I do yoga and meditation once a week, and though I always feel great physically after, there are definitely days that I feel like it "unlocked" something. I have to do a lot of work to manage my...
I do yoga and meditation once a week, and though I always feel great physically after, there are definitely days that I feel like it "unlocked" something. I have to do a lot of work to manage my mood for many other reasons, and I would not say that meditation disregulates me more than anything else.
I know of at least one person who first uncovered memories of major abuse in meditation. It was a years long shakeup to their life and relationship, but in the long run I think they are better off. I suppose there's some survivor bias there.
It's not clear to me that these risks are inherently negative. I think it's a little like uncovering a latent physical problem. Once you know about it, you can begin to address it. Before then, it's probably affecting you in ways you don't have access to, so you're somewhat at its mercy.
In people I know, there is a definite bimodal distribution when it comes to attitudes about meditation. I can see why convincing people from the "definitely not" hill to try it would be harder if you talk about the risks, but it does seem irresponsible to do otherwise.
I'm glad that research is being done, but I worry about the path dependence keeping that from leading to better practices. I think there's a high overlap between doubt about western medicine and meditation/spirituality, so hopefully there are people on both sides who are open minded enough to bridge the gap.
From experience, there is some overlap between meditation and psychedelics. I've unlocked suppressed memories with psychedelics. That others have with meditation makes sense.
From experience, there is some overlap between meditation and psychedelics. I've unlocked suppressed memories with psychedelics. That others have with meditation makes sense.
This is very descriptive of my experience; meditation got me the majority of the way towards realising I'm trans.
It's not clear to me that these risks are inherently negative. I think it's a little like uncovering a latent physical problem. Once you know about it, you can begin to address it. Before then, it's probably affecting you in ways you don't have access to, so you're somewhat at its mercy.
This is very descriptive of my experience; meditation got me the majority of the way towards realising I'm trans.
It is just incorrect to think that the meditation is at fault here. It is the major abuse, and mal-adaptive coping mechanisms, that were the problem in this example. I had un-diagnosed Celiac...
I know of at least one person who first uncovered memories of major abuse in meditation. It was a years long shakeup to their life and relationship, but in the long run I think they are better off. I suppose there's some survivor bias there.
It is just incorrect to think that the meditation is at fault here. It is the major abuse, and mal-adaptive coping mechanisms, that were the problem in this example.
I had un-diagnosed Celiac Disease for at least 5 years. It was finally discovered on a blood test. The blood test is not bad because of this, and it is not because of the blood test that I can't eat gluten for the rest of my life. I was just ignorant of all of my symptoms before then. Yes, if I never got diagnosed, I could still eat gluten every single day. But I'd feel like absolute shit and have no reason why, and I would increase my risk of cancers and other problems.
I had un-diagnosed sleep apnea for a long time. It was finally diagnosed via a home sleep study, and now I have to sleep with a CPAP machine. The test isn't at fault here, I was literally unable to sleep through the night before, but I just didn't know it. But if I didn't take that test, I would not have to use a CPAP machine now.
As a root cause, yes, sure. But when a person meditates regularly, believes that it is an absolutely safe relaxation technique, and then by 'accident' unlocks/relives traumatic experiences, ends...
It is just incorrect to think that the medication is at fault here. It is the major abuse, and mal-adaptive coping mechanisms, that were the problem in this example.
As a root cause, yes, sure. But when a person meditates regularly, believes that it is an absolutely safe relaxation technique, and then by 'accident' unlocks/relives traumatic experiences, ends up in a psychotic state and is scarred for a long time, then meditation IS the catalyst for that reaction.
When someone managed to live a somewhat normal life after being exposed to traumatic situations it is horrible for them to involuntarily have to face these feelings again.
So, anybody with an interest in meditation should be aware that certain practices can be a risk for them. Especially if they lived through trauma.
To add to @shu's reply, which I agree with, I was not intending to say that meditation is at fault. I think the paragraph below the one you quoted acknowledges that. In medical practice, all...
To add to @shu's reply, which I agree with, I was not intending to say that meditation is at fault. I think the paragraph below the one you quoted acknowledges that.
In medical practice, all interventions have risk, even if that risk is very slight. Doctors will weigh those risks against the benefits of the intervention.
An example of this: when my wife was pregnant, I very much enjoyed the ultrasound because it was so neat to see the baby. I was quite disappointed when they didn't do an ultrasound at every checkup, but I learned that even though the ultrasound is considered very, very safe, there's a small risk of thermal heating and cavitation, so they don't do them "for fun" if there is no diagnostic purpose. They avoid even very small risks if there is no counterbalancing benefit.
In the example I was citing in my first post, the person was at an equilibrium that was unexpectedly upset by the meditation. Sure the abuse is the root cause, but dealing with it can be incredibly fraught, and once they had opened that up, they had no choice but to deal with it. They were fortunate to have good social and medical support around theme but not everyone does.
I think meditation is a valuable tool, but the point of the article and my own experience is that it is not without risk, and these risks often go unacknowledged. People should have informed consent of the risk so they can try to experience the benefits if they choose to accept the risk.
it’s known and discussed that for one, meditation isn’t the best thing, at least, the rinpoche i know best and the many vajrayana buddhist books i read discussed it. same with teachers in general,...
it’s known and discussed that for one, meditation isn’t the best thing, at least, the rinpoche i know best and the many vajrayana buddhist books i read discussed it. same with teachers in general, students and would-be students are cautioned to not just blindly take someone as a guru or to just blindly do whatever they say.
with meditation, it’s like a pond. if you stir it with a stick, the water becomes muddy because you’re also stirring up all the mud at the bottom. some folks aren’t ready for that, some people can’t even do sittin*meditation at all.
there’s not a thing i’ve ever seen in life that is good for everyone at any time (of things people can undertake to do or not do, i’m saying). even eating say, raw veggies isn’t for everyone. some people have conditions that would worsen if they did that.
in all things, using your brain and paying attention to results is how to approach any situation. meditation is just a tool, and for any job, getting the right tool is how it’s done. what the right tool is—in the case of human development—can change over time.
to sum up: always use your head and pay attention to how what you do (and what you eat! and any meds you!re taking! etc) is affecting you. stop if it’s not going well and try to see why and what to do next. if anything.
I definitely agree! Now, mind everyone, I am not a doctor, nor an academic. I don't work a prestigious job, nor do I have the money to back my claims, so take what I say with a huge grain of salt....
Exemplary
I definitely agree! Now, mind everyone, I am not a doctor, nor an academic. I don't work a prestigious job, nor do I have the money to back my claims, so take what I say with a huge grain of salt.
But to add to your point, the pitfalls of meditation have been written about, off-and-on, for a couple-thousand years and the negative association that gurus and masters are gatekeeping is not solely the result of snake-oil salesman and cultists, but also because meditation is easy to start, difficult to master, and prone to harmful results when propped up by bad habits. Look no further than the Nèiyè to see that stressing healthful practice has always been there.
Dàoism comes with forms of meditation that are not always commonly known, and it has its own fair share of McMeditation charlatans. However, as with any discipline —from diet, to exercise, to scholarly studies— the overuse or misuse of a new area of interest can lead to adverse and sometimes harmful results. Historically speaking, the Dàoist outlook on meditation is no different: improper prescription or practice can lead to improper outcomes, including depression and psychosis, especially when diving deep without addressing things like a sedentary lifestyle, genetic and personality issues, or past traumas.
In general, people can come to experience feelings of panic, discomfort such as uncontrolled spontaneous movements, sensory problems such as visual or auditory hallucinations, irrational beliefs such as valuing apophenic patterns, or even withdrawal from their personal lives for dream and meditation addiction (daydream tripping).
While exposure and treatment of trauma and personal issues is an integral part of the therapy of meditation, this can be the opposite of helpful for someone who is unprepared for it. A proper diet and regular exercise are vitally important factors to a healthy body. Likewise, training, moderation, and gradual process are vitally important factors to a healthy mind. None of these are truly separate from each other but are all pieces in a larger puzzle of cultivating health.
Consider some of these essential phrases and terms that Dàoists sometimes use:
Yà miáo zhù zhǎng[ 揠苗助長 ]idiom
/ jä⁵¹ mi̯ɑʊ̯³⁵ ʈ͡ʂu⁵¹ ʈ͡ʂɑŋ²¹⁴ˉ²¹/ [Wade-Giles: Ya miao chu chang ]
Rip out sprouts, help them grow; to spoil something through
excessive enthusiasm.
Zǒuhuǒ rùmó[ 走火入魔 ]idiom
/ t͡soʊ̯²¹⁴ˉ³⁵-xu̯ɔ²¹⁴ˉ²¹ ʐu⁵¹ mu̯ɔ³⁵/ [Wade-Giles: Tsou huo ju mo ]
Exit fire, enter demons; misfire & obsession; to believe that
the harmful results of a mental or martial practice are of
benefit; to mistakenly focus on hallucinations that arise
during meditation.
Qìgōng piānchā[ 氣功偏差 ]noun
/ t͡ɕʰi⁵¹-kʊŋ⁵⁵ pʰi̯ɛn⁵⁵-ʈ͡ʂʰä⁵⁵/ [Wade-Giles: Ch'i kung p'ien ch'a ]
Energy results straying wrong; psychosomatic imbalance;
to undergo bodily symptoms that are caused by mental and
emotional disturbances, improper training & practice, or both.
The latter term is probably well known to the non/inter-religious Qìgōng crowd as "Qì deviation."
There is another term that is likely well known by Zen Buddhists, as it comes from the Rinzai master Hakuin Ekaku:
Chán bìng[ 禪病 ]noun
/ ʈ͡ʂʰ-än³⁵ piŋ⁵¹/ [Wade-Giles: Ch'an ping ]
Zen sickness; a deep fatigue due to striving beyond what one
is prepared for; illness or malaise that is induced by fearful
glimpses into the non-mind; to be sick without realizing it.
Hakuin wrote about zen sickness in his autobiography, the Itsumadegusa (Wild Ivy), where he details some of the aspects of his practice-induced depression, the training regimen that a Dàoist recluse taught him, and the importance of health and stamina training that he began to incorporate in his teachings.
A lot of this is why I tend to recommend that if one is going to go down the meditation route, in addition to addressing diet, they take up a stretching and workout regimen, especially building some core strength. Planks, leg-lifts, crunches, back-bridges, back leg-lifts, and superman stretches are of immense benefit in the ability to hold a half or full lotus pose, but more than that, they aid in good posture and alignment. Bad posture and spinal alignment leads to back and nerve problems. Likewise, without that stretching and workout regimen, blood will not adequately circulate through the body to oxygenate the nerves that are increasing in sensitivity through meditative practices. Both of these can cascade into deeper health problems if left untreated.
Only about a half to two-thirds of the neurons in your body are in your brain. Kinesthetic theory carries with it the idea that muscle-memory —the aspects of our sensory inputs which are tied into the neural networks that comprise our memories— traces its way through the body and back to the brain. The overlap of these visual and physical aspects of our memory networks is, in neuro-scientific terms, actually called "memory integration." The long-standing, operating theory behind the complications with meditation is that it induces a sort of defragmentation process that parallels sleep in many ways, but that this integrative process may connect and expose traumatic memories especially by means of triggering physical or emotional components of stored memory events. Again, this is not necessarily bad, but can be an unintended consequence for someone ill-prepared who dives too deep.
Consider the sensation of dreaming after having ridden the roller coaster at an amusement park that day, wherein you can still feel the movement of your body, especially below the diaphragm. Likewise, most people have had a dream where you are falling towards the ground and can actually feel that movement which shifts from virtual to physical as you jolt awake. Or there is the dream where you are vividly angry with a loved one, then wake up while retaining some form of baseless anger towards them that still feels real. Now, consider the notion that through meditation, you could trigger feelings of the emotional or physical aspects of a previous traumatic event that you had otherwise only rationally settled.
