Here is another way of thinking about mindfulness:
“You don’t want to fall into your problems, sink in them, become them. Conversely, you don’t want to run away from them, ignore them, or repress them. Those approaches are usually not fruitful.
There is a third way, a much more useful one. It is the inner act of distancing oneself from what is troubling you but still keeping it before you. You don’t go into the problems. You stand back just a little way- far enough so that the problems no longer feel overwhelming, but close enough so that you can still feel them.
Stand back a few feet from your problems. You can walk up and touch them if you like, sense them there, as though with your fingertips. And you can pull back whenever they begin to get too threatening.”
by Eugene Gendlin, in Focusing, page 72.