The Dark Side of Mindfulness • Promoted as a treatment for anxiety, chronic pain, alcohol abuse, addiction, and many other ailments, meditation can sometimes, for some people, cause severe and lasting side effects: depression, anxiety, even acute psychosis.

206 points by Naurgul 20 hours ago on reddit | 81 comments

FlyConfident1622 | 11 hours ago

Loving all these angry responses from meditators who haven’t read the article but are insisting any negative effects are impossible.

Showing no interest in incorporating new information into their worldview isn’t a convincing way to defend ANY practice. Meditation is no different

Plasmelon | 10 hours ago

People ascribe negative things to meditation itself which come from people. It’s nothing new. People end up mistakenly thinking the practice which elucidates the negative things in them is actually causing them.

cajolinghail | 10 hours ago

So if meditation “elucidates“ an episode of psychosis in someone who could have otherwise gone their whole life without it, meditation is still a positive thing for that person? You see how that doesn’t make sense, right?

Plasmelon | 9 hours ago

You’re looking at this too simply. Meditation isn’t the factor making that person psychotic.

People do therapy and become psychotic and commit suicide. Are you gonna blame therapy for that?

hologram137 | 7 hours ago

It’s an altered state. An altered state of consciousness triggering psychosis in someone who would have never had it is not uncommon

Plasmelon | 7 hours ago

You really don’t know shit about meditation. It’s an unaltered state shedding the altered state of delusions created by an overactive mind.

That’s why a common metaphor for it is letting dirt settle at the bottom of a glass of still water.

hologram137 | 6 hours ago

What are you even talking about?

The meditative state is objectively an altered state of consciousness. By all definitions, that’s what it is. Deep meditative states can be comparable to a low dose of psychedelics. The meditative state is not simply “calming an overactive mind” or a state of focus and relaxation in which you practice not paying attention to harmful thoughts. That’s not what it is.

There is a reason why cultures that developed these practices don’t have a bunch of people doing it casually or randomly. They are screened and trained with a guide. And the purpose is definitely not to “shed the altered state of delusions created by an overactive mind.”

cajolinghail | 6 hours ago

You could know more about it if you read the article.

Plasmelon | 6 hours ago

I did read the article. It has crap studies with tiny sample sizes and cherrypicked information meant to paint a false picture.

People do therapy and antidepressants and have psychotic breaks, too. Gonna talk about the dark side of therapy?

And the article doesn’t teach shit about meditation. It generalizes a lot to paint a negative picture when there are different types, even within a single religion which incorporates it.

I’ve done meditation for 13 years. I know more about it than you and the person who wrote this crap piece of propaganda.

I’d be happy to teach you about it if you’re willing to learn.

: cajolinghail | 6 hours ago
If it’s all false then why has it been reproduced by other organizations? This is definitely not the first article about potential harms of meditation.

Is mindfulness actually just some kind of cult? Pretty much every form of therapy, wellness practice or even actual medical treatment has some possible side effects and is known not to be recommended for every single person. But this is the only one I’ve seen people get so emotional about.

FlyConfident1622 | 9 hours ago

Let me guess, you didn’t read the article either!

: Plasmelon | 9 hours ago
I did. It was crap studies and anecdotes from a person who didn’t understand meditation.

It’s well-known it can bring psychological issues to the surface. The issue is the issues and how people handle them, not meditation itself. The article confuses the two, and people like you who don’t know shit about meditation eat it up.

There’s a reason psychology is called a “soft science.” And this isn’t even well-done psychology. The sample sizes are less than 100 people lol.

Edit: Downvoting me because you hate the truth. Maybe you should meditate to clear your minds and stop being delusional.

zzzzzooted | 3 hours ago

Clearly meditation isn’t working for you if you’re getting this worked up about the idea of it not working for everyone.

Why are you getting defensive? Why does it need to work for everyone? Why is it so important to you that it is literally impossible for meditation to be the cause of a negative experience for someone?

Meditation can be very useful to you and very bad for other people, those two things are allowed to coexist and it’s not an attack on you or your coping mechanism.