People talk about the potential for psychoactive drugs to stimulate and induce manic or depressive episodes in those who are genetically predisposed, but practitioners have also stressed that meditation carries a similar potential by stimulating the nervous system in not-dissimilar ways. The therapy of addressing the physical and emotional aspects of our body and its memories is part of what can make meditation practice very beneficial, but also very complicated, which is why serious practitioners tend to steer other students towards finding a good teacher, and if necessary, a helpful doctor (or therapist).
To be clear, not everybody is at serious risk, and at only 10~20 minutes of practice a day, likely very few are at any risk. But in a world of 8-billion people, it's worth taking a more conscientious approach to meditation as being part of a larger toolkit of healthful practices, rather than some orientalist panacea as pitched by influencers.
This is some serious business I predict that most people who hear about anything negative at all about meditation will react the same way: surely they were just not practicing enough, or surely...
This is some serious business
A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.
According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror.
The most common account I hear from people who have suffered adverse meditation effects is that the teachers don't believe them. They're usually told to just keep meditating and it will go away.
I predict that most people who hear about anything negative at all about meditation will react the same way: surely they were just not practicing enough, or surely there were underlying problems, or maybe folks will hit a rough patch but they'll be so much better when they get to the other side. Pish posh, dismiss these studies, keep believing. That attitude would be superstitious faith and anti-science.
Trouble is, McMeditation is being sold as 100% effective and 100% safe, to work places, gyms and the youngest kids -- had the effects from these scientific studies been known, I doubt they could have been able to pass ethics for a large scale study on kids.
We don't even understand how our consciousness works and we're messing around with altered states of consciousness. Proceed with caution for sure, rewards seem fantastic. But people should also know the risks and not everyone should just click on a random YouTube video and mess with their brains personhood.
[Edit: disclaimer, I do meditation. Going to read into it more and find out more about how to do it safely. These practices are thousands of years old: maybe we should do a better job listening to the ancients and learning from their findings]
I've dabbled with mindfulness and meditation a bit on and off, but haven't ever gotten too serious about it for any extended period of time. The attitude you describe is a large part of what kind...
I've dabbled with mindfulness and meditation a bit on and off, but haven't ever gotten too serious about it for any extended period of time.
The attitude you describe is a large part of what kind of turns me off. When proponents who gush about the positive benefits and how profoundly it can improve your life suddenly do a 180 and brush off any talk of potential negative side effects as absurd, it's a big red flag to me--comes off as very cult-like or new-agey thinking. If your claim is that meditation can have a huge impact on your life, what magical force is at play to ensure that impact will only be a positive one? I can take medicine for an illness and it might make me better, but if I don't take the correct dose or if I'm allergic to that medication it could make things worse. Why would mindfulness practice be exempt from that?
First I'm not going to contest that proponents of mindfulness can be overly enthusiastic and over sell the benefits. But I am curious... what about it seems magical? My practice of meditation is...
First I'm not going to contest that proponents of mindfulness can be overly enthusiastic and over sell the benefits.
But I am curious... what about it seems magical? My practice of meditation is very simple: sit in silence, eyes closed, count breaths, intentionally note my body from toes to head, turn my focus to a particular exercise, return to counting breaths, allow my attention to expand to my sense, open my eyes. It's just sitting in silence and practicing focus.
If it doesn't work for someone, fine. If sitting in silence with oneself surfaces debilitating darkness... that is a big problem and professional help is necessary. That isn't meditation's fault that someone can't tolerate themselves in silence.
I don't love this particular part of your take. If meditation doesn't work for someone it doesn't work for someone. The same way that some people get suicidal on anti-depressants or that CBT...
That isn't meditation's fault that someone can't tolerate themselves in silence.
I don't love this particular part of your take. If meditation doesn't work for someone it doesn't work for someone. The same way that some people get suicidal on anti-depressants or that CBT doesn't work for everyone, it's not inherently that they "cannot tolerate themselves in silence." You're correct that this doesn't make meditation or antidepressants or CBT the "problem", but it does make them a "problem for that person"
It's fundamental to mental health practice that not every intervention is effective on or positive for everyone. Even if they cannot "tolerate" themselves, it still reveals that they need other interventions.
I'll own that it's a harsh take, but I think my preceding sentence aligns what you've said here. And I don't think it's going to work for everyone. I think there is a difference between "not...
I'll own that it's a harsh take, but I think my preceding sentence aligns what you've said here. And I don't think it's going to work for everyone.
I think there is a difference between "not working" and "actively harmful." If it just doesn't work, that's fine. What I mean by "can't tolerate" is "trying this methodology is actually making things worst." For example, there was a phase where I found myself falling asleep to harsh metal or WW2 documentaries at night. I realized that I was so unhappy that I couldn't cope with being in silence. I needed something loud to drown out my discontentment. As an aside, I had practiced meditation to great effect before this episode and returning to meditation was not one of the changes I made and I think would have been neither helpful or deleterious.
If you'd said "can't tolerate meditation" I'd have tracked but I felt the "can't tolerate themselves" and a similar sentiment in the previous paragraph, was more personal. Meditation may be the...
If you'd said "can't tolerate meditation" I'd have tracked but I felt the "can't tolerate themselves" and a similar sentiment in the previous paragraph, was more personal. Meditation may be the problem for some, the solution for others and just fine as a practice for plenty of folks.
As in it may be actively harmful for, say, someone having auditory hallucinations or in a major depressive episode, or whatever, and though there may be an underlying reason why it's harmful that still means the practice is causing the harm for those people.
Correct, I wasn't trying to imply that mindfulness or meditation itself as a practice seems magical--more that the idea that it can only result in positive impacts and that any suggestion of...
Correct, I wasn't trying to imply that mindfulness or meditation itself as a practice seems magical--more that the idea that it can only result in positive impacts and that any suggestion of possible negative ones are immediately dismissed seems like magical thinking to me.
The idea that someone can sit silently, count breaths, intentionally note their body from head to toe, focus on something, etc. does feel magical to me, but that's ye olde ADHD talking.
The idea that someone can sit silently, count breaths, intentionally note their body from head to toe, focus on something, etc. does feel magical to me, but that's ye olde ADHD talking.
I probably sound like Yoda but I don't think mindfulness can be described as something you can or cannot do. There is no try, only do. You cannot fail in mindfulness or do it wrong per se. I see...
I probably sound like Yoda but I don't think mindfulness can be described as something you can or cannot do. There is no try, only do. You cannot fail in mindfulness or do it wrong per se. I see many say they cannot do it because they see it as a failure if they cannot focus and they have other thoughts than their breath. But that is the entire point. Simply to notice it happening. It is not about forcing some intense focus
I didn't say it was. But what I described was meditation more than broader mindfulness. I'm aware of how it's supposed to work (I do have a counseling degree and I've tried meditation more than a...
I didn't say it was. But what I described was meditation more than broader mindfulness.
I'm aware of how it's supposed to work (I do have a counseling degree and I've tried meditation more than a few times) but doing self-guided meditations are not my vibe. They don't work for me. I dabbled with mantras for a while, because that does sort of work a bit, but not really. Sticking with a practice and forming a habit is yet another level of difficulty there.
What I said was they don't work for me/I don't find a benefit from them. Which is true. So I do other things instead.
Not the one you originally replied to but for me, it's less that I can't do it and more that I find it torturously boring and don't feel any particular benefit from it afterwards. ADHD does make...
Not the one you originally replied to but for me, it's less that I can't do it and more that I find it torturously boring and don't feel any particular benefit from it afterwards. ADHD does make it harder to tolerate boredom (it was a factor in my diagnosis interview lol), so that may be a factor for me, but I can't imagine even the mindfulness/meditation folks think it works well when you spend the entire duration hating and resenting doing it.
At the very least the fact that I find the process miserable demotivates me from attempting to actually make it a habit -- something else that does not come easily due to my ADHD. I already struggle with doing that with an exercise routine, and I find the act of exercising less miserable while I'm dong it than meditating (though ig meditation has never made me sore the next day).
I'm someone who does not find a benefit from mediation (or McMindfulness, though being generally more attentive is helpful for me) but I don't have the detriment, I just don't get anything from it...
I'm someone who does not find a benefit from mediation (or McMindfulness, though being generally more attentive is helpful for me) but I don't have the detriment, I just don't get anything from it and have a hard time doing it.
But I feel similarly about the proponents. Gratitude work is very similar to me. It feels very toxic positivity. I saw someone reframe typical gratitude practice in to a conversation about how it's more about finding the small stuff that is going well while acknowledging the big pile of shit you're dealing with instead of ignoring the pile of shit and only focusing on the gratitude. As a MH professional who doesn't practice clinically (and thus knows I'm out of date on some things) it's been frustrating to watch things like mindfulness and gratitude and such pitched as cure-alls.
I have been practicing casually some years and it is news to me that it can have negative side effects, though with how meditation and mindfulness have been scooped up and commercialized into...
I have been practicing casually some years and it is news to me that it can have negative side effects, though with how meditation and mindfulness have been scooped up and commercialized into McMeditation it doesn't seem surprising. It has become completely detached from its Buddhist origins and is now sold as a fix for stress in the workplace or egoistical self improvements for performance gains.
"Significant" here means statistically significant, for what it's worth - not necessarily life-alteringly significant. The study's authors found that people experiencing negative effects were just...
"Significant" here means statistically significant, for what it's worth - not necessarily life-alteringly significant. The study's authors found that people experiencing negative effects were just as glad to be practicing meditation as those who weren't. This probably won't be a surprise to anybody, but individuals reporting childhood trauma were more likely to suffer meditation-related adverse effects. The same goes for individuals who reported preexisting depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
After reading the linked article I find it a little... overblown. It's also factually incorrect to say that
A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.
As you will see below, the study's actual results suggest that 0.2% of participants had "severely impairing" adverse effects, and 1.2% of the participants had impairment that lasted for a month or longer.
From the study:
Functional impairment was reported by 10.6% of participants, which was higher than our prediction (5%). Impairment varied in severity (7.1% somewhat, 2.3% moderately, 0.2% severely impairing). Impairment that lasted a day or less was reported by 7.1% of participants and impairment lasting longer than a day occurred for 6% of the sample. Impairment lasting 1 month or longer occurred for 1.2% of participants.
Given meditation is associated with adverse effects, one may reasonably ask whether those experiencing negative consequences feel less glad to have practiced meditation (i.e., regret practicing meditation). We did not find evidence this is the case. The proportion of participants endorsing feeling glad to have practiced meditation (88.7%) was essentially unchanged when restricted to those reporting [meditation-related adverse effects] (MRAE) (87.9% to 88.2%). Feeling glad to have meditated was also not associated with MRAE when treated continuously.
The most common MRAE were anxiety (27.0%), traumatic re-experiencing (25.8%), and emotional sensitivity (22.8%).
As hypothesized, participants reporting a greater number of adverse childhood experiences were more likely to report any MRAE (single item occurrence: r = .19, p < .001), a greater number of MRAE (MRAES-MBP total score: r = .19, p < .001), and were more likely to report impairment due to meditation (r = .15, p = .002).
The fact that 10.6% of participants experienced functional impairment is still absolutely concerning, and limiting your assessment solely to those who had "severe" functional impairment rather...
The fact that 10.6% of participants experienced functional impairment is still absolutely concerning, and limiting your assessment solely to those who had "severe" functional impairment rather than those who had any functional impairment is not a fair representation of the results. I think you're really understating what "functional impairment" actually entails and as a result downplaying that effect. While you're correct pointing out the error in the comment your replied to and that only 1.2% of participants experienced impairment lasting 1 month or longer, that's still a pretty high percentage for such a severe reaction, and 6% of participants experienced impairment lasting longer than a day, which is still surprisingly long to experience functional impairment in response to something like this.
The data about participants being glad to have practiced meditation regardless of these effects is still interesting and worthwhile for those deciding whether they want to take part in meditation themselves, but I don't think it's fair to pick and choose the lowest stats for only the most severe reactions and ignore other adverse experience that had real impact on these people's lives.
