You're welcome.
To continue, this thread should break out elsewhere. Illona's fonts are getting larger and swollen; such is the aroused state.
Otherwise, to consider your last questions:
Effort to stay where? In cessation attainment?
Cessation attainment is the full stop of arising selfhood. No more "effort". (This does not mean sustaining one's own life is without efforts (i.e.,water, food) and higher-order interests of being a cognitive animal).
Efforting is allowing the self-forming mechanism to wind down, come to a full stop.
If I add extras to mere natural processes (like HPA dysregulation, an underlying biological process of anxiety - which may be triggered by an external stressor in early childhood, or an ongoing stressor throughout a period of life, or by self-thinking) and if I cause perception of perception to become fictional, then a comment like, "Oh, woe, I am an anxious person" will form and the self-hood reforms on this fiction.
What can be done, if the feeling wave is so strong that it is incapacitating - i.e, if there is uncontrollable bodily shaking, is let perception perceive all the component sensations arising (as you probably already do with vipassana). It is important, however, that "you" knows" not to add fictional stories to this ("I am an anxious person", "my grandfather was an anxious person..." and so forth). I gave an example of "bipolar" above. I am not bipolar, however, it is clear some people (Georg Cantor) live with these more apparently tidal brains.
Consider the bore tide - a big wall of water coming every 12 hours: so too a person with lots of cerebral nerves and nerve-creation/myelination. Such a person will have an ideaphoric period, followed by a majorly depressed period.
So the brain myelinates during the learning. There are bi-products of myelination which are "toxic" if they cannot be broken down (homocysteine) into the readily digestible bits (cysteine). If Georg Cantor (and his culture) knew that it was perfectly normal to have heaving feeling, tears coming down face, pressure in skull after a few days of abundant myelination (new learning, new thinking) and he learned to let this body response happen without self-attack/loathing (the same as we permit the feeling of soreness which occurs for about a week after a long run/marathon) then perhaps Georg would not have hung himself and our world would have a bit more useful math, as well as tremendous acceptance for the biological underlyers of our respective beings.
Effort aspect:
There can exist for some time after the pivotal first realization/clear sight/stream entry/visceral shift an effort to nip in the bud a building upon this perception of perception with stories:
Take anxiety-story: that has a biological process (HPA axis dysregulation is a part): it may take a few weeks of exercise, reduced caffeine, breathing meditation, yoga, massage etc, and early-to-bed sleep to let that brain process re-regulate.
Meanwhile, on the self-process front, each time a wave of anxiety hits (not sure if anxiety is your issue, btw, this is just an example from my own experience) realize that the underlyer is a process (adrenal glands+cortisol re-bathing and re-bathing the hippocampus) and there is no need to follow it with stories (i.e., no adding "I am an anxious person"), no more than you follow the branches of a tree moving in a breeze, except as a feature of sight and, perhaps, wonder (and self-cessation results in a lot of wonder, IMO).
So, if "watcher" (personified perception of perception) is no longer perceived as a hindrance, how do you describe experience now?
[Edits: spelling, clean-up]
[rin, i added a distinction regarding "watcher" - watcher-state could be considered more than "perception of perception" because it has an element of personification in it - the "I-ness", thus "personified perception of perception".
It may be finer point, or one you see easily, and not to be a source for snagging "you". The story-making I-ness which forms a watcher-on-top-of-perception-of-perception attenuates over time, knowing it is extra, the same as I do not wear a pair of shoes over a pair of shoes (unless they are rubbers for the rain)
So, lastly, the above examples (i.e., anxiety) are larger personifications of perception of perception, but attaching to perception of perception and attributing it person-ness (watcher) is the same.]