01/16/2026
Michael Singer uses the metaphor of a thorn in the hand.
If you have a thorn embedded in your skin, you can spend your entire life protecting it—avoiding situations, changing behavior, arranging your life so nothing ever touches it.
And for a while, that works.
But every act of protection reinforces the belief that the thorn is too dangerous to face.
So the guarding increases.
The fear increases.
The life restrictions increase.
This metaphor lands deeply for me because I lived it.
For years, I used drugs and alcohol as a way to manage the anxiety inside me. Not because I was reckless—but because they worked in the short term. They dulled the edge. They created space. They gave my nervous system temporary relief.
But they were never removing the thorn.
They were just padding around it.
And over time, the anxiety didn’t shrink—it grew.
The coping strategies had to increase.
The avoidance had to become more elaborate.
The inner turmoil got louder, not quieter.
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