I am responding to the claims made in the article. The question used in the survey was I am really not sure how I am downplaying the effect of the functional impairment. I posted the full relevant...
limiting your assessment solely to those who had "severe" functional impairment rather than those who had any functional impairment is not a fair representation of the results. I think you're really understating what "functional impairment" actually entails and as a result downplaying that effect.
I am responding to the claims made in the article. The question used in the survey was
“My meditation-related challenging, difficult, or distressing experiences impaired my ability to function”: not at all, somewhat, moderately, severely, other
I am really not sure how I am downplaying the effect of the functional impairment. I posted the full relevant results from the study, including all response categories, in my comment.
I briefly skimmed this article - it's garbage. I've practiced on and off for years and it's always correlated with an improvement of mood stability. This is like saying running has a 'dark side'...
I briefly skimmed this article - it's garbage.
I've practiced on and off for years and it's always correlated with an improvement of mood stability. This is like saying running has a 'dark side' because if you actually go for a run then you'll realize how out of shape you are - except in this case it's literally just sitting down for a couple minutes and taking stock of where your brain and body are at.
If practicing mindfulness makes you depressed, it's because the world we live in is depressing sometimes. This is not a problem that's going away any time soon.
I can't speak to the correctness of the article, but I don't think it's a fair argument to say it has always worked for you and therefore the concerns are invalid.
I can't speak to the correctness of the article, but I don't think it's a fair argument to say it has always worked for you and therefore the concerns are invalid.
I'm not trying to construct an argument here. If you don't want to be mindful, then don't. But nobody needs an article telling them not to do the difficult thing
I'm not trying to construct an argument here. If you don't want to be mindful, then don't. But nobody needs an article telling them not to do the difficult thing
I am someone who practices regular mindfulness & meditation. But I am also a scientist. Your takeaway that this is "an article telling them not to do the difficult thing" is not a fair assessment...
nobody needs an article telling them not to do the difficult thing
I am someone who practices regular mindfulness & meditation. But I am also a scientist. Your takeaway that this is "an article telling them not to do the difficult thing" is not a fair assessment of the link provided above. The article isn't telling anyone to do or not do anything, the article is summarizing research, which it also conveniently links to, and is meant to provide an unbiased review of the findings from several major studies as well as some of the criticisms of mindfulness and meditation.
Your dismissal of the scientific evidence is your own prerogative, but if you are going to dismiss scientific evidence because you don't feel it applies to you, please be honest in that dismissal. If you disagree with the findings because you believe the studies are not large enough, didn't measure the right things, had problems with study design or other reasons, you should share them. You're also welcome to just say that you don't agree because that's not your experience. But you do a disservice when you say it's just an article telling someone not to do the thing and completely glaze over amount of scientific research present in said article, let alone try to explain what the article is stating and why you disagree.
As a scientist, can you tell us if there is enough data here to conclude that meditation is causative of these events? Or is it possible that people who are more likely to suffer these events are...
As a scientist, can you tell us if there is enough data here to conclude that meditation is causative of these events? Or is it possible that people who are more likely to suffer these events are for some reason more likely to practice meditation? One of the phrases in the study sticks out to me, and that is "traumatic re-experiencing". This sticks out to me because these people have to have traumatic events to re-experience.
Everything in healthcare has reported adverse effects. Vaccines can cause muscle soreness at the site of injection, swelling, and fevers. Eye glasses can result in eye strain, headaches, dizziness. Contacts can cause dry eyes and infections. Braces cause jaw pain, difficulty eating, and irritation to the soft tissue. Even in mental health, some people react negatively to therapy/psychotherapy. Calling any of this the "dark side" does not come off as unbiased.
That said, I don't disagree with the articles main point, that people should be aware of adverse effects. But they should probably reach out to a licensed and trained mental health professional for help with these symptoms after that.
Causation and correlation in medicine is often messy. Many of the articles are retrospective questionnaire based studies where individuals are asked to reflect upon their experiences. Strictly...
Exemplary
can you tell us if there is enough data here to conclude that meditation is causative of these events?
Causation and correlation in medicine is often messy. Many of the articles are retrospective questionnaire based studies where individuals are asked to reflect upon their experiences. Strictly speaking, this would be correlation and not causation, because you are not controlling for experience. However, in medicine, it can often be unethical to withhold treatment to someone in order to find out if something is causative rather than a correlation, so we often need to explore these shades of gray in more detail. Having people reflect upon experiences and pull out detail of those experiences, leaning on them as expert witnesses to their own life and experience, can often help us understand whether something is more likely to be causative or more likely to be a correlation. The majority of the studies linked fall into this general bucket and I would say most of them have reasonably strong evidence to suggest causation and provide evidence that should be considered and presented to patients when discussing potential medical interventions.
With all that being said, one of the studies (the one they note was the most expensive) was a true gold standard double-blind study where children were separated into different groups and either given training in meditation/mindfulness or other treatments ("standard social–emotional learning" vs "school-based mindfulness training"). The control group in this case, however, was to just continue giving children regular social-emotional education, so understanding the difference between nothing and mindfulness was not assessed. I think this literature is particularly important, however, as it shows that mindfulness is not the only way to gain relevant skills and it highlights that the mindfulness cohort had additional issues not present in the 'regular' cohort, which provides insight for further research. Was the reason for this difference rooted in issues with traditional mindfulness programs? Could this difference be offset by supplementing mindfulness programs? Was the difference rooted in the current psychological state of the individuals as is suggested in the other research linked on the same page and would the suggestion instead be to route people to the appropriate therapy/intervention based on their unique mental health needs? Or was this all just statistical noise and no one will be able to replicate the findings? These are findings to be considered and weighed when thinking about the applications for mindfulness. Of note, the authors explore this in the conclusion and suggest that perhaps we do need to think more actively about the participants mental health state before suggesting mindfulness.
Everything in healthcare has reported adverse effects.
Yes, because we spend a lot of time understanding them. There's a really good reason for this as well, because often adverse effects are related to common traits. We want to know about how braces can cause irritation to soft tissue because then people can come up with alternative methods of teeth correction which perhaps are designed in a way to be less abrasive to the soft tissue, because some individuals have sensitive gums. In the realm of mental health, this is especially true, and the recent history of mental health suggests that this is an extremely important distinction to make. For example, the extremely common first line of antidepressant treatment used to be SSRIs, and the research on SSRIs and the adverse effects has yielded more than a few models for depression which help to categorize or group different kinds of people together and the interventions that work best for them. For some folks, serotonin is not ultimately behind their negative thought patterns, and so we should not expect SSRIs to work for some subsection of patients, and understanding this is important for both the clinician and the patient. When the clinician is knowledgeable in this, they can switch the patient to other kinds of drugs to see if they are more responsive to them rather than switching to a different SSRI, depending on the patient's narrative of how the drug is affecting them. For the patient, it's important to know that other options are available so that they can properly assess the right treatment for them amongst the backdrop of all possible interventions. In the patient's case, it's also important to know about specific adverse outcomes and their likelihood, so they can proactively reach out to medical professionals when adverse outcomes happen, but also so that they can appropriately weigh the risks and benefits of any particular outcome. Tolerance of each kind of adverse outcome is unsurprisingly going to vary from person to person based on what they value in their life - someone may not care at all about being slightly more sleepy because they are also an insomniac, whereas someone else who struggles with staying awake all day may find that intolerable.
But they should probably reach out to a licensed and trained mental health professional for help with these symptoms after that.
I disagree with a model which does not center the patient just as much as it centers the system which they go to for help. Physicians are not omnipotent and there are serious drawbacks with systems that overly prioritize the needs and expertise of clinical folks over the needs and expertise of the patient. I strongly believe that patient-centered health care is superior to medical paternalism in nearly all situations and medical paternalism is still a hugely pervasive problem in many fields, notably psychology and psychiatry.
I would consider running to have a dark side for me. It's similar to the one that meditation is cautioned for in this article. When I run, I get horrible intrusive thoughts, and end up depressed...
I would consider running to have a dark side for me. It's similar to the one that meditation is cautioned for in this article. When I run, I get horrible intrusive thoughts, and end up depressed for days or weeks, depending on how bad it gets and how quickly I can move my mind away from the ideas it brought up. Some people have never dealt with that problem. Some people always feel better emotionally after a run. Some people have a hard time regulating their moods without regular physical exertion.
I think to claim that it isn't a problem for you is a terrible argument that it can't be a problem.
Also, if you're capable of feeling generally good day to day in this depressing world, why would you choose a practice that makes you depressed instead? As you say, it's not going to change any time soon. As long as ignoring the horrible doesn't keep you from doing what little you can about it, it's an extremely valid choice not to dwell on it, and refusing to acknowledge that meditation has the potential to remove that option would be dishonest and irresponsible.
There isn’t a guarantee that your model is accurate. However, if it is, there are still some points to consider with this study. For example, it’s possible to cause some damage with strength...
There isn’t a guarantee that your model is accurate.
However, if it is, there are still some points to consider with this study.
For example, it’s possible to cause some damage with strength training if you push too hard with it while you’re injured. It’s also possible to do more harm than good if you perform strength training with poor form.
I believe I could think of cases where mindfulness could exacerbate existing trauma, akin to training with an injury.
I also believe there there are “right” and “wrong” forms for mindfulness. If one is pushed into doing it when they aren’t ready to address issues, I think it could have a different effect than if someone comes at it respectfully, ready to forgive themselves versus punish themselves.
This could all be really torturing a metaphor, but thank you for the excuse to work through that analogy in my head.
This is 100% true for meditation as well, but I also believe that an overwhelming majority of teachers would not dispute that, so I don't think that's where any conflicts or common issues lie....
For example, it’s possible to cause some damage with strength training if you push too hard with it while you’re injured. It’s also possible to do more harm than good if you perform strength training with poor form.
This is 100% true for meditation as well, but I also believe that an overwhelming majority of teachers would not dispute that, so I don't think that's where any conflicts or common issues lie. McMindfulness is often recommended at like 5 or 10 minutes per session once or twice a day, that's not going to overtrain anyone.
Regarding your other points, I think it also depends on the way one meditates, there are different levels to it. Walking meditation, where one focuses on individual steps instead of on breath while sitting, tends to be milder and since there is movement instead of attempts at complete calmness, it's easier to do when one is anxious. This subtle difference can be rather meaningful when the meditator is really feeling like shit.
Okay... but what if that willpower is pointed in the wrong direction? I intend to elaborate in a longer comment somewhere else in this thread, but just wanted to mention it here as food for thought.
Okay... but what if that willpower is pointed in the wrong direction? I intend to elaborate in a longer comment somewhere else in this thread, but just wanted to mention it here as food for thought.
If you want more information on this topic, spend some time googling things like "difficult meditation experiences", there are blog articles and even collections of people describing their...
If you want more information on this topic, spend some time googling things like "difficult meditation experiences", there are blog articles and even collections of people describing their negative experiences that go into great detail and they can be pretty interesting.
With that said, while I appreciate the data, I disagree with the tone and conclusions of the article. I think it shows the difficulty in objectively evaluating many psychological interventions.
The issue with this broad category of "things you do to improve your mental wellbeing" is that subtle differences in the way they are taught and practiced can make great differences in the result. It is healthy to learn how to acknowledge unnecessary thoughts that for some reason arise and let go of them, but "letting go" if possible without exerting any mental force can be deceptively close to "pushing away", which is very unhealthy and will cause long term issues with near certainty when done regularly. Traps like this simply exist and most teachers (including meditation apps) will warn you of it, but some certainly do not.
Any psychological work also often becomes temporarily quite challenging, as it includes uncovering and shoveling old shit - this includes normal talking therapy as well. In that situation I think that having a meditation teacher and a normal therapist is crucial, because that's the way to shovel the shit successfully and emerge cleaner.
Some of it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem - when you're able to think about your mental processes, reflect and describe what seems to be changing within your mind as a result of meditation, the probability of a negative outcome goes way down because you can adjust or pause your practice to fit your issues, talk about it with a teacher etc. But many people are not able to do this and one very good way to learn it is... meditation. Well, shit.
