was in the present, pushing against it.
Once I started looking, I could place almost every moment in one of nine positions: past, present, or future, combined with liking, disliking, or feeling neutral. Most of my day was spent in the past and the future, and most of the weight came from there.
The most useful discovery was the one position that seemed to carry less weight: present and neutral. Just this moment, without a story on top of it: feet on the floor, the sound of traffic, the steering wheel in my hands.
The Illness Was Constant; The Suffering Was Not
This is what surprised me most. My condition was there every hour of every day. My suffering about it was not.
Even on bad days, there were hours when I simply forgot about it because something else had my full attention. In those hours the worry was not there. Nothing about my body had changed; my attention had moved.
Then the moment ended, attention drifted back to “what if,” and the heaviness came back with it.
Worry about my health had always felt permanent, like a weight I had to carry everywhere. When I watched closely, it was not. Each worry rose, stayed for as long as I held on to it, and passed, often faster than I noticed.
My mind was not a container slowly filling with fear. It was more like a river, always moving, and I could stop waiting for it to stand still.
That gave me something I could actually use. If the suffering came and went with my attention, while the illness stayed the same, then a large part of what I was carrying was not the illness. It was where my attention kept going.
That is not the same as saying it was all in my head. The condition was real, and it still is. And the appointments, the medicine, and the practical decisions all needed my attention.
But planning the next appointment is a very different activity from replaying the last one at two in the morning.
When It Came Back
The first relapse came in March 2023, and there have been a few more since. During one of them, this March, I was back on steroids.
A few days in, I was driving to the office, and my phone kept lighting up with messages from my boss. Each one landed with a jolt of urgency on top of the worry about my body.
This time I had the question. I noticed that the urgency was not in the messages. It was in the importance my mind had already given them before I had read a word.
And the worry about the relapse was almost entirely in the future: What if this time it does not settle?
So I named it, quietly, in the car: “This is not present.” The thought settled. An hour later it came back, and I did the same thing again.
I want to be honest about what this does and does not do. It settles the thought. It does not always lift the weight underneath.
Some mornings, before an important meeting, the worry still takes my peace until the meeting actually starts. I am still practicing.
But the difference between being lost inside a worry for hours and noticing it within a minute is not a small one. Over a day, it is most of the day.
What I’d Tell Someone Living with an Illness That Will Not Go Away
1. Separate the condition from the commentary.
Ask: is this thought about what my body is doing right now, or about what it did or what it might do? A lot of the weight lives in the past and the future.
2. Name the position, not the story.
“Future, fear.” “Past, regret.” Two words are enough; the story pulls you further in, and the label lets you take one step back from it.
3. Do not argue with the thought.
Telling yourself to stay positive is one more thought, and it keeps the worry in front of you. Notice it and let it be there.
4. Come back to something that is here.
The weight of your body on the chair, your breathing, a sound in the room. Not to escape the illness, but to give your mind something else to focus on, even briefly.
5. Expect it to return.
It will. Each time you notice, the practice is working, not failing.
6. Keep planning and worrying apart.
Take the medicine, book the appointment, write down your questions for the doctor, and then put the plan down. Planning happens now; rehearsing the worst case is a visit to a future that has not arrived.
7. Watch the gaps.
Notice the moments when the worry is simply not there. They are your own evidence that the suffering is not constant, even when the condition is.
What This Is Not
This is not a treatment, and it did not change my diagnosis. Please follow your doctor’s advice.
If worry has become constant, if your mood has been low for weeks, or if you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to a doctor or a crisis line.
What it gave me is smaller and, for me, more important: knowing that even on the hardest days, there is a moment available where nothing is wrong right now. The illness may stay with me for life. The suffering about it does not have to.
About A.C. Amarasinghe
A.C. Amarasinghe lives in Sri Lanka with his family and works in a corporate role. After an autoimmune diagnosis in 2022, he began mapping where attention goes and wrote it down as The Return of Attention, a step-by-step practice for a steadier mind. He writes about overthinking, anxiety, and sleep at ayutalks.com/blog.
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