Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
newscientist.com
Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
1–10 of 295 posts
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#2Depends on your object of meditation
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#3This is probably oversimplified, but it does make some sense.
Some people are happily trotting about in their objectively miserable lives.
Sit them down and let them think on it, and they just might realize how empty their lives are and how little control they have over their situation.
I've always been very "mindful" and depending on your inclination to cynicism, that inevitably means finding out that life is what it is.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#4Depends on your object of meditation
In para.3 they say this is specifically about mindfulness meditation. And they provide experts who give reasons why the results could quantitatively be wrong in both directions.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#5This is probably oversimplified, but it does make some sense. Some people are happily trotting about in their objectively miserable lives. Sit them down and let them think on it, and they just might realize how empty their lives are and how little control they have over their situation. I've always been very "mindful" and depending on your inclination to cynicism, that inevitably means finding out that life is what i…
This.
It's actually a step in the right direction even if they "suffer more": this is merely the first step. But this is an issue if they get stuck here unless driving this to the conclusion.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#6This is probably oversimplified, but it does make some sense. Some people are happily trotting about in their objectively miserable lives. Sit them down and let them think on it, and they just might realize how empty their lives are and how little control they have over their situation. I've always been very "mindful" and depending on your inclination to cynicism, that inevitably means finding out that life is what i…
So mindfulness meditation is like the Total Perspective Vortex? https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#7I'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 freak out and they aren't able to finish the retreat. It's perfectly normal and usually has positive effects in the long run. Although sometimes meditator is not able to work through the energies released - he should seek (any) professional help then.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#8Nice try. Still going to be mindful and meditate.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#9This is probably oversimplified, but it does make some sense. Some people are happily trotting about in their objectively miserable lives. Sit them down and let them think on it, and they just might realize how empty their lives are and how little control they have over their situation. I've always been very "mindful" and depending on your inclination to cynicism, that inevitably means finding out that life is what i…
Thinking about every aspect of my life in a very deep and logical way is what got me depressed. And what got me out of it was being busy enough that I didn't have time for that.
Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety
#10Depends on your object of meditation
No. For any meditation object one can have pleasant and unpleasant experiences.