It is not sensible to throw out conclusions like the one in the article as "well, they're just doing it wrong". But at the same time the fact that some people are doing it wrong, the portion might not be that small with a suddenly widespread cultural trend and we must examine this very carefully when trying to construct metastudies is just a reality. Without that a negative outcome might just mean (and in my experience with some regularity does, regardless of whether we're talking about meditation or other interventions) that a significant portion of meditators must start practicing differently or more carefully examine whether the method is appropriate for their specific issues. That is often still an issue with the method not being defined well enough, but it would be wrong to stop doing the method altogether because of it.
With trendy practices like meditation that are often talked about as miraculous, people tend to be eager to latch onto negative findings, as if to say "see? it's not a miracle after all, actually it's bad for you!". Be careful not to do that, there is nuance in meditation as in every self-experiential practice, and it would be a terrible idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can confirm from my own experience that claims about meditation bringing dramatically positive changes are not made up.
For what it's worth, it's factually incorrect to say that The study's actual results suggest that 0.2% of participants had "severely impairing" adverse effects, and 1.2% of the participants had...
Exemplary
For what it's worth, it's factually incorrect to say that
A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.
The study's actual results suggest that 0.2% of participants had "severely impairing" adverse effects, and 1.2% of the participants had impairment that lasted for a month or longer.
From the study:
Functional impairment was reported by 10.6% of participants, which was higher than our prediction (5%). Impairment varied in severity (7.1% somewhat, 2.3% moderately, 0.2% severely impairing). Impairment that lasted a day or less was reported by 7.1% of participants and impairment lasting longer than a day occurred for 6% of the sample. Impairment lasting 1 month or longer occurred for 1.2% of participants.
Given meditation is associated with adverse effects, one may reasonably ask whether those experiencing negative consequences feel less glad to have practiced meditation (i.e., regret practicing meditation). We did not find evidence this is the case. The proportion of participants endorsing feeling glad to have practiced meditation (88.7%) was essentially unchanged when restricted to those reporting [meditation-related adverse effects] (MRAE) (87.9% to 88.2%). Feeling glad to have meditated was also not associated with MRAE when treated continuously.
The most common MRAE were anxiety (27.0%), traumatic re-experiencing (25.8%), and emotional sensitivity (22.8%).
As hypothesized, participants reporting a greater number of adverse childhood experiences were more likely to report any MRAE (single item occurrence: r = .19, p < .001), a greater number of MRAE (MRAES-MBP total score: r = .19, p < .001), and were more likely to report impairment due to meditation (r = .15, p = .002).
Edit:
I think it is eminently reasonable to say "meditation can cause some unexpected adverse effects, especially if you have preexisting mental health issues or unresolved trauma." The authors of the actual study probably put it best:
There is no reasonable doubt that meditation can cause challenging experiences.
What irritates me is the sloppy use of science by a professor (the article's author) who should really know better. For those interested, Dr David Treleaven is a better resource when discussing traumatic backgrounds, mindfulness meditation, and the best way to combine the two.
Finally, a bias statement - I do not meditate. I've tried it, and it's not really for me.
I feel like this is the single most important point in the whole damn thing: It doesn't significantly impact how anybody feels about doing the meditation. If you're having an adverse effect, but...
The proportion of participants endorsing feeling glad to have practiced meditation (88.7%) was essentially unchanged when restricted to those reporting [meditation-related adverse effects] (MRAE) (87.9% to 88.2%). Feeling glad to have meditated was also not associated with MRAE when treated continuously.
I feel like this is the single most important point in the whole damn thing: It doesn't significantly impact how anybody feels about doing the meditation.
If you're having an adverse effect, but still like doing meditation, the process is working.
Turns out that thinking about your life sometimes makes you feel more worried than ignoring it and that remembering trauma sucks (but is an important part of coping with it).
Remember kids: If you feel better immediately after a therapy session, odds are it isn't working right. Every one of my genuinely-useful therapy sessions resulted in days/weeks/months of reflection and striving for self-improvement.
Please don't give such black-and-white mental health advice as this on Tildes, especially if you aren't a therapist of some kind yourself. While this may be true in certain circumstances and with...
Remember kids: If you feel better immediately after a therapy session, odds are it isn't working right.
Please don't give such black-and-white mental health advice as this on Tildes, especially if you aren't a therapist of some kind yourself. While this may be true in certain circumstances and with certain types of therapy, this is a horrible thing to say as a catch-all, especially to a bunch of strangers, and may end up undermining therapy that is actually working for others. It is absolutely possible for a therapy session to be effective and still leave you feeling positive at the end of it, and it's rude to insist you're the arbiter there because of your own experience.
YES. It's actually super common to leave therapy and feel good. A lot of folks struggle with the gaps between therapy sessions and then feeling really good at therapy actually. I generally feel...
YES. It's actually super common to leave therapy and feel good. A lot of folks struggle with the gaps between therapy sessions and then feeling really good at therapy actually.
I generally feel great leaving therapy because I need someone to process my caretaker's feelings with in a non-judgemental way. Therapy can also be work, and sometimes it won't feel great. But there's no one true therapeutic model, because that isn't how therapy works. Digging up some trauma and working on it is absolutely a reasonable thing to do. But not everyone's got that trauma, not everyone needs to be working on that trauma right now (or ever). I hope anyone thinking about their therapy will talk with their therapist about it!
Sounds like they should talk to their therapist about how an offhand comment from an internet stranger with insufficient disclaimers about ancedotes makes them insecure about their therapeutic...
may end up undermining therapy that is actually working for others
Sounds like they should talk to their therapist about how an offhand comment from an internet stranger with insufficient disclaimers about ancedotes makes them insecure about their therapeutic progress, rather than having them dismiss that stranger as being wrong.
The people most vulnerable to being harmed by this bad advice are those who would have the most trouble dismissing it. Seeing other people dismissing it as bad advice in the thread can only help...
The people most vulnerable to being harmed by this bad advice are those who would have the most trouble dismissing it. Seeing other people dismissing it as bad advice in the thread can only help them in that case.
I just read the article and thread (50-some comments currently) and feel like there's something I can add that's an angle not covered, but may be worth consideration. Qualifier: I don't meditate...
I just read the article and thread (50-some comments currently) and feel like there's something I can add that's an angle not covered, but may be worth consideration.
Qualifier: I don't meditate currently, but have at periods in my life. My life is not on track. As I've mentioned before here, I'm a 12-step guy of many years. Also - I'll try to stick mostly to my own personal experience first, but will likely make generalizations based on that.
My experience is mixed with meditation, so I've a sort of "whatever works for you" opinion on the matter. The times when I've meditated are when I was struggling. When "life had gotten lifey" so they say- when sleep and peace of mind are hard to come by. If my own pattern is common, as I suspect it might be, then it seems probable that from the jump the pool of participants in meditation studies is to some degree skewed. It's akin to church or 12 step programs... people seek out solutions to problems, and that's the base you're working with. To make an absurd extreme metaphor, we wouldn't study public health issues using only hospitalized people.
Back to me... one of the reasons I sought out meditation was difficulty with depression, rumination, resentment, anger, and some degree of obsessing. Those were some of my common symptoms and how they manifested. Meditation helped. It alleviated the symptoms and it did build that willpower muscle that was mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It helped me let go and begin to have more peace (and sleep better).
But... (for me) this was also a kind of patch. It was a tool that I used to alleviate symptoms (anger, depression, etc.) that were stemming from a root cause. What I found later was that I had sublimated a guilty conscience, and it was eating me up. No amount of deep breathing and mindfulness and surrender was going to fix it. It wasn't until I actually dealt with making some changes that I was able to get a deeper sense of peace, comfort, and ease. Then I didn't seek out meditation because I was comfortable in my own skin, slept without issue, and dealt with life with a lot less struggle.
In essence, to put it in 12 step parlance, the serenity prayer is an appeal for 3 things, Acceptance, Courage, and Wisdom... and I was asking for the wrong one of those three for stuff I was struggling with. Here's the most important part though... I didn't know that's what I was doing.
Meditation is just me and my mind. I don't believe anyone can fix their own mental health in a vacuum... and I know that's not what meditation is for or claims to be able to do... but that's what I was attempting to do, so maybe other people also are too. IMO it's also the basis for much of CBT/DBT. Just reframe it instead of actually getting down to the root of it and discussing it, write about it, get support for it, medicate properly for it... or whatever other thing will move the needle back to whatever normal is.
It's like an old Seinfeld joke where Kramer starts saying "Serenity Now". (This is also the only Seinfeld reference I can make, I never even watched the show, but this one stuck.) The punchline is at the end of the episode Kramer has completely lost his shit and yells "They don't tell you it's INSANITY LATER!"
Maybe this is the "danger" of meditation. Mediation can alleviate symptoms while leaving root issues to fester. When I was struggling and meditating I had a view of life that didn't line up with reality. Just sitting with this didn't fix it. It actually became a tool that enabled me to postpone having to deal with things. Postpone them until the consequences of inaction piled up to such an extent that something had to give.
It's a tool, but not the only tool. It's just the one that's freely available all the time for no cost and little involvement of other people. It's the difference between a newly sober alcoholic who's praying because that's what AA has told him to do... and the person with actual faith built by tending to a relationship with a higher power over time and with effort and maybe study and some degree of invested exploration. There's a depth difference between those two (often - tho some get the lightning bolt to the forehead I've been told).
There's an old AA saying "I've never met anyone too stupid to get sober, but I've met a lot of people too smart to do it." The mind is powerful. Mental health matters. Maybe it's the reason we as a species used to flock to religion? I don't know- that's more philosophical than I care to get.
The point is, we humans (especially the intellectually driven, or with a lot of certainty, or the inflexible or unteachable) can build flawed beliefs and convince ourselves they are true - sometimes until it kills us. Or we overthrow a government. Or hang women for having magic. Or make concentration camps.
Let me try wrapping up again here with finally getting to an alternative - social structures. Family, neighbors, tribes, churches, therapists, peers, colleagues, support groups, whatever makes you bump up against other people to get examples and to help process and form context. To get grounded.
Okay... credit to anyone who actually reads all of this, but I'm gonna end this now finally. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I may need a meeting.
Interesting. I think that the idea of meditation as a band-aid solution is something that I've never considered before. Illustrating it as prayer from someone who was told what to do versus prayer...
Interesting. I think that the idea of meditation as a band-aid solution is something that I've never considered before. Illustrating it as prayer from someone who was told what to do versus prayer from someone of devout faith works pretty well, and I think that it lends itself well to the "McMindfulness movement" of people sitting because people tell them it's good for you.
I sit because it helps me stay sane. It may be a band-aid, but while I am still trying to find and assemble social structures that help me feel part of a real community it's important for me to find habits and grounding ritual in my life that support my well-being. I really value taking a few minutes to get an honest look at what my internal landscape looks like on a given day before I start interacting with others so that I can have a clear understanding of how different situations affect me through the day.
I don't do breathing exercises or single pointed focus or anything like that. I tell myself that I'm going to sit still on the pillow for 15 minutes and watch how my mind and body respond to that. I am absolutely not going to "sit away the sadness", but being able to notice when I'm feeling low and taking steps to deal with that is way more effective than reacting to the sadness in a potentially harmful way (substance use, for example).
Anyways, thank you for your perspective and I think that you have some good talking points. I hope you have a strong community to support you.
If anybody is interested in this topic: the work of Dr. Willoughby Britton covers the adverse effects of meditation. She's "an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown...
If anybody is interested in this topic: the work of Dr. Willoughby Britton covers the adverse effects of meditation.
She's "an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown University Medical School, an Associate Professor of Behaviour and Social Sciences in Brown University’s School of Public Health, the Director of Brown’s Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, and founder of Cheetah House which provides support to those experiencing meditation-related difficulties." <- a description I stole from this interview with her.
(I've been on and off meditating since 2010, I had mostly positive experiences and I think meditation can be a good thing for an individual. But for 'serious' practitioners it is also a tool to completely deconstruct their individual psyche and their sense of self. It's kinda obvious that some practices come with risks for some people.