AnimatorImpressive24 | 9 hours ago

Every contemplative spiritual tradition to which modern meditation owes its origins has been very clear that meditation isn't for everyone and also must involve experienced peer guidance precisely so an aspirant doesn't decide they are a deity or immortal and wind up hurting themself or someone else.

It is only a particular brand of modern cost-focused individualism that has pushed the idea that already isolated people can just fire up an app that will direct them to stare into their inner abyss and somehow be more healthy as a result. And disproving that idea with hard evidence is difficult to do both for ethical reasons and due to positivity bias in research acting as inertia.

Which sucks because it means that even in the presence of best intentions by all involved the impact to those most vulnerable to risks of the practice can still be a little predatory. The power dynamic between a system which has inbuilt incentives for each instance of treatment provided versus individual vulnerable patients is vastly imbalanced in a way the patient can't really address or maybe even recognize if they are severely unwell.

invisiblecows | 9 hours ago

> It is only a particular brand of modern cost-focused individualism that has pushed the idea that already isolated people can just fire up an app that will direct them to stare into their inner abyss and somehow be more healthy as a result.

This is so well put, thank you.

rwe4rl | 7 hours ago

more to be found in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

: cedaro0o | 6 hours ago
Background on trungpa for the uninformed,

https://thewalrus.ca/survivors-of-an-international-buddhist-cult-share-their-stories/

kelcamer | 7 hours ago

Ageeed and let me add to this too that wim
Hof is a great example of something that not everyone SHOULD practice

And a random tip:
Most people who try wim
Hof are not, indeed, hallucinating as if they were tripping on DMT

Turns out that level of depth is not normal or healthy for wim hof lmao

BodyMindReset | 5 hours ago

I’m going to put here what I wrote on another thread about this so more people who need can see it:

None of this is surprising if you work with trauma physiology for a living. Meditation is not inherently regulating, it is an attention practice, and for a lot of people it works by removing the distractions and management strategies that were holding a fragile system together. Take those away without building any containment first and the survival energy that was being held back has nowhere to go except for to the surface and it can appear rapidly and with force. That is the flooding and depersonalization people are describing. It is not a spiritual stage, it is a nervous system that got opened faster than it could organize.

The part that gets me is the teachers telling her the dissociation was enlightenment and to keep going. That is the same move I see constantly, where the practice produces a bad outcome and the person gets told they are doing it right or just need to do more, instead of the practice itself being questioned. Depersonalization is a protective response, not a breakthrough, and doubling down on the thing that triggered it is exactly how people end up experiencing retraumatization.

For anyone reading this who got wrecked by a retreat or a heavy practice, it is usually not that you failed at meditating and it usually is not permanent. More often the practice outpaced your capacity and there were not enough resources on the other end to help your system come back down. Slower, more contained, more relational work tends to be what teaches your system to settle. Nurturing Resilience is a good book to start if you want to understand the mechanics of why this happens.

***

ETA: I absolutely agree with everyone making points about the bastardization of these practices when removed from their original cultural contexts and adapted for consumption. Those are important realities to hold.

However, I have worked with ex monks. I have heard about their experiences in those systems and the realities. It is not abnormal for there to be chronic drug use in monestaries, people with severe trauma who never recovered, dysfunctional power dynamics in social relationships, etc. Even people who embodied those traditions still dealt with the impacts of trauma in a way that meditation and mindfulness could not combat.

: AnimatorImpressive24 | 4 hours ago
Agreed about your edit! A monastery is not inherently different from a church and neither one is immune to the harms you list. The same people who may be strongly critical about extant religions in their own culture will turn right around and fetishize "traditions" of cultures other than their own. East/West divide adds to that in gross ways, too.

jeadon88 | 13 hours ago

I think mindfulness is just a starting point. It helps you observe (and label) what your thoughts and feelings and urges to act are but with mental health difficulties that’s not enough

parasyte_steve | 11 hours ago

Agree. I was hospitalized for mental health issues. Meditation and mindfulness did help me personally but I do see how it could be problematic for patients struggling with psychosis or even OCD. Thoughts of if I don't meditate something bad can happen... or deep in meditation starting to hear voices or feel connections to things and entertain delusions. I also became sort of spiritual through this process and that can be VERY problematic for someone with psychosis. Luckily I have never had psychosis myself.

