This "Buddhist meditation retreat" in a tiny cabin in the North Carolina mountains goes way beyond the practicing mindfulness the author describes it as.
As with everything else in life: don't overdo it.
My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#72> And I didn’t have a history of any major trauma prior to the retreat Yeah, right. > in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar … I broke a window with my fist, misplaced my shirt, and guzzled about 16 bottles of Miller High Life … > That … represented a constant battle I had waged over the prior decade with anger and other negative emotions. I drank too much. I occasionally smashed printers that jammed.…
Yeah, on the surface level it looks like the author exchanged an intensity for impulsive and aggressive behaviour with an intensity for mindfulness and meditation.
I wonder if this is a symptom of going far too much in a direction people don't normally do, similar to how people can and do die from water intoxication but almost never under regular conditions. The naive guidance of the meditation teachers saying "more of a good thing is always a good thing" with regards to meditation having the same role as organisers of a water drinking contest.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#73I've had some very negative anxiety-driven experiences with dissociation (depersonalization / derealization / de-something-zation), usually when traveling to somewhere I'm unfamiliar with. It usually only lasts for 5 to 15 minutes rather than hours, but it does sound a lot like what he describes.
Relating this to meditation: On the rare occasion that I try meditating, it doesn't trigger anything negative, but I have found that I can induce such negative dissociative experiences on purpose (at least to some degree) by inducing a certain meditative-like thought pattern. It's hard to describe, but it has to do with time. It's like the mind is usually thinking at least a fraction of a second ahead, it's focused at least just a little into the future. If you break that, then meaningfulness seems to collapse and... it's not good, and you have to snap out of it.
I wonder if meditating is triggering something like that for the author.
Instead of meditating, mindfulness, thinking about your own thinking and purposefully trying to dissociate from yourself by conscious force, it may be more helpful just to find something that helps you relax. The point is to clear away stressful thoughts and thought patterns by letting the mind focus on something else rather than nothing (or itself).
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
These sorts of things have been dealt with for centuries by Buddhists, it’s a fairly common effect when you start with Zazen. This is why taking one part of the practice and abandoning the rest (most specifically, an experienced teacher) isn’t a great idea for everyone. Most of the time all you need to hear is “just let whatever comes up during Zazen go, and return to the moment” but alas, if you don’t things can go…
This is exactly the kind of inappropriate advice that the author is cautioning against. He was not just starting out, he had experienced teachers, and the horriffic panic-attack-like state he was not something that could have been addressed by "returning to the moment".
He was an instructor in "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" -- sorry, this is not a real thing. He's been teaching things he clearly does not understand, and his mind was blown by this. When I say "a teacher would tell you to come back to the moment" it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, the key thing is who the advice is coming from (read: an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan mindfulness camp fleecing wannabe mindfulness bro's out of several hundred dollars to sit with no experience for 10 days).
I don't really have much sympathy here, it seems, but I don't really understand how one could not expect something like this to happen unless they really avoided speaking to anyone with actual experience (which, yes, means a zen monk, and not someone who spent 3 days in a Hilton doubletree learning how to teach people to 'breathe' and 'unlock their chakras' -- which is all bollocks.)
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#75Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#76Ah yes, the realizations of pointlessness of life, inevitability of death and the prison-like construct of our physical bodies for our actual minds. Don't need meditation to get there. But more importantly, you're supposed to keep going and find peace with it. Not stop and run away in terror. You have yet to succeed at awakening.
> Congrats, you failed awakening. This is needlessly dismissive and condescending. It's like saying "Congrats, you failed running a marathon" to someone who suffers an injury after 20 kilometers.
Hmm, I didn't intend it that way, you're right.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#77> I relayed my experiences that afternoon to the two teachers who were overseeing the retreat of about 40 meditators. They were both kind, compassionate, and welcoming, suggesting various ways that I might alter my meditation practice to alleviate my symptoms
>
> In fact, in Britton’s study, 60% of the participants reporting distressing experiences were meditation teachers, rebutting Davidson’s argument that experienced meditators don’t end up in difficult territory.
It sounds like a scary failure mode due to survivorship bias, where meditation retreats don't have experienced leaders, because those that have had adverse effects of meditation simply stop teaching it. I wonder how many other fields suffer from the same, where it's easy to deny anything could go wrong until it happens to you, and that removes you from the race.
> A few months ago, I began dabbling with teaching mindfulness again, which may seem surprising. [---] I feel that I could do something for my students that wasn’t ever done for me: tell the truth.
This is great, and I hope Dan succeeds in making it sustainable.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your conclusion. I'd go a step further and state there is no such thing as a bad trip. There are just situations where loss go of control can result in the surfacing of things that are unresolved... and unpleasant. No one has a bad trip without the latter. Another reason why psychedelics should come with clear warning labels that describe bad outcomes for specific situations.
I see your point, but I prefer to live in a free universe. We don't ban electricity or knives ... and both can do harm.
I prefer so too.
Let's not jump to conclusions. I wouldn't propose a ban on anything when a warning label or full disclosure would do just fine. I've edited my comment accordingly
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#79Wow, there are a lot of judgemental and defensive responses here, from people who are allegedly working towards greater self knowledge and detachment...
So many saying some variation of "he's not doing it right". Yet with ten years of practice, it doesn't seem like this person was just dabbling or dipping their toe in the water.
Surely, even if they are "doing it wrong" that just goes to prove the point, that what's being taught and lauded so much as a panacea by some in the western world is potentially dangerous? And such dangers are downplayed or hand-waved away?
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
#80> This terrain was fresh. I had never previously experienced a psychotic episode and have no history of mental illness besides occasional bouts of mild anxiety and depression. ... > Why did I start meditating? The short answer is that in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar over some jambalaya, a steamy kiss, and a stray comment I didn’t take fondly. The evening ended hours later after I broke a window…
I agree with your conclusion. I'd go a step further and state there is no such thing as a bad trip. There are just situations where loss go of control can result in the surfacing of things that are unresolved... and unpleasant. No one has a bad trip without the latter. Another reason why psychedelics should come with clear warning labels that describe bad outcomes for specific situations.
A bad trip can tell people unthruths or falsehoods that they then believe. That is objectively bad.
In other words, a bad trip can manifest pathologies where none existed before.