Here's another article in which a meditation instructor experienced a crisis due to a retreat: When Buddhism Goes Bad
I think it's a good thing to be aware that there are risks.)
Just to put it out there, but Meditation and 'Mindfulness' don't really seem to be a thing in actual research. It's basically just relaxation. Studies often ignore confounding variables and lack...
Just to put it out there, but Meditation and 'Mindfulness' don't really seem to be a thing in actual research. It's basically just relaxation. Studies often ignore confounding variables and lack clear definitions or protocols for meditation or mindfulness.
For example, in this case it's an online survey lumping together pretty much any type of 'meditation'. It doesn't verify compliance with any specific protocol. It also doesn't look at any confounding variables for anxiety, depression, or anything else. So at it's best you can say 'X% of people surveyed online reported a negative impact on their life after a loosely themed 'meditation' intervention'.
Which isn't very useful if only for the fact that somebody interested in and seeking out something like 'meditation' might already be unsatisfied and dealing with things. I really hate studies like this, a complete waste of time and money. It doesn't go very fear in providing evidence for or against meditation practices. It's pretty much just completely useless.
As much as I agree this can be a problem in spaces where we research what is also sold as snake-oil, meditation and mindfulness do actually have clinical definitions and protocols and MBSR...
Just to put it out there, but Meditation and 'Mindfulness' don't really seem to be a thing in actual research. It's basically just relaxation. Studies often ignore confounding variables and lack clear definitions or protocols for meditation or mindfulness.
As much as I agree this can be a problem in spaces where we research what is also sold as snake-oil, meditation and mindfulness do actually have clinical definitions and protocols and MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) in particular actually has a large body of research. Here's a few meta reviews of MBSR in different contexts:
There are certainly definitions that exist, but like this study they are often mentioned and then not actively used in any practical way. But that's only one issue. For the two meta analysis...
There are certainly definitions that exist, but like this study they are often mentioned and then not actively used in any practical way. But that's only one issue. For the two meta analysis studies I could access the the issue is that they are comparing against passive groups.
The argument against mindfulness and meditation is that it's really just relaxation. Which is a stress reducing activity. To change my mind I'd want to see a study or meta-analysis looking at a different stress reduction strategies including simple undirected relaxation compared with meditation and mindfulness where specific protocols are followed and compared.
That way we can actually tease out if the person following the protocol and therefore being 'mindful' is actually receiving a benefit from their actions of from simply relaxing in a peaceful environment.
To be clear, I don't disagree with your criticisms of study design and tried to bring that in focus when I said there are issues in spaces where research is done on something that is also sold as...
To be clear, I don't disagree with your criticisms of study design and tried to bring that in focus when I said there are issues in spaces where research is done on something that is also sold as snake-oil. I was merely bringing light to the fact that MBSR exists and has been researched for some time (of note, the person who developed it was a biologist and a buddhist). I have no doubt that there are papers assessing MBSR versus relaxation and other practices and interventions, I just did not have time nor the interest in digging through the literature that exists- I was highlighting it because I've come across it in medicine on more than one occasion. I personally have no skin in the game as to whether a specific protocol around relaxation and introspection is more effective than other protocols (or the lack thereof).
The night is darkest before the dawn. Paying off the debt of accumulating that suffering is hard. I've been doing it for a decade now. There are positives to it too.
The night is darkest before the dawn. Paying off the debt of accumulating that suffering is hard. I've been doing it for a decade now. There are positives to it too.
Originally published by The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/meditation-can-be-harmful-and-can-even-make-mental-health-problems-worse-230435 Posted the Science Alert link since The...
@mycketforvirrad The original source is The Conversation. It was reprinted in Science Alert as my above comment mentions. What's wrong with having both tagged?
@mycketforvirrad The original source is The Conversation. It was reprinted in Science Alert as my above comment mentions. What's wrong with having both tagged?
The source tags main use is for people to be able to filter websites they don't wish to visit. Therefore the source tag simply represents the source link posted.
The source tags main use is for people to be able to filter websites they don't wish to visit. Therefore the source tag simply represents the source link posted.
Honestly, the largest downside to meditation and mindfulness for me are that I was continuously shunted towards participating in them (often in group contexts alongside neurotypical people who...
Honestly, the largest downside to meditation and mindfulness for me are that I was continuously shunted towards participating in them (often in group contexts alongside neurotypical people who were not going through remotely the same mental health experiences as me) because providers were hesitant to treat me with medication that has proven effective for my condition. Or test me for any physical health condition that could have already been contributing to my mental health problems (since I now have been diagnosed with one, it's very possible they could've caught it back then). For all people complain about the medicalization of mental health care, my experience is that meditation and mindfulness are used as the psychological equivalent of how yoga is used in physical health -- no one denies that it can have great benefits for some people, but proponents constantly insist it's the thing that will cure your chronic conditions when it just is not suited for that.
As someone that’s done psychedelics, disassociation and depersonalization don’t seem like they are necessarily negative. I honestly wish more people could experience these sensations because they...
As someone that’s done psychedelics, disassociation and depersonalization don’t seem like they are necessarily negative. I honestly wish more people could experience these sensations because they are humbling. People get wrapped up in their life and their mind (myself included) and being smacked in the face with the reality that your sensations are not reality but merely a meaty interpretation of the smaller sliver of reality is a realization that can make people care more for each other. No matter how much you think your problems matter, everyone else is doomed to the same reality as you. We will all die. We can’t reach many of our goals. You can do everything right and still get screwed by your body. So treat people with respect and dignity.
Besides taking psychedelics or meditating I feel the strongest medium to convey this experience is horror fiction. So I can acknowledge that these sensations are frightening. But they can be met with bravery.
I do yoga and meditation once a week, and though I always feel great physically after, there are definitely days that I feel like it "unlocked" something. I have to do a lot of work to manage my mood for many other reasons, and I would not say that meditation disregulates me more than anything else.
I know of at least one person who first uncovered memories of major abuse in meditation. It was a years long shakeup to their life and relationship, but in the long run I think they are better off. I suppose there's some survivor bias there.
It's not clear to me that these risks are inherently negative. I think it's a little like uncovering a latent physical problem. Once you know about it, you can begin to address it. Before then, it's probably affecting you in ways you don't have access to, so you're somewhat at its mercy.
In people I know, there is a definite bimodal distribution when it comes to attitudes about meditation. I can see why convincing people from the "definitely not" hill to try it would be harder if you talk about the risks, but it does seem irresponsible to do otherwise.
I'm glad that research is being done, but I worry about the path dependence keeping that from leading to better practices. I think there's a high overlap between doubt about western medicine and meditation/spirituality, so hopefully there are people on both sides who are open minded enough to bridge the gap.
From experience, there is some overlap between meditation and psychedelics. I've unlocked suppressed memories with psychedelics. That others have with meditation makes sense.
This is very descriptive of my experience; meditation got me the majority of the way towards realising I'm trans.
It is just incorrect to think that the meditation is at fault here. It is the major abuse, and mal-adaptive coping mechanisms, that were the problem in this example.
I had un-diagnosed Celiac Disease for at least 5 years. It was finally discovered on a blood test. The blood test is not bad because of this, and it is not because of the blood test that I can't eat gluten for the rest of my life. I was just ignorant of all of my symptoms before then. Yes, if I never got diagnosed, I could still eat gluten every single day. But I'd feel like absolute shit and have no reason why, and I would increase my risk of cancers and other problems.
I had un-diagnosed sleep apnea for a long time. It was finally diagnosed via a home sleep study, and now I have to sleep with a CPAP machine. The test isn't at fault here, I was literally unable to sleep through the night before, but I just didn't know it. But if I didn't take that test, I would not have to use a CPAP machine now.
As a root cause, yes, sure. But when a person meditates regularly, believes that it is an absolutely safe relaxation technique, and then by 'accident' unlocks/relives traumatic experiences, ends up in a psychotic state and is scarred for a long time, then meditation IS the catalyst for that reaction.
When someone managed to live a somewhat normal life after being exposed to traumatic situations it is horrible for them to involuntarily have to face these feelings again.
So, anybody with an interest in meditation should be aware that certain practices can be a risk for them. Especially if they lived through trauma.
You have a typo in your first line that confused me for a moment. Please swap meditation for medication.
Thanks, I just fixed it
To add to @shu's reply, which I agree with, I was not intending to say that meditation is at fault. I think the paragraph below the one you quoted acknowledges that.
In medical practice, all interventions have risk, even if that risk is very slight. Doctors will weigh those risks against the benefits of the intervention.
An example of this: when my wife was pregnant, I very much enjoyed the ultrasound because it was so neat to see the baby. I was quite disappointed when they didn't do an ultrasound at every checkup, but I learned that even though the ultrasound is considered very, very safe, there's a small risk of thermal heating and cavitation, so they don't do them "for fun" if there is no diagnostic purpose. They avoid even very small risks if there is no counterbalancing benefit.
In the example I was citing in my first post, the person was at an equilibrium that was unexpectedly upset by the meditation. Sure the abuse is the root cause, but dealing with it can be incredibly fraught, and once they had opened that up, they had no choice but to deal with it. They were fortunate to have good social and medical support around theme but not everyone does.
I think meditation is a valuable tool, but the point of the article and my own experience is that it is not without risk, and these risks often go unacknowledged. People should have informed consent of the risk so they can try to experience the benefits if they choose to accept the risk.
it’s known and discussed that for one, meditation isn’t the best thing, at least, the rinpoche i know best and the many vajrayana buddhist books i read discussed it. same with teachers in general, students and would-be students are cautioned to not just blindly take someone as a guru or to just blindly do whatever they say.
with meditation, it’s like a pond. if you stir it with a stick, the water becomes muddy because you’re also stirring up all the mud at the bottom. some folks aren’t ready for that, some people can’t even do sittin*meditation at all.
there’s not a thing i’ve ever seen in life that is good for everyone at any time (of things people can undertake to do or not do, i’m saying). even eating say, raw veggies isn’t for everyone. some people have conditions that would worsen if they did that.
in all things, using your brain and paying attention to results is how to approach any situation. meditation is just a tool, and for any job, getting the right tool is how it’s done. what the right tool is—in the case of human development—can change over time.
to sum up: always use your head and pay attention to how what you do (and what you eat! and any meds you!re taking! etc) is affecting you. stop if it’s not going well and try to see why and what to do next. if anything.
I definitely agree! Now, mind everyone, I am not a doctor, nor an academic. I don't work a prestigious job, nor do I have the money to back my claims, so take what I say with a huge grain of salt.
But to add to your point, the pitfalls of meditation have been written about, off-and-on, for a couple-thousand years and the negative association that gurus and masters are gatekeeping is not solely the result of snake-oil salesman and cultists, but also because meditation is easy to start, difficult to master, and prone to harmful results when propped up by bad habits. Look no further than the Nèiyè to see that stressing healthful practice has always been there.
Dàoism comes with forms of meditation that are not always commonly known, and it has its own fair share of McMeditation charlatans. However, as with any discipline —from diet, to exercise, to scholarly studies— the overuse or misuse of a new area of interest can lead to adverse and sometimes harmful results. Historically speaking, the Dàoist outlook on meditation is no different: improper prescription or practice can lead to improper outcomes, including depression and psychosis, especially when diving deep without addressing things like a sedentary lifestyle, genetic and personality issues, or past traumas.
In general, people can come to experience feelings of panic, discomfort such as uncontrolled spontaneous movements, sensory problems such as visual or auditory hallucinations, irrational beliefs such as valuing apophenic patterns, or even withdrawal from their personal lives for dream and meditation addiction (daydream tripping).
While exposure and treatment of trauma and personal issues is an integral part of the therapy of meditation, this can be the opposite of helpful for someone who is unprepared for it. A proper diet and regular exercise are vitally important factors to a healthy body. Likewise, training, moderation, and gradual process are vitally important factors to a healthy mind. None of these are truly separate from each other but are all pieces in a larger puzzle of cultivating health.