Anyway I did not actually improve until my meds were correct. Having the correct diagnosis is impotant and I had the wrong diagnosis for years. Improving the diagnostic process is where I'd like to see mental health improve. Too many doctors do not take a "full view" picture beyond the symptoms presented to connect everything. Instead I was given temporary relief for symptoms or just given meds based on symptoms instead of saying hey, maybe the diagnosis is wrong (after the 600th med) and taking a different approach.

hologram137 | 9 hours ago

That’s not what meditation is

jeadon88 | 3 hours ago

We are talking about mindfulness not meditation. Mindfulness is a means of training your attention and building attentional control skills. It’s not intended to make you relax or calm down, it’s intended to help you notice.

hologram137 | 3 hours ago

Read the article

jeadon88 | 3 hours ago

Yes I think it’s a problem with the article. The headline refers to mindfulness but the article refers to meditation - suggesting they’re interchangeable.

hologram137 | 3 hours ago

Because it’s tied up with the entire “mindfulness” industry. The article is clearly about meditation.

jeadon88 | 2 hours ago

Yes and the headline references mindfulness - does it not ?

hologram137 | 2 hours ago

This is a thread discussing the article. Do you just read headlines and talk about them? LOL

: jeadon88 | 2 hours ago
I’ve read the article. I am pointing out a feature of poor journalism here - the headline of this post refers to mindfulness , and mindfulness is mentioned in a paragraph or two of the article itself. Mindfulness and meditation are different - they do not mean the same thing, as you have pointed out. This post is called “the dark side of mindfulness” yet the article is broadly about meditation. To treat these as the same is really bad form. It gives the impression that mindfulness has been researched to have negative outcomes when the article is about meditation. Mindfulness can associate with increases in distress but that’s not unexpected or unusual.

Do you understand ?

Parking-Complex-3887 | 14 hours ago

I learned how to meditate with distractions, now my mind doesn't have rando shit in the background (song in my head, errant thoughts)... is actually kind of disconcerting.

Plasmelon | 7 hours ago

This article is propaganda. All the sample sizes in the studies are too tiny to be taken seriously and it’s also full of anecdotes.

People here are fucking stupid for thinking it proves anything.

What a shame.

: AnimatorImpressive24 | 5 hours ago
It is very difficult bordering on impossible to ethically collect substantial data about risks of harm in psychological treatments. You either have to sift through a privacy-limited number of case studies of individual patients with sample sizes of one each or "hope" that a clinical trial which expected a positive result actually has negative results and gets published.

Consider these two links, taken in order:

https://medium.com/@KPWaResearch/from-17-years-to-17-months-implementation-of-suicide-risk-assessment-37bd7931a2b0

https://rethinkingclinicaltrials.org/news/february-28-2022-spot-finds-no-reduction-in-suicide-risk-for-at-risk-adults-offered-care-management-higher-risk-for-those-offered-dialectical-behavior-therapy-skills-training/

Compare the optimism displayed in 2019 about a clinical trial by its lead researcher to the article about that same trial published in 2022 after its completion. Then really scrutinize what the results actually show and decide whether you think the title of the 2022 article accurately summarizes those results. (Hint: "increase" is technically "no reduction".)

Then take note of the fact that it was considered remarkable by the research and practitioner communities at the time that the results were published at all, as it is more often expected adverse outcomes will cause a trial to be shut down early and simply abandoned.

That's part of why I call positivity bias an inertial force. It is easier to make unsupported pre-study claims of potential benefits of a treatment and then produce initial evidence confirming that benefit (which sets it "in motion" where it will tend to remain) than it is to overcome the higher bar of producing later evidence disputing its benefit. Much less suggesting it is openly harmful, which the second link pointedly refrains from doing. Any pre-follow-up-study claims of potential harm must be carefully phrased or else will be bad mouthing peers who published the initial data.

