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Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

newscientist.com

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Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#71

Post by wrnr »

JesseMeyer wrote: post #56
Mo3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm from personal experience. Even a lot of vipassana meditation by itself can send you into psychotic states when you're not ready for all the insight yet. I came very close to psychosis once, experienced ego death, broke down mentally and had to spend 2 months in a depression ward. Cannot recommend. On the other hand, I met my now-wife in the depression ward, which in the "active" phase right before my admi…

Meditation is a blade with no hilt. I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old. At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the…

I recently got bored and started to practice my vocal cords by sustaining a single tone. Turn out it is good technique for getting into a meditative state. I think it is the controlled breathing and single focus on one thing that helps to bring it about. Thought it was fun, but my neighbours must think that I have lost it.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#72

Post by [deleted] »

JesseMeyer wrote: post #56
Mo3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm from personal experience. Even a lot of vipassana meditation by itself can send you into psychotic states when you're not ready for all the insight yet. I came very close to psychosis once, experienced ego death, broke down mentally and had to spend 2 months in a depression ward. Cannot recommend. On the other hand, I met my now-wife in the depression ward, which in the "active" phase right before my admi…

Meditation is a blade with no hilt. I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old. At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the…

[deleted]

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#73

Post by thewarrior »

dTal wrote: post #26

It's important to bear in mind that meditation is a religious practice specifically aimed at causing ego-death. Yogis writing about the practice (before it became big business) freely admit all sorts of horrible-sounding mental side effects, but couch them in religious terms (and encourage the acolyte to push through until they achieve "enlightenment", which they describe as a profoundly nihilist state of being). Thi…

Modern day mindfulness is completely shorn of its spiritual foundations which are quite important.

The Buddha wasn’t about meditating so you could be more productive at work. It’s about letting go of all such desires.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#74

Post by JesseMeyer »

wrnr wrote: post #71
JesseMeyer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meditation is a blade with no hilt. I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old. At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the…

I recently got bored and started to practice my vocal cords by sustaining a single tone. Turn out it is good technique for getting into a meditative state. I think it is the controlled breathing and single focus on one thing that helps to bring it about. Thought it was fun, but my neighbours must think that I have lost it.

Oooooooooooooooooooooohm.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#75

Post by NoOneNew »

troughway wrote: post #65
NoOneNew wrote: post #63

Yea... you know, surgery is extremely painful. It can sometimes be worse than whatever is the reason you're getting cut open. The recovery period is a nightmare too sometimes. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Non-religious meditation is sort of the same for your psyche. You bring things to light that have been plaguing you in the background. Once in the light, you have to painfully deal with it. Make peace with…

Your ire is misplaced. This article is talking about the minority of people for whom meditation does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. This reminds me of study done where, again, a small percentage of people who were exposed to sounds that are typically used to reduce anxiety had the opposite effect to. I am trying to dig up this study but it was posted to HN close to a decade ago, so who knows what happened…

Okay, but it's not a minority of people. If you do mindfulness right, you will feel even more depressed at times. Part of the point. You are now in control of said depression. This helps to teach you have to control it. When I started years ago, I became super depressed after realizing I should have left my ex after about 1 year instead of staying with her for 6 years. I became more depressed than when I found out she cheated on me. However, I learned a valuable lesson from it. I got rid of people in my life that brought me down and valued the people who were a positive in my life.

It's not supposed to be a feel good, heroin injection process. It's a mental surgery to better understand your life. If you take the painful part away from the process, you might as well not even bother doing it. Because then it's more like masturbating with zero payoff.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#76

Post by uwagar »

nabla9 wrote: post #29
r34 wrote: post #7

I've been practicing meditation for several years now. The phenomenon described in the article is very obvious to every practitioner - it can happen that for some time you will feel worse (actually I'm surprised that it's only 8%). It is related to psychological mechanisms of repression, which is weakened during meditation practices. That is why during serious meditation retreats (like 10 days vipassana) some people…