Consider some of these essential phrases and terms that Dàoists sometimes use:
Yà miáo zhù zhǎng [ 揠苗助長 ] idiom
/ jä⁵¹ mi̯ɑʊ̯³⁵ ʈ͡ʂu⁵¹ ʈ͡ʂɑŋ²¹⁴ˉ²¹/ [Wade-Giles: Ya miao chu chang ]
Rip out sprouts, help them grow; to spoil something through
excessive enthusiasm.
Zǒuhuǒ rùmó [ 走火入魔 ] idiom
/ t͡soʊ̯²¹⁴ˉ³⁵-xu̯ɔ²¹⁴ˉ²¹ ʐu⁵¹ mu̯ɔ³⁵/ [Wade-Giles: Tsou huo ju mo ]
Exit fire, enter demons; misfire & obsession; to believe that
the harmful results of a mental or martial practice are of
benefit; to mistakenly focus on hallucinations that arise
during meditation.
Qìgōng piānchā [ 氣功偏差 ] noun
/ t͡ɕʰi⁵¹-kʊŋ⁵⁵ pʰi̯ɛn⁵⁵-ʈ͡ʂʰä⁵⁵/ [Wade-Giles: Ch'i kung p'ien ch'a ]
Energy results straying wrong; psychosomatic imbalance;
to undergo bodily symptoms that are caused by mental and
emotional disturbances, improper training & practice, or both.
The latter term is probably well known to the non/inter-religious Qìgōng crowd as "Qì deviation."
There is another term that is likely well known by Zen Buddhists, as it comes from the Rinzai master Hakuin Ekaku:
Chán bìng [ 禪病 ] noun
/ ʈ͡ʂʰ-än³⁵ piŋ⁵¹/ [Wade-Giles: Ch'an ping ]
Zen sickness; a deep fatigue due to striving beyond what one
is prepared for; illness or malaise that is induced by fearful
glimpses into the non-mind; to be sick without realizing it.
Hakuin wrote about zen sickness in his autobiography, the Itsumadegusa (Wild Ivy), where he details some of the aspects of his practice-induced depression, the training regimen that a Dàoist recluse taught him, and the importance of health and stamina training that he began to incorporate in his teachings.
A lot of this is why I tend to recommend that if one is going to go down the meditation route, in addition to addressing diet, they take up a stretching and workout regimen, especially building some core strength. Planks, leg-lifts, crunches, back-bridges, back leg-lifts, and superman stretches are of immense benefit in the ability to hold a half or full lotus pose, but more than that, they aid in good posture and alignment. Bad posture and spinal alignment leads to back and nerve problems. Likewise, without that stretching and workout regimen, blood will not adequately circulate through the body to oxygenate the nerves that are increasing in sensitivity through meditative practices. Both of these can cascade into deeper health problems if left untreated.
Only about a half to two-thirds of the neurons in your body are in your brain. Kinesthetic theory carries with it the idea that muscle-memory —the aspects of our sensory inputs which are tied into the neural networks that comprise our memories— traces its way through the body and back to the brain. The overlap of these visual and physical aspects of our memory networks is, in neuro-scientific terms, actually called "memory integration." The long-standing, operating theory behind the complications with meditation is that it induces a sort of defragmentation process that parallels sleep in many ways, but that this integrative process may connect and expose traumatic memories especially by means of triggering physical or emotional components of stored memory events. Again, this is not necessarily bad, but can be an unintended consequence for someone ill-prepared who dives too deep.
Consider the sensation of dreaming after having ridden the roller coaster at an amusement park that day, wherein you can still feel the movement of your body, especially below the diaphragm. Likewise, most people have had a dream where you are falling towards the ground and can actually feel that movement which shifts from virtual to physical as you jolt awake. Or there is the dream where you are vividly angry with a loved one, then wake up while retaining some form of baseless anger towards them that still feels real. Now, consider the notion that through meditation, you could trigger feelings of the emotional or physical aspects of a previous traumatic event that you had otherwise only rationally settled.
People talk about the potential for psychoactive drugs to stimulate and induce manic or depressive episodes in those who are genetically predisposed, but practitioners have also stressed that meditation carries a similar potential by stimulating the nervous system in not-dissimilar ways. The therapy of addressing the physical and emotional aspects of our body and its memories is part of what can make meditation practice very beneficial, but also very complicated, which is why serious practitioners tend to steer other students towards finding a good teacher, and if necessary, a helpful doctor (or therapist).
To be clear, not everybody is at serious risk, and at only 10~20 minutes of practice a day, likely very few are at any risk. But in a world of 8-billion people, it's worth taking a more conscientious approach to meditation as being part of a larger toolkit of healthful practices, rather than some orientalist panacea as pitched by influencers.
EDIT: sentence clarity and spelling corrections.
thanks for doing a comprehensive and accurate expansion on what i said. 🙏
You are very welcome, and thank you for bringing these points up to begin with. It's great advice!
This is some serious business
I predict that most people who hear about anything negative at all about meditation will react the same way: surely they were just not practicing enough, or surely there were underlying problems, or maybe folks will hit a rough patch but they'll be so much better when they get to the other side. Pish posh, dismiss these studies, keep believing. That attitude would be superstitious faith and anti-science.
Trouble is, McMeditation is being sold as 100% effective and 100% safe, to work places, gyms and the youngest kids -- had the effects from these scientific studies been known, I doubt they could have been able to pass ethics for a large scale study on kids.
We don't even understand how our consciousness works and we're messing around with altered states of consciousness. Proceed with caution for sure, rewards seem fantastic. But people should also know the risks and not everyone should just click on a random YouTube video and mess with their
brainspersonhood.[Edit: disclaimer, I do meditation. Going to read into it more and find out more about how to do it safely. These practices are thousands of years old: maybe we should do a better job listening to the ancients and learning from their findings]
I've dabbled with mindfulness and meditation a bit on and off, but haven't ever gotten too serious about it for any extended period of time.
The attitude you describe is a large part of what kind of turns me off. When proponents who gush about the positive benefits and how profoundly it can improve your life suddenly do a 180 and brush off any talk of potential negative side effects as absurd, it's a big red flag to me--comes off as very cult-like or new-agey thinking. If your claim is that meditation can have a huge impact on your life, what magical force is at play to ensure that impact will only be a positive one? I can take medicine for an illness and it might make me better, but if I don't take the correct dose or if I'm allergic to that medication it could make things worse. Why would mindfulness practice be exempt from that?
First I'm not going to contest that proponents of mindfulness can be overly enthusiastic and over sell the benefits.
But I am curious... what about it seems magical? My practice of meditation is very simple: sit in silence, eyes closed, count breaths, intentionally note my body from toes to head, turn my focus to a particular exercise, return to counting breaths, allow my attention to expand to my sense, open my eyes. It's just sitting in silence and practicing focus.
If it doesn't work for someone, fine. If sitting in silence with oneself surfaces debilitating darkness... that is a big problem and professional help is necessary. That isn't meditation's fault that someone can't tolerate themselves in silence.
I don't love this particular part of your take. If meditation doesn't work for someone it doesn't work for someone. The same way that some people get suicidal on anti-depressants or that CBT doesn't work for everyone, it's not inherently that they "cannot tolerate themselves in silence." You're correct that this doesn't make meditation or antidepressants or CBT the "problem", but it does make them a "problem for that person"
It's fundamental to mental health practice that not every intervention is effective on or positive for everyone. Even if they cannot "tolerate" themselves, it still reveals that they need other interventions.
I'll own that it's a harsh take, but I think my preceding sentence aligns what you've said here. And I don't think it's going to work for everyone.
I think there is a difference between "not working" and "actively harmful." If it just doesn't work, that's fine. What I mean by "can't tolerate" is "trying this methodology is actually making things worst." For example, there was a phase where I found myself falling asleep to harsh metal or WW2 documentaries at night. I realized that I was so unhappy that I couldn't cope with being in silence. I needed something loud to drown out my discontentment. As an aside, I had practiced meditation to great effect before this episode and returning to meditation was not one of the changes I made and I think would have been neither helpful or deleterious.
If you'd said "can't tolerate meditation" I'd have tracked but I felt the "can't tolerate themselves" and a similar sentiment in the previous paragraph, was more personal. Meditation may be the problem for some, the solution for others and just fine as a practice for plenty of folks.
As in it may be actively harmful for, say, someone having auditory hallucinations or in a major depressive episode, or whatever, and though there may be an underlying reason why it's harmful that still means the practice is causing the harm for those people.
It's less that the actual practice seems magical imo and more that the way certain proponents talk about it make it seem "magical".
Correct, I wasn't trying to imply that mindfulness or meditation itself as a practice seems magical--more that the idea that it can only result in positive impacts and that any suggestion of possible negative ones are immediately dismissed seems like magical thinking to me.
The idea that someone can sit silently, count breaths, intentionally note their body from head to toe, focus on something, etc. does feel magical to me, but that's ye olde ADHD talking.
I probably sound like Yoda but I don't think mindfulness can be described as something you can or cannot do. There is no try, only do. You cannot fail in mindfulness or do it wrong per se. I see many say they cannot do it because they see it as a failure if they cannot focus and they have other thoughts than their breath. But that is the entire point. Simply to notice it happening. It is not about forcing some intense focus
I didn't say it was. But what I described was meditation more than broader mindfulness.
I'm aware of how it's supposed to work (I do have a counseling degree and I've tried meditation more than a few times) but doing self-guided meditations are not my vibe. They don't work for me. I dabbled with mantras for a while, because that does sort of work a bit, but not really. Sticking with a practice and forming a habit is yet another level of difficulty there.
What I said was they don't work for me/I don't find a benefit from them. Which is true. So I do other things instead.
Not the one you originally replied to but for me, it's less that I can't do it and more that I find it torturously boring and don't feel any particular benefit from it afterwards. ADHD does make it harder to tolerate boredom (it was a factor in my diagnosis interview lol), so that may be a factor for me, but I can't imagine even the mindfulness/meditation folks think it works well when you spend the entire duration hating and resenting doing it.
At the very least the fact that I find the process miserable demotivates me from attempting to actually make it a habit -- something else that does not come easily due to my ADHD. I already struggle with doing that with an exercise routine, and I find the act of exercising less miserable while I'm dong it than meditating (though ig meditation has never made me sore the next day).
I'm someone who does not find a benefit from mediation (or McMindfulness, though being generally more attentive is helpful for me) but I don't have the detriment, I just don't get anything from it and have a hard time doing it.
But I feel similarly about the proponents. Gratitude work is very similar to me. It feels very toxic positivity. I saw someone reframe typical gratitude practice in to a conversation about how it's more about finding the small stuff that is going well while acknowledging the big pile of shit you're dealing with instead of ignoring the pile of shit and only focusing on the gratitude. As a MH professional who doesn't practice clinically (and thus knows I'm out of date on some things) it's been frustrating to watch things like mindfulness and gratitude and such pitched as cure-alls.
I have been practicing casually some years and it is news to me that it can have negative side effects, though with how meditation and mindfulness have been scooped up and commercialized into McMeditation it doesn't seem surprising. It has become completely detached from its Buddhist origins and is now sold as a fix for stress in the workplace or egoistical self improvements for performance gains.
"Significant" here means statistically significant, for what it's worth - not necessarily life-alteringly significant. The study's authors found that people experiencing negative effects were just as glad to be practicing meditation as those who weren't. This probably won't be a surprise to anybody, but individuals reporting childhood trauma were more likely to suffer meditation-related adverse effects. The same goes for individuals who reported preexisting depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
After reading the linked article I find it a little... overblown. It's also factually incorrect to say that
As you will see below, the study's actual results suggest that 0.2% of participants had "severely impairing" adverse effects, and 1.2% of the participants had impairment that lasted for a month or longer.
From the study:
The fact that 10.6% of participants experienced functional impairment is still absolutely concerning, and limiting your assessment solely to those who had "severe" functional impairment rather than those who had any functional impairment is not a fair representation of the results. I think you're really understating what "functional impairment" actually entails and as a result downplaying that effect. While you're correct pointing out the error in the comment your replied to and that only 1.2% of participants experienced impairment lasting 1 month or longer, that's still a pretty high percentage for such a severe reaction, and 6% of participants experienced impairment lasting longer than a day, which is still surprisingly long to experience functional impairment in response to something like this.