But it is sort of a one-way inertia. Because a treatment that is "at rest" by not having been proposed yet may tend to remain at rest if an initial trial produces neutral/adverse outcomes, however if that isn't also published then someone else may come up with the idea independently and have nothing telling them not to give it a try. Repeat that often enough and it would only take a minor fluctuation in collected data from a single trial to give the treatment a bump and set it moving.
: Otherkin | 5 hours ago
Yeah, it briefly mentions the numerous positive studies on medication and then focuses on one woman with PTSD. I mean, it makes a great point that meditation re-writes the brain and isn't for everybody, but it presents mostly cherry-picked anecdotes.

PrairieFire_withwind | 5 hours ago

Cheetah House deserves more recognition for the work they do!

That said there is a lot this article does not cover, context and nuance that, i will admit is difficult to convey without people having had a fair bit of meditation experience to start.

A worthwhile warning though. I have seen one person have total break with reality on retreat ans others with massive anxiety struggles.

Yet, on the other hand, i, myself, cannot stop saying how wonderful meditation is and how much better off everyone would be if they learned it. Lol.

But the warnings are valid. People who tend towards anxiety, depression, or have a history need a shitton more support if they wish to walk this path ansnot just may not be the path for them.

bhauls | 17 hours ago

Eye roll. In 50 years of my life I’ve never once heard of someone’s life being ruined by meditation. Drugs. Yes. Alcohol. Yes. Excessive Sex. Yes. Excessive religion. Yes. Excessive politics. Yes. Meditation- not once.

LaDreadPirateRoberta | 15 hours ago

Maybe not ruined my life but mindfullness did push me to repeatedly self-harm once!

I had severe depression and my therapist kept pushing me to use this one mindfulness CD and workbook. It really wasn't what I needed at the time and the harder I tried, the worse my mental state got. It was a terrible time for me until i changed therapists to someone's who acknowledged I needed a different treatment.

I can now listen to guided meditations without issues but I'm still wary to go near anything labled "mindfulness".

invisiblecows | 15 hours ago

Yeah, mindfulness isn't always helpful, particularly if you're in a deep depression.

My main issue with mindfulness is the way it's touted as a cure-all. Mental health issues take a variety of different forms, and what's helpful for one person might be deeply triggering for another.

EDIT: I commented earlier without reading the article, but now I have read it and HOLY SHIT. It's fascinating and troubling. Everybody is commenting here about their own beliefs and experiences, but y'all need to go actually read the article.

LaDreadPirateRoberta | 14 hours ago

I agree. It's basically what the article is saying, too. Meditation is a treatment and like all treatments, it has to be the right one for the problem and side effects, even if uncommon, will sometimes happen.

Plasmelon | 9 hours ago

Bro, the article is crap. The studies have tiny sample sizes and it’s full of anecdotes. You’re fucking stupid for finding it compelling.

: cajolinghail | 5 hours ago
A bit aggressive, don’t you think? If you are an example of the kind of attitude towards others that mediation gives you, I’m happy to keep avoiding it.

BunnyLovesTheStars | 10 hours ago

That was your shitty therapist not giving you the proper care.

My therapist recommends mindfulness to try at home (because she thinks I'd be a good fit for it) but she is never all, "now that you have this you won't need EMDR!"

LaDreadPirateRoberta | 9 hours ago

Your right of course, but what both I and the article are saying is that mindfulness is not a panacea. It is a treatment that can be harmful if wrongly prescribed.

That's not the fault of mindfulness, any more than it is the fault of an antidepressant that is prescribed wrongly, it's just a fact of treating mental illness.

: BunnyLovesTheStars | 9 hours ago
Yes, good example! I said something similar in another comment. Sorry if it came off as dismissive of your experience. I am mostly angry at your therapist for insisting on it despite what you were telling them, which is ridiculous. My therapists would never.

In fact I had a problem in the beginning because I expected them to tell me what to do all the time (like I was back in the military), and they said that's not how therapy is supposed to work. You're supposed to tell them what you need, and they give you their educated guidance on the options to try and how they will help you try them.

