Peter A Levine “In an Unspoken Voice”- 2010
The fear of being consumed by these "terrible" feelings leads us to convince ourselves that avoiding them will make us feel better and, ultimately, safer...

Unfortunately the opposite is true. When we fight against and/or hide from unpleasant or painful sensations and feelings, we generally make things worse. The more we avoid them, the greater is the power they exert on our behavior and sense of well being.

Inviting the Demons In A Hasidic Approach to Suffering, Conflict and Human Failings James Jacobson-Maisels
The yetzer ha-ra, the evil urge, can be battled against or it can be seen as an aspect of divine will, containing one of the sacred names of God. Though an understanding of the positive aspects of the yetzer ha-ra is ancient in Judaism, in Hasidism there is a concerted effort to harness its power in concrete ways. The yetzer ha-ra, and all the dangerous emotions and drives with which it is associated, can, according to Hasidism, be harnessed as a path to God. 2 The demons of the soul can be tamed and yoked to spiritual growth.

And this is not only true of the demons of the soul. 3 A story is told of the Baal Shem Tov, known by his acronym, the Besht, who was hired by an arrendator, a Jewish lease holder in Eastern Europe, as a melamed (teacher) for his children. …

The Besht, a well-known magus and spiritual healer, does not banish or harm the demons he encounters in his dwelling, but simply assigns them their proper place in the attic, a place where they will not come into contact with vulnerable humans, and scolds them like children when they act up. Why does the Besht present such a tolerant attitude to these demons, and what does Hasidism have to teach us about the demons we all encounter?

..... How is one to overcome the pain and human failings which act as stumbling blocks to self-transformation and self-transcendence? The Besht, and the Hasidic movement he spawned, present a unique answer to this question, founded on a notion of what we might call — borrowing a phrase popularized by author Tara Brach —“radical acceptance.” For Hasidism, demons are overcome precisely through their embrace, transformation is achieved through acceptance, and transcendence comes through earthly embodied presence. We go beyond the self by returning to it, by embracing it in its fullness with all its blemishes, failures, and shame. Yet to do so wisely, in a way which transforms, requires a certain consciousness, a certain quality of attention, which begins with the fundamental Hasidic insight of the divinity of all being.