The data about participants being glad to have practiced meditation regardless of these effects is still interesting and worthwhile for those deciding whether they want to take part in meditation themselves, but I don't think it's fair to pick and choose the lowest stats for only the most severe reactions and ignore other adverse experience that had real impact on these people's lives.
I am responding to the claims made in the article. The question used in the survey was
I am really not sure how I am downplaying the effect of the functional impairment. I posted the full relevant results from the study, including all response categories, in my comment.
I briefly skimmed this article - it's garbage.
I've practiced on and off for years and it's always correlated with an improvement of mood stability. This is like saying running has a 'dark side' because if you actually go for a run then you'll realize how out of shape you are - except in this case it's literally just sitting down for a couple minutes and taking stock of where your brain and body are at.
If practicing mindfulness makes you depressed, it's because the world we live in is depressing sometimes. This is not a problem that's going away any time soon.
I can't speak to the correctness of the article, but I don't think it's a fair argument to say it has always worked for you and therefore the concerns are invalid.
I'm not trying to construct an argument here. If you don't want to be mindful, then don't. But nobody needs an article telling them not to do the difficult thing
I am someone who practices regular mindfulness & meditation. But I am also a scientist. Your takeaway that this is "an article telling them not to do the difficult thing" is not a fair assessment of the link provided above. The article isn't telling anyone to do or not do anything, the article is summarizing research, which it also conveniently links to, and is meant to provide an unbiased review of the findings from several major studies as well as some of the criticisms of mindfulness and meditation.
Your dismissal of the scientific evidence is your own prerogative, but if you are going to dismiss scientific evidence because you don't feel it applies to you, please be honest in that dismissal. If you disagree with the findings because you believe the studies are not large enough, didn't measure the right things, had problems with study design or other reasons, you should share them. You're also welcome to just say that you don't agree because that's not your experience. But you do a disservice when you say it's just an article telling someone not to do the thing and completely glaze over amount of scientific research present in said article, let alone try to explain what the article is stating and why you disagree.
As a scientist, can you tell us if there is enough data here to conclude that meditation is causative of these events? Or is it possible that people who are more likely to suffer these events are for some reason more likely to practice meditation? One of the phrases in the study sticks out to me, and that is "traumatic re-experiencing". This sticks out to me because these people have to have traumatic events to re-experience.
Everything in healthcare has reported adverse effects. Vaccines can cause muscle soreness at the site of injection, swelling, and fevers. Eye glasses can result in eye strain, headaches, dizziness. Contacts can cause dry eyes and infections. Braces cause jaw pain, difficulty eating, and irritation to the soft tissue. Even in mental health, some people react negatively to therapy/psychotherapy. Calling any of this the "dark side" does not come off as unbiased.
That said, I don't disagree with the articles main point, that people should be aware of adverse effects. But they should probably reach out to a licensed and trained mental health professional for help with these symptoms after that.
Causation and correlation in medicine is often messy. Many of the articles are retrospective questionnaire based studies where individuals are asked to reflect upon their experiences. Strictly speaking, this would be correlation and not causation, because you are not controlling for experience. However, in medicine, it can often be unethical to withhold treatment to someone in order to find out if something is causative rather than a correlation, so we often need to explore these shades of gray in more detail. Having people reflect upon experiences and pull out detail of those experiences, leaning on them as expert witnesses to their own life and experience, can often help us understand whether something is more likely to be causative or more likely to be a correlation. The majority of the studies linked fall into this general bucket and I would say most of them have reasonably strong evidence to suggest causation and provide evidence that should be considered and presented to patients when discussing potential medical interventions.
With all that being said, one of the studies (the one they note was the most expensive) was a true gold standard double-blind study where children were separated into different groups and either given training in meditation/mindfulness or other treatments ("standard social–emotional learning" vs "school-based mindfulness training"). The control group in this case, however, was to just continue giving children regular social-emotional education, so understanding the difference between nothing and mindfulness was not assessed. I think this literature is particularly important, however, as it shows that mindfulness is not the only way to gain relevant skills and it highlights that the mindfulness cohort had additional issues not present in the 'regular' cohort, which provides insight for further research. Was the reason for this difference rooted in issues with traditional mindfulness programs? Could this difference be offset by supplementing mindfulness programs? Was the difference rooted in the current psychological state of the individuals as is suggested in the other research linked on the same page and would the suggestion instead be to route people to the appropriate therapy/intervention based on their unique mental health needs? Or was this all just statistical noise and no one will be able to replicate the findings? These are findings to be considered and weighed when thinking about the applications for mindfulness. Of note, the authors explore this in the conclusion and suggest that perhaps we do need to think more actively about the participants mental health state before suggesting mindfulness.
Yes, because we spend a lot of time understanding them. There's a really good reason for this as well, because often adverse effects are related to common traits. We want to know about how braces can cause irritation to soft tissue because then people can come up with alternative methods of teeth correction which perhaps are designed in a way to be less abrasive to the soft tissue, because some individuals have sensitive gums. In the realm of mental health, this is especially true, and the recent history of mental health suggests that this is an extremely important distinction to make. For example, the extremely common first line of antidepressant treatment used to be SSRIs, and the research on SSRIs and the adverse effects has yielded more than a few models for depression which help to categorize or group different kinds of people together and the interventions that work best for them. For some folks, serotonin is not ultimately behind their negative thought patterns, and so we should not expect SSRIs to work for some subsection of patients, and understanding this is important for both the clinician and the patient. When the clinician is knowledgeable in this, they can switch the patient to other kinds of drugs to see if they are more responsive to them rather than switching to a different SSRI, depending on the patient's narrative of how the drug is affecting them. For the patient, it's important to know that other options are available so that they can properly assess the right treatment for them amongst the backdrop of all possible interventions. In the patient's case, it's also important to know about specific adverse outcomes and their likelihood, so they can proactively reach out to medical professionals when adverse outcomes happen, but also so that they can appropriately weigh the risks and benefits of any particular outcome. Tolerance of each kind of adverse outcome is unsurprisingly going to vary from person to person based on what they value in their life - someone may not care at all about being slightly more sleepy because they are also an insomniac, whereas someone else who struggles with staying awake all day may find that intolerable.
I disagree with a model which does not center the patient just as much as it centers the system which they go to for help. Physicians are not omnipotent and there are serious drawbacks with systems that overly prioritize the needs and expertise of clinical folks over the needs and expertise of the patient. I strongly believe that patient-centered health care is superior to medical paternalism in nearly all situations and medical paternalism is still a hugely pervasive problem in many fields, notably psychology and psychiatry.
I would consider running to have a dark side for me. It's similar to the one that meditation is cautioned for in this article. When I run, I get horrible intrusive thoughts, and end up depressed for days or weeks, depending on how bad it gets and how quickly I can move my mind away from the ideas it brought up. Some people have never dealt with that problem. Some people always feel better emotionally after a run. Some people have a hard time regulating their moods without regular physical exertion.
I think to claim that it isn't a problem for you is a terrible argument that it can't be a problem.
Also, if you're capable of feeling generally good day to day in this depressing world, why would you choose a practice that makes you depressed instead? As you say, it's not going to change any time soon. As long as ignoring the horrible doesn't keep you from doing what little you can about it, it's an extremely valid choice not to dwell on it, and refusing to acknowledge that meditation has the potential to remove that option would be dishonest and irresponsible.
mindfulness is strength training for willpower. The more you do it, the better you get at addressing the root causes
There isn’t a guarantee that your model is accurate.
However, if it is, there are still some points to consider with this study.
For example, it’s possible to cause some damage with strength training if you push too hard with it while you’re injured. It’s also possible to do more harm than good if you perform strength training with poor form.
I believe I could think of cases where mindfulness could exacerbate existing trauma, akin to training with an injury.
I also believe there there are “right” and “wrong” forms for mindfulness. If one is pushed into doing it when they aren’t ready to address issues, I think it could have a different effect than if someone comes at it respectfully, ready to forgive themselves versus punish themselves.
This could all be really torturing a metaphor, but thank you for the excuse to work through that analogy in my head.
This is 100% true for meditation as well, but I also believe that an overwhelming majority of teachers would not dispute that, so I don't think that's where any conflicts or common issues lie. McMindfulness is often recommended at like 5 or 10 minutes per session once or twice a day, that's not going to overtrain anyone.
Regarding your other points, I think it also depends on the way one meditates, there are different levels to it. Walking meditation, where one focuses on individual steps instead of on breath while sitting, tends to be milder and since there is movement instead of attempts at complete calmness, it's easier to do when one is anxious. This subtle difference can be rather meaningful when the meditator is really feeling like shit.
Thank you for the insights!
Okay... but what if that willpower is pointed in the wrong direction? I intend to elaborate in a longer comment somewhere else in this thread, but just wanted to mention it here as food for thought.
Good question. Link it when you do, I'm interested to hear your thoughts
Well, here's a whole lot of words I finally posted. There might be some thoughts in there somewhere. Hope you can find them.
If you want more information on this topic, spend some time googling things like "difficult meditation experiences", there are blog articles and even collections of people describing their negative experiences that go into great detail and they can be pretty interesting.
With that said, while I appreciate the data, I disagree with the tone and conclusions of the article. I think it shows the difficulty in objectively evaluating many psychological interventions.
The issue with this broad category of "things you do to improve your mental wellbeing" is that subtle differences in the way they are taught and practiced can make great differences in the result. It is healthy to learn how to acknowledge unnecessary thoughts that for some reason arise and let go of them, but "letting go" if possible without exerting any mental force can be deceptively close to "pushing away", which is very unhealthy and will cause long term issues with near certainty when done regularly. Traps like this simply exist and most teachers (including meditation apps) will warn you of it, but some certainly do not.
Any psychological work also often becomes temporarily quite challenging, as it includes uncovering and shoveling old shit - this includes normal talking therapy as well. In that situation I think that having a meditation teacher and a normal therapist is crucial, because that's the way to shovel the shit successfully and emerge cleaner.
Some of it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem - when you're able to think about your mental processes, reflect and describe what seems to be changing within your mind as a result of meditation, the probability of a negative outcome goes way down because you can adjust or pause your practice to fit your issues, talk about it with a teacher etc. But many people are not able to do this and one very good way to learn it is... meditation. Well, shit.
It is not sensible to throw out conclusions like the one in the article as "well, they're just doing it wrong". But at the same time the fact that some people are doing it wrong, the portion might not be that small with a suddenly widespread cultural trend and we must examine this very carefully when trying to construct metastudies is just a reality. Without that a negative outcome might just mean (and in my experience with some regularity does, regardless of whether we're talking about meditation or other interventions) that a significant portion of meditators must start practicing differently or more carefully examine whether the method is appropriate for their specific issues. That is often still an issue with the method not being defined well enough, but it would be wrong to stop doing the method altogether because of it.
With trendy practices like meditation that are often talked about as miraculous, people tend to be eager to latch onto negative findings, as if to say "see? it's not a miracle after all, actually it's bad for you!". Be careful not to do that, there is nuance in meditation as in every self-experiential practice, and it would be a terrible idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can confirm from my own experience that claims about meditation bringing dramatically positive changes are not made up.
For what it's worth, it's factually incorrect to say that
The study's actual results suggest that 0.2% of participants had "severely impairing" adverse effects, and 1.2% of the participants had impairment that lasted for a month or longer.
From the study:
Edit:
I think it is eminently reasonable to say "meditation can cause some unexpected adverse effects, especially if you have preexisting mental health issues or unresolved trauma." The authors of the actual study probably put it best:
What irritates me is the sloppy use of science by a professor (the article's author) who should really know better. For those interested, Dr David Treleaven is a better resource when discussing traumatic backgrounds, mindfulness meditation, and the best way to combine the two.
Finally, a bias statement - I do not meditate. I've tried it, and it's not really for me.