Mindfulness isn't going to cure any sort of deeply rooted mental health issue on its own, I didn't even realize people were touting it as such. I found mindfulness helpful with the little calming exercises like box breathing to reduce my anxiety when it spikes. But I still need actual trauma therapy and medication in the meantime. Any therapist who uses mindfulness as a cure-all should have their license yoinked.

Plasmelon | 10 hours ago

It wasn’t meditation. It was you.

gherkonthedeglover | 14 hours ago

but that probably wasnt caused by the mindfulness workbook, your therapist wasnt treating your condition adequately.

It shouldnt be a replacement for medication and regular therapy. Its supposed to help manage symptoms that are already somewhat under control

edit: im not saying it wasnt the inciting incident, im saying that it being specifically a mindfulness book probably had less to do with the behaviors than the therapist being incompetant.

LaDreadPirateRoberta | 14 hours ago

You're saying it's a total coincidence that I experienced extreme distress and harmful urges during and shortly after each meditation?

I agree I wasn't being treated correctly but I would argue that a significant part of that wrong treatment was the mindfulness exercises.

You may well be right that it would work better when I am less depressed but I think a large part of the problem, as highlighted in the article, is that it's being overprescribed for all stages of mental illness.

gherkonthedeglover | 13 hours ago

no i think your therapist should have referred you to a psychiatrist. I think in the state you described its the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. Any introspective exercise would have probably set it off similarly.

I dont think talk therapy works too well either for someone in acute distress unless you have a really experienced therapist that knows your limits and is good at deescalation

meditation was also really agitating to me when my anxiety was out of control. I also have adhd so my difficulty concentrating frustrated me a lot and made it worse. but now that i have got a grip on it finally, im able to relax when i do guided meditations.

Now i can even do them when im having a panic attack.

: BunnyLovesTheStars | 9 hours ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is true.

Medicine doesn't help if it's for the wrong ailment. It can even cause harm if used incorrectly. That doesn't mean the medicine itself is inherently bad for everyone, just that it wasn't adminstered responsibly.

elliottas | 15 hours ago

You learn something new every day!! Maybe be more open minded to things you don’t understand?

: Plasmelon | 10 hours ago
That’s ironic considering you’re saying it to someone who understands meditation.

cajolinghail | 12 hours ago

Sounds like you didn’t read the article then.

krispy7 | 10 hours ago

it's a mistake to think that 50 years of experience on earth is enough to hear about all the things that actually happen to people

hologram137 | 8 hours ago

The problem here is that a ton of people don’t actually know what meditation is, even if they “meditate.” Most studies on meditation use random college students with no or very little experience meditating, but it often takes a lot of practice (even years) to be able to do it properly and even get in the true meditative state at all! So the data they get from that kind of sample population is flawed, they are really studying more of a relaxed and focused state instead.

The meditative state is an altered state of consciousness. Telling people with mental health issues to just start regularly entering an altered state is dangerous. Cultures in which meditation practices are taught do not treat it casually at all. And some people are able to enter it more easily than others, I’m one of them. And so meditation immediately had negative consequences and I stopped.

I have C-PTSD. A brand new therapist casually told me “try meditation.” I did. 1st, my nightmares immediately got worse and more frequent, then, that protective amnesia barrier between the period of time that the situation that caused the C-PTSD was occurring and my current every day experience of myself that doesn’t include that time (it’s like living with amnesia except I do remember, I know what’s there, but the period of time is just blocked out day to day if that makes sense) started to dissolve and it was destabilizing me and causing panic attacks and dissociation episodes in response to the content from that period just suddenly intruding in my awareness when I wasn’t meditating and I had no tools for that at all. It was extremely disruptive to my life and there was nothing positive about it.

I had a bizarre experience after meditating for a good amount of time and was in a really deep meditative state, suddenly my entire body started to vibrate intensely, I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life, and I was really scared. The sensation increased in intensity and I began to feel like I was leaving my body floating up, then suddenly I was. I saw myself laying on the bed and was TERRIFIED. Absolutely terrified. Then I felt a presence near me and I didn’t want to turn and look, in my mind I’m screaming “I want this to stop,” and then I felt myself yanked back and I’m in my body again.