I just want to add that for some people the 'freak out' is psychosis, or other serious mental condition that needs immediate treatment. There are many people who come into meditation to fix something because they have a sense that something is going wrong with them. Meditation has become very popular and there is strong incentive to avoid mentioning possible negatives. Then you just ship out damaged people from the b…

while this is valid, one should take it with a pinch of salt of Not Invented Here Syndrome as meditation is generally a practice of the 'East' and there is a nervousness that it is a gateway drug to the eastern religions for the Christian / rational 'West'.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#77

Post by lewispollard »

yomly wrote: post #15
r34 wrote: post #7

I've been practicing meditation for several years now. The phenomenon described in the article is very obvious to every practitioner - it can happen that for some time you will feel worse (actually I'm surprised that it's only 8%). It is related to psychological mechanisms of repression, which is weakened during meditation practices. That is why during serious meditation retreats (like 10 days vipassana) some people…

I have never sat down and properly given meditation a go. That said I have encountered it in various walks - through yoga, martial arts and casual meditation sessions. What benefits would you describe you feeling from getting past beginner stage?

For me, having practised for around 6 years now, I can sum it up as the acceptance of reality as it is. Some valuable thing in my house breaks? Well, that's just what happens to things. There's very little resistance to what's going on even if it's painful.

There's also a strong sense that the self/world boundary is constructed, and I can see that construction happening in my mind in real-time. This has led to greater empathy and compassion, because of the felt sense that we're all the same 'stuff'.

Besides that, I have access to states of mind I couldn't conceive of before. I no longer feel like I am some kind of entity that lives behind my eyeballs, trapped in a body. I can always 'feel' the awareness of awareness, which isn't limited by my perception. So there's this great open space in which perception occurs, and I can continuously sense that. Having that as an anchor makes me far less reactive, and more calm in the face of challenges.

I can deconstruct my sensory experience in realtime, which basically means whatever the senses are delivering to me, I can recognise what kind of sensing it is. This sounds trivial or tautological, what it means in practice is that nothing really 'sticks'. If a strong emotion comes up, I recognise internal feeling and it just sort of flows out of me. If I'm having a thought or mental image, I recognise it's a thought or a mental image, and it's seen in proportion to the space of awareness, rather than the mind getting stuck into it.

If you're looking at a screen right now, you can sense the proportionality of the device to the room quite intuitively. That same sense of proportionality is given to the contents of the mind-body system with continued mindfulness practice. Everything just happening where it is, rather than somehow being stuck within it.

All that said, the linked article is quite right. Most people do not get to these states of mind without struggle, because we are complex psychological beings with trauma, regret, guilt, shame, and so on, and all of that comes up while sitting, to be seen and digested.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#78

Post by loxs »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #70
loxs wrote: post #68

Exactly how it works for me. I tried meditation and my anxiety became much worse. Somehow the meditation itself unlocks many more things to worry about. Conversely, I found out that doing things that are exactly the opposite (of mindfulness) do great for me to not worry that much: Play computer games, go to "pointless" parties, "waste" some money... and of course, physical activity. Meditation centers my mind squarel…

.. many would strongly advise against avoiding those emotions, and possibly getting help / ideas / guidance on how best to defuse their affect on you. There's a significant difference between understanding the political horrors, or knowing that cancer is a problem - versus being terrified of thinking about these realities.

Well, yeah, I hear you. But for the past 5 years I have progressed from panic attacks and benzodiazepine dependance... to mostly "nothing" by just "avoiding" the anxiety. I sleep all night, I am much more happy with my work, etc. All of this, just because of taking the "right" decisions, which are mostly avoiding stress, like switching jobs, improving my physical fitness, allowing myself to be lazy etc.

Yeah, it may backfire in the future, but I am not going back there, if I am allowed to choose.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#80

Post by uwagar »

NoOneNew wrote: post #63

Yea... you know, surgery is extremely painful. It can sometimes be worse than whatever is the reason you're getting cut open. The recovery period is a nightmare too sometimes. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Non-religious meditation is sort of the same for your psyche. You bring things to light that have been plaguing you in the background. Once in the light, you have to painfully deal with it. Make peace with…

new scientist has always stuck me as a science magazine for the alt-right type. full page ads of BMWs on the opening page and some climate change article as well.
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