How to manage difficult associations formed with meditation practice?
I first stumbled upon TMI several years ago when I was dealing with quite serious health issues and a burnout. At that time meditation helped me to focus my attention on something other than my immediate issues and taught me a lot about the mind and life in general.
Fast forward to today, thankfully many things have improved in my life. But the regularity of practicing TMI has dropped from several longish sessions per day to a few short and not so productive sessions per week (having more frequent and long sessions is also logistically more challenging now).
What I keep noticing and what often creates inner resistance is that meditating tends to bring me back mentally to that period of life when I was experiencing a lot of mental and physical suffering. Even the sounds of my refrigerator when I'm sitting with my eyes closed can be enough to bring that mental state back (this doesn't happen when I'm simply doing something in my apartment). There were numerous times when it felt so overpowering that I had to stop meditating right away despite trying not to.
From what I know we can learn to strengthen our attitude of equanimity and acceptance but doing this in practice can feel so difficult when these emotions are so visceral and strong.
Changing the environment or turning on some background sounds does seem to help but only to a degree. Also, meditating with my eyes open is helpful, but this makes it more difficult to reach a more focused meditation state.
I'm curious if someone has gone through something similar or has any advice what could be done in similar circumstances?
Thank you