I feel like this is the single most important point in the whole damn thing: It doesn't significantly impact how anybody feels about doing the meditation.
If you're having an adverse effect, but still like doing meditation, the process is working.
Turns out that thinking about your life sometimes makes you feel more worried than ignoring it and that remembering trauma sucks (but is an important part of coping with it).
Remember kids: If you feel better immediately after a therapy session, odds are it isn't working right. Every one of my genuinely-useful therapy sessions resulted in days/weeks/months of reflection and striving for self-improvement.
Please don't give such black-and-white mental health advice as this on Tildes, especially if you aren't a therapist of some kind yourself. While this may be true in certain circumstances and with certain types of therapy, this is a horrible thing to say as a catch-all, especially to a bunch of strangers, and may end up undermining therapy that is actually working for others. It is absolutely possible for a therapy session to be effective and still leave you feeling positive at the end of it, and it's rude to insist you're the arbiter there because of your own experience.
YES. It's actually super common to leave therapy and feel good. A lot of folks struggle with the gaps between therapy sessions and then feeling really good at therapy actually.
I generally feel great leaving therapy because I need someone to process my caretaker's feelings with in a non-judgemental way. Therapy can also be work, and sometimes it won't feel great. But there's no one true therapeutic model, because that isn't how therapy works. Digging up some trauma and working on it is absolutely a reasonable thing to do. But not everyone's got that trauma, not everyone needs to be working on that trauma right now (or ever). I hope anyone thinking about their therapy will talk with their therapist about it!
Sounds like they should talk to their therapist about how an offhand comment from an internet stranger with insufficient disclaimers about ancedotes makes them insecure about their therapeutic progress, rather than having them dismiss that stranger as being wrong.
Still worth pointing out bad mental health advice when we see it.
The people most vulnerable to being harmed by this bad advice are those who would have the most trouble dismissing it. Seeing other people dismissing it as bad advice in the thread can only help them in that case.
I just read the article and thread (50-some comments currently) and feel like there's something I can add that's an angle not covered, but may be worth consideration.
Qualifier: I don't meditate currently, but have at periods in my life. My life is not on track. As I've mentioned before here, I'm a 12-step guy of many years. Also - I'll try to stick mostly to my own personal experience first, but will likely make generalizations based on that.
My experience is mixed with meditation, so I've a sort of "whatever works for you" opinion on the matter. The times when I've meditated are when I was struggling. When "life had gotten lifey" so they say- when sleep and peace of mind are hard to come by. If my own pattern is common, as I suspect it might be, then it seems probable that from the jump the pool of participants in meditation studies is to some degree skewed. It's akin to church or 12 step programs... people seek out solutions to problems, and that's the base you're working with. To make an absurd extreme metaphor, we wouldn't study public health issues using only hospitalized people.
Back to me... one of the reasons I sought out meditation was difficulty with depression, rumination, resentment, anger, and some degree of obsessing. Those were some of my common symptoms and how they manifested. Meditation helped. It alleviated the symptoms and it did build that willpower muscle that was mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It helped me let go and begin to have more peace (and sleep better).
But... (for me) this was also a kind of patch. It was a tool that I used to alleviate symptoms (anger, depression, etc.) that were stemming from a root cause. What I found later was that I had sublimated a guilty conscience, and it was eating me up. No amount of deep breathing and mindfulness and surrender was going to fix it. It wasn't until I actually dealt with making some changes that I was able to get a deeper sense of peace, comfort, and ease. Then I didn't seek out meditation because I was comfortable in my own skin, slept without issue, and dealt with life with a lot less struggle.
In essence, to put it in 12 step parlance, the serenity prayer is an appeal for 3 things, Acceptance, Courage, and Wisdom... and I was asking for the wrong one of those three for stuff I was struggling with. Here's the most important part though... I didn't know that's what I was doing.
Meditation is just me and my mind. I don't believe anyone can fix their own mental health in a vacuum... and I know that's not what meditation is for or claims to be able to do... but that's what I was attempting to do, so maybe other people also are too. IMO it's also the basis for much of CBT/DBT. Just reframe it instead of actually getting down to the root of it and discussing it, write about it, get support for it, medicate properly for it... or whatever other thing will move the needle back to whatever normal is.
It's like an old Seinfeld joke where Kramer starts saying "Serenity Now". (This is also the only Seinfeld reference I can make, I never even watched the show, but this one stuck.) The punchline is at the end of the episode Kramer has completely lost his shit and yells "They don't tell you it's INSANITY LATER!"
Maybe this is the "danger" of meditation. Mediation can alleviate symptoms while leaving root issues to fester. When I was struggling and meditating I had a view of life that didn't line up with reality. Just sitting with this didn't fix it. It actually became a tool that enabled me to postpone having to deal with things. Postpone them until the consequences of inaction piled up to such an extent that something had to give.
It's a tool, but not the only tool. It's just the one that's freely available all the time for no cost and little involvement of other people. It's the difference between a newly sober alcoholic who's praying because that's what AA has told him to do... and the person with actual faith built by tending to a relationship with a higher power over time and with effort and maybe study and some degree of invested exploration. There's a depth difference between those two (often - tho some get the lightning bolt to the forehead I've been told).
There's an old AA saying "I've never met anyone too stupid to get sober, but I've met a lot of people too smart to do it." The mind is powerful. Mental health matters. Maybe it's the reason we as a species used to flock to religion? I don't know- that's more philosophical than I care to get.
The point is, we humans (especially the intellectually driven, or with a lot of certainty, or the inflexible or unteachable) can build flawed beliefs and convince ourselves they are true - sometimes until it kills us. Or we overthrow a government. Or hang women for having magic. Or make concentration camps.
Let me try wrapping up again here with finally getting to an alternative - social structures. Family, neighbors, tribes, churches, therapists, peers, colleagues, support groups, whatever makes you bump up against other people to get examples and to help process and form context. To get grounded.
Okay... credit to anyone who actually reads all of this, but I'm gonna end this now finally. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I may need a meeting.
Interesting. I think that the idea of meditation as a band-aid solution is something that I've never considered before. Illustrating it as prayer from someone who was told what to do versus prayer from someone of devout faith works pretty well, and I think that it lends itself well to the "McMindfulness movement" of people sitting because people tell them it's good for you.
I sit because it helps me stay sane. It may be a band-aid, but while I am still trying to find and assemble social structures that help me feel part of a real community it's important for me to find habits and grounding ritual in my life that support my well-being. I really value taking a few minutes to get an honest look at what my internal landscape looks like on a given day before I start interacting with others so that I can have a clear understanding of how different situations affect me through the day.
I don't do breathing exercises or single pointed focus or anything like that. I tell myself that I'm going to sit still on the pillow for 15 minutes and watch how my mind and body respond to that. I am absolutely not going to "sit away the sadness", but being able to notice when I'm feeling low and taking steps to deal with that is way more effective than reacting to the sadness in a potentially harmful way (substance use, for example).
Anyways, thank you for your perspective and I think that you have some good talking points. I hope you have a strong community to support you.
If anybody is interested in this topic: the work of Dr. Willoughby Britton covers the adverse effects of meditation.
She's "an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown University Medical School, an Associate Professor of Behaviour and Social Sciences in Brown University’s School of Public Health, the Director of Brown’s Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, and founder of Cheetah House which provides support to those experiencing meditation-related difficulties." <- a description I stole from this interview with her.
(I've been on and off meditating since 2010, I had mostly positive experiences and I think meditation can be a good thing for an individual. But for 'serious' practitioners it is also a tool to completely deconstruct their individual psyche and their sense of self. It's kinda obvious that some practices come with risks for some people.
Here's another article in which a meditation instructor experienced a crisis due to a retreat: When Buddhism Goes Bad
I think it's a good thing to be aware that there are risks.)
e: english hard
Just to put it out there, but Meditation and 'Mindfulness' don't really seem to be a thing in actual research. It's basically just relaxation. Studies often ignore confounding variables and lack clear definitions or protocols for meditation or mindfulness.
For example, in this case it's an online survey lumping together pretty much any type of 'meditation'. It doesn't verify compliance with any specific protocol. It also doesn't look at any confounding variables for anxiety, depression, or anything else. So at it's best you can say 'X% of people surveyed online reported a negative impact on their life after a loosely themed 'meditation' intervention'.
Which isn't very useful if only for the fact that somebody interested in and seeking out something like 'meditation' might already be unsatisfied and dealing with things. I really hate studies like this, a complete waste of time and money. It doesn't go very fear in providing evidence for or against meditation practices. It's pretty much just completely useless.
As much as I agree this can be a problem in spaces where we research what is also sold as snake-oil, meditation and mindfulness do actually have clinical definitions and protocols and MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) in particular actually has a large body of research. Here's a few meta reviews of MBSR in different contexts:
There are certainly definitions that exist, but like this study they are often mentioned and then not actively used in any practical way. But that's only one issue. For the two meta analysis studies I could access the the issue is that they are comparing against passive groups.
The argument against mindfulness and meditation is that it's really just relaxation. Which is a stress reducing activity. To change my mind I'd want to see a study or meta-analysis looking at a different stress reduction strategies including simple undirected relaxation compared with meditation and mindfulness where specific protocols are followed and compared.
That way we can actually tease out if the person following the protocol and therefore being 'mindful' is actually receiving a benefit from their actions of from simply relaxing in a peaceful environment.
To be clear, I don't disagree with your criticisms of study design and tried to bring that in focus when I said there are issues in spaces where research is done on something that is also sold as snake-oil. I was merely bringing light to the fact that MBSR exists and has been researched for some time (of note, the person who developed it was a biologist and a buddhist). I have no doubt that there are papers assessing MBSR versus relaxation and other practices and interventions, I just did not have time nor the interest in digging through the literature that exists- I was highlighting it because I've come across it in medicine on more than one occasion. I personally have no skin in the game as to whether a specific protocol around relaxation and introspection is more effective than other protocols (or the lack thereof).
Fair enough, if I ever end up looking for more studies I'll be sure to make a post on Tildes. It is an interesting topic to me.
The night is darkest before the dawn. Paying off the debt of accumulating that suffering is hard. I've been doing it for a decade now. There are positives to it too.
Originally published by The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/meditation-can-be-harmful-and-can-even-make-mental-health-problems-worse-230435
Posted the Science Alert link since The Conversation has a typo in the first sentence.
Thank you for this link. I was unfamiliar with that site, but it looks like a great site to read for in-depth articles on a lot of interesting topics!
@mycketforvirrad The original source is The Conversation. It was reprinted in Science Alert as my above comment mentions. What's wrong with having both tagged?
The source tags main use is for people to be able to filter websites they don't wish to visit. Therefore the source tag simply represents the source link posted.
Honestly, the largest downside to meditation and mindfulness for me are that I was continuously shunted towards participating in them (often in group contexts alongside neurotypical people who were not going through remotely the same mental health experiences as me) because providers were hesitant to treat me with medication that has proven effective for my condition. Or test me for any physical health condition that could have already been contributing to my mental health problems (since I now have been diagnosed with one, it's very possible they could've caught it back then). For all people complain about the medicalization of mental health care, my experience is that meditation and mindfulness are used as the psychological equivalent of how yoga is used in physical health -- no one denies that it can have great benefits for some people, but proponents constantly insist it's the thing that will cure your chronic conditions when it just is not suited for that.
As someone that’s done psychedelics, disassociation and depersonalization don’t seem like they are necessarily negative. I honestly wish more people could experience these sensations because they are humbling. People get wrapped up in their life and their mind (myself included) and being smacked in the face with the reality that your sensations are not reality but merely a meaty interpretation of the smaller sliver of reality is a realization that can make people care more for each other. No matter how much you think your problems matter, everyone else is doomed to the same reality as you. We will all die. We can’t reach many of our goals. You can do everything right and still get screwed by your body. So treat people with respect and dignity.
Besides taking psychedelics or meditating I feel the strongest medium to convey this experience is horror fiction. So I can acknowledge that these sensations are frightening. But they can be met with bravery.