I cannot tell you what that was. No way to tell if I had the most vivid (and only) hallucination of my life (I was NOT asleep and dreaming I know that for sure) that also involved a very real physical sensation that I’ve never experienced, or if our consciousness is actually something more than our bodies, and I actually did leave it. There is no way to tell objectively. I can tell you that there was nothing dream like or hallucinatory about it, at least subjectively but….I don’t know. So I just refrain from interpreting it, that was the experience, what does it mean? Can’t tell you.

But it was very distressing. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I’ve told one person since and I don’t know if they believed me. What if I was having some kind of episode? I was scared. I stopped meditating pretty soon after that (and all the above effects stopped immediately) instead I do grounding exercises in which I practice being more connected to my body and surroundings, not less.

Meditation is not this casual thing that everyone should be doing alone without guidance. Especially people experiencing mental health issues. And it absolutely does not have exclusively positive effects.

Many people who say they meditate are laying there doing breathing exercises, relaxing while practicing being able to quiet their mind with focus. And like I already pointed out, there’s research that shows that most studies on “meditation,” the ones used to justify recommending it, are actually measuring people doing the above. But that’s not what the meditative state is. What I described is more like practicing the precursor to it.

Studies on yogis, other experienced meditators or people who are able to easily do it for whatever reason exist, but they aren’t in the clinical literature. In the clinical literature, they don’t use those subjects because they are testing the effects on the general population to see if there are any beneficial effects. But the studies end up very flawed for that exact reason

But in the study in the article she actually sent subjects to an 8 week meditation course. This is not usual. And what do you know, when they are actually meditating the harmful effects show up.

AnimatorImpressive24 | 8 hours ago

Question: What all would have to happen before you heard of it, assuming it did happen?

Whoever it happened to would have to actually survive the experience, understand the cause, and be able to effectively communicate the cause to others. If you weren't directly told about it by the person it happened to, then some combination of these other things would need to be true:

Any harm done would have to be significant enough to either spawn 24-hour wall to wall media coverage or common enough that it would be impossible for you not to see one story among countless others.

It would have to impact one or more people isolated or marginalized by society already thanks to whatever condition they were being treated for, but still connected and respected enough to be believed when they reported harm and able to draw the attention of journalists.

Alternately it would have to happen in the controlled settings of clinical trial of a potentially harmful practice tested on a known vulnerable population with some reasonable concern of having diminished capacity to consent to take part. Which is hard to get approval for, and if the results show a poor outcome or even just no benefit there will be temptation to simply not publish results and move on to a different project.

Taking all that into account, it is easier to conceive of it happening more than once and just not making it to most people's attention.

wazzup-notemuch | 14 hours ago

God forbid you should discover that your favorite hobby isn't right for everyone.

Go fuck yourself, troll.

ViciaFaba_FavaBean | 4 hours ago

I just read the full article. I have had an off and on meditation practice for 20+ years. For several years I would spend a month a year at a monastery. Meditation is hard. And it can definitely lead to all of the things she found in her research. Much of what the article discussed I have experienced. Minus the psychosis.

Though it has been hugely beneficial to me to experience those things they can be incredibly dangerous without a good teacher. And that is why the explosion of mindfulness retreats and the for profit industry that has been built around meditation, yoga, and other practices in the same vein worries me so much as do meditation apps.

A poor teacher is worse than no teacher. The benefit of studying at a monastery was the years of experience of the community and how the community supported safe practices. There were times I had deep depressions, times I was manically elated, times I felt pure terror raging through me. All of which could have been dangerous in a different context. I am so thankful I found the community I did. With their guidance I was able to work through those states or not get caught up in them and doing so made me a better version of myself that was not as controlled by my emotions as I had been. It gave me a solid foundation to build on as I continue to do the work to be a better human, which also involves periodic depression, anxiety, etc as whether or not I am meditating working to cease harmful habits is fucking hard. But there comes a point where sticking with the habit is worse in the long run.

When I was younger I would have been upset by this article and would have defended meditation practice completely. But it can have negative outcomes especially when poor advise is given or issues are dismissed by the teacher/people in positions of authority.

