I hope I can answer your question. I think your entire post is full of stress.

The goal of open awareness is to allow anything in. The most important parts of mindfulness is to allow anything in (including uncomfortable situations in) and then to not add extra narratives. By paying attention to the body and watch the sensations pass away
on their own the relief happens. Trying to
make relief happen is aversion already.
The subtlety of meditation shows that you can be aversive to the results of the meditation practice as well. You can even have aversion to aversion which is common when making so much depend on meditation. The typical error is trying to "clean the mirror" constantly. It's what we do when we are starting but aversion is simply dislike of something you
perceive/recognize/objectify. Seeing the mind strategize how it will stop stress is already a setup for more stress.
Another problem is the thoughts try to day-dream about being a meditator and identifying oneself as a meditator. Most day-dreaming is about wanting something or wanting to get rid of something so the stress starts up. Then we all have habits of doing this so trying to stop a wandering mind is more aversion yet again. The trick is to not
add to what is habitual but to not repress the habit impulse when it arises. Be welcoming when it arises but don't add to it.

Here are some Shikantaza instructions Kenneth that can help (especially in daily life):
Practice becoming aware of the body sensations that correspond to a thought. Whenever a thought arises, feel the body. How do you know whether you like the thought or not? It's because the body sensations feel either pleasant or unpleasant. Notice that if you dissociate from this moment, i.e., step into the fantasy and leave the body, you will suffer. Suffering is not ordinary pain; ordinary pain is just unpleasant sensation. Suffering is cause by the dissociation, the stepping out of this moment, out of the body. Stay in the body and ride the waves of body sensation. Watch how the body reacts to the thougts and vice versa. See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation. Short-circuit this by returning to the body. Stay with the body as continuously as you can. You are stretching the amount of time you can stay in the body without being blown out of it by an event or a thought. To be in the body is to be free. To be in the body all the time is to be free all the time.
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"While you are practicing just sitting, be clear about everything going on in your mind. Whatever you feel, be aware of it, but never abandon the awareness of your whole body sitting there. Shikantaza is not sitting with nothing to do; it is a very demanding practice, requiring diligence as well as alertness. If your practice goes well, you will experience the 'dropping off' of sensations and thoughts. You need to stay with it and begin to take the whole environment as your body. Whatever enters the door of your senses becomes one totality, extending from your body to the whole environment. This is silent illumination."
-Master Shengyen
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Kenneth: See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation.
Mumuwu: Do you mean the moving out of the body to the mind and back?
I mean the creation of a third "thing," this pseudo-entity that is a composite of body sensations and mental phenomena. Living in this third thing is suffering because it takes you out of what is really happening in this moment; it becomes a proxy for experience. You can train yourself to stop living this proxy life of suffering by coming back to the body sensations in this moment. The body cannot lie. Being in the body is being present in this moment. Being present in this moment does not allow the pseudo-self to form. When the pseudo-self does not form, life is simple and free. It will be pleasant at times and unpleasant at times, but it is always free.
There is no conflict between noting and living in your body, by the way, whether you note silently or aloud. You can note or not note, think, act, talk, love, live; there is very little you can't do; you just can't suffer. If you choose to note, understand that there is nothing magical about the noting itself. The noting is simply a feedback loop to remind you to feel your body and observe your mind in this moment.
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Shinzen Young - Return to the Source1. You don’t need to position your attention in any particular way.
2. Let whatever happens happen, but as soon as you notice that you are doing anything
intentionally, stop.
Examples of things that you can stop doing are:
Intentionally thinking (as opposed to thinking that just happens to you)
Trying to focus on a certain thing
Trying to have equanimity
Trying to keep track of what’sgoing on
Trying to meditate
You want to be as normal as possible while decreasing the clinging habit. It's like forgetting on purpose. Of course any skills you need to develop you should always be practising. It's like gardening. Weed out the bad habits and plant flowers for the good habits. It's very easy to do mindfulness and forget more than you want to so there is a role for concentration/metta/practice practical skills.