My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

"One might wonder if these wounded meditators had preexisting conditions that triggered these experiences. Most of us don’t, a finding similar to Britton and Lindahl’s study, which reported that 57% of practitioners suffering adverse effects didn’t have a trauma history and 42% had no psychiatric issues at all prior to meditation practice."

The framing is disingenuous. If you flip it, nearly half of people who have negative responses to meditation had trauma histories, and nearly 60% had previous mental health conditions.

Mindfulness, as I've learned it, means being aware of your thoughts and feelings, introducing positive thoughts and feelings, and replacing negative thoughts and feelings.

Meditation is also meant to be positive. You start with short sessions. The idea is to slow down and eventually stop your thoughts.

From what I've heard, a lot people just fall asleep at Vipassana retreats, due to the long meditation sessions, which would not be very useful. The way I learned meditation is that short, focused sessions are better than long sessions where you don't focus / just fall asleep. Based on this article, it sounds like these extended sessions might even be dangerous for some (almost like sensory deprivation or psychedelics can be in some cases).

Meditation on its own is not dangerous. The idea is to feel more grounded and centered after. The idea is to focus and develop your concentration. Otherwise, it's just "spacing out", which I've always been told is not meditation. If you space out and start to go into weird states of mind, that is not meditation, that is just dissociating / falling asleep / etc. There is a difference.

There's nothing wrong with slowing down your thoughts. If people think that slowing down your thoughts is dangerous, to me that just sounds like the ego not wanting to lose its grasp. Egos can be almost as crazy as someone having a psychotic break. It's fine to let yourself rest in your natural state for a little while. Nothing wrong with that. In my experience, that actually makes you more balanced then someone overthinking their whole life / not being aware of what's going on inside themselves.

I'm not a doctor, so get help if you need it, but one suggestion for a meditation practice is to start with 15 minutes a day, morning and evening. Set aside some space in your home and sit quietly for that period of time. Build up from there. Sitting in nature can also be helpful. If you start to feel weird, try to use your mindfulness practice during the day of focusing on positive things to get yourself out of it. Don't stay in a dissociated state, that is unproductive and potentially dangerous. If that doesn't work, stop and come back at a later time.

Meditation and mindfulness are meant to support one other. They are not exactly the same, but they are related. When you start to meditate you will become aware of how many thoughts you are having (most people go day to day not paying that much attention). With mindfulness, you practice directing your mind in a more positive way (i.e. neuroplasticity, you are restructuring your mind with a positive intent). This helps your meditations be better and more productive, and helps your life be better and more productive.

The way that I've been taught meditation and mindfulness are that they should be positive practices that support your life. If they are making life worse, something is off with that teacher or meditation school. Your own results can inform you if a teacher or meditation school is positive or not. If you're not getting positive results, that's not a good sign. These practices should make your life better.

> “I think that many of the people who are having difficulty and who are reporting that their problems are exacerbated by meditation are not meditating correctly, to put it simply and coarsely," he said, "Some might even say that they're not meditating. That they think they're meditating, but they're not really meditating.2”

> His notion, contradicted by historical and contemporary accounts, is a fusion of victim-blaming and fundamental attribution error. Unable to entertain the possibility of deficiencies in the mechanism, he blames the meditator.

I do appreciate meditating though to observe the background thoughts that are consuming energy as you mentioned. But I like my conviction and plan to keep it :)

Have you ever (I would be surprised if you never ever had, but perhaps this doesn't happen to you often) went outdoors and then suddenly started wondering if you have turnt off the stove/iron, locked the door and taken the key with you? This happens to me every day because I always exit "unconsciously" in the meaning of the word I intended. When we go together with my wife she would ask me "have you taken the key"? I respond "yes" automatically (here I am speaking but "unconsciously") because such is the habit and I am "daydreaming" ("unconscious" as I label it) at the moment, we lock the door (it locks itself when closed) and then I always feel a boost of adrenaline (in such a degree I have even started taking beta-blockers as this caused heart ache) and think "have I? bloody hell! I probably haven't, we will have to call a locksmith, wait an hour and pay $100 to get back in" (and occasionally this turns out to be the case). Then I become "conscious" and tell myself it's not a big deal, whatever, check the pockets calmly (usually finding the key) and go on. The very phenomenon of such strong anxiety at the moment itself takes place because I still am not really "conscious" at it (if I were I wold understand it's not a big deal). This wouldn't occur if I were leaving the home "consciously". I could put a huge red "wake up" sign on the inside of my door but I know I will get used to it soon and it will stop working.

The "doorway effect" has even gotten some scientific recognition recently[1].

Another example of unconscious speaking is when I am reading or writing something and somebody talks to me - I get less than 30% of what they say and "consciously" answer "yes" to everything then have no idea what did I agree with (and often can't even remember I said anything). And this is not intentional behaviour - they started when I was reading and I was not "conscious" enough to make a "conscious decision" (I tend to believe this phrase is pretty standard English) and switching to just listening them.

This is what I meant.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...