: reedreadreddred | 3 hours ago
oh i have cptsd and am interested in meditation too! (can't do it, just know now is not the right time, still stuck in an actively traumatizing/triggering place)

how can you tell if someone should stop meditating, or any tell tale signs

3p1taph | 2 hours ago

Very interesting article. I never would have guessed. Reminds me of my scarier times with hallucinogens.

Top_Pirate699 | 12 hours ago

Mindfulness can be a great tool but we need a cultural overhaul. We are far too individualistic and constantly look at health through this lens. But, the greatest impacts on well-being are genetics and environment. We can't do much about genetics but we absolutely can intervene on our environment. Tacoma WA is an excellent example of a city that went from being a superfund site with high rates of violent crime and horrific environmental pollution to a city with outstanding public access to parks and improved air quality. It wasn't magical. It was the result of good governance and investment. The entire US needs to invest in improving our environments. That will make the greatest difference in our health.

myliobatis | 16 hours ago

Sometimes the way out is through

HexspaReloaded | 13 hours ago

True. It’s like a floaty. If you thrash around, it’ll drown with you, but once you relax, it pulls up. That’s exactly how your mind works.

Everyone thinks meditation brings peace. Hell no! It brings opportunity for the devil to emerge in you.

The problem is that America is spiritually bereft, while religiously glutted ironically.

Point is, you need a little theory to understand what’s taking place:

You are peace. Nothing can bring it or take it away. All that can happen is an obscuring. That happens when you identify with thoughts and body and the world, which we call ordinary waking consciousness. Ultimately that is a lie. So meditation is a slow ungluing of that identity lie. It can be quite unsettling!

It’s time to bring back respect for the authentically religious.

Stunning-Hat2309 | 10 hours ago

or maybe we should actually listen to medical professionals rather than thinking really hard about bronze age mythical sky creatures

garddarf | 9 hours ago

Yep. Meditation wouldn't cause psychosis, but it would allow latent psychotic material to surface to be dealt with. Relax and release, the way out is through.

We have this bogus cultural view that "number must go up". We can't tolerate regression, or the need to go backward to go forward. Healing, therapy, and mindfulness will all cause regression that must be tolerated.

: HexspaReloaded | an hour ago
Great point. I saw a comment recently from a presumably blue-collar guy. He said meditation made things worse, and the only stability he found in life was gainful employment. I was like, wow, that’s actually a very unstable thing. Anyway, cheers.

soberthrowawayfairy | 12 hours ago

Mindfulness can be both. Many people for a variety of reasons will need more than mindfulness; thank goodness for walking, journaling, therapy, psychiatry, and music

Vast-Percentage-7312 | 9 hours ago

oh, give me a break. now we're fear mongering about meditation "side effects" ??

: cajolinghail | 9 hours ago
If by “fear mongering“ you mean “dedicating your life to studying mindfulness because you believed so strongly it its positive effects but then accidentally discovering through multiple scientific studies that it can actually have negative effects for certain people“, then yes.

jaavuori24 | 12 hours ago

...what the fuck. No.

The idea that mindfulness can cause depression or psychosis is the dumbest fucking thing I've read on the Internet in ages. Signed, a therapist with over a decade of experience.

if you want to say that mindfulness isn't a panacea for everything mental health, then yeah absolutely. But saying that it causes psychosis is fucking wildly out of pocket. psychosis is caused by biological factors. Full stop

cajolinghail | 10 hours ago

Another person who seems incredibly upset without having actually read the whole article. Why is this so emotional for people? It’s not like this article is saying mindfulness is bad. It’s saying that for SOME PEOPLE, who already have other risk factors, it can be harmful. Just like any other form of therapy, it’s not for everyone. Why is that so controversial?

: welllitinn | 10 hours ago
Right god I would hate to be treated by the above therapist. Can you imagine paying to talk to that psycho?

Humble-Resource-8635 | 13 hours ago

Haven’t even read this but equating mindfulness and meditation is a stretch. Mindfulness is a broad word. One can engage with mindfulness practices without meditation. It is true that those who struggle with dissociation/feeling detached from their body can have adverse experiences. But there’s as many forms of meditation as there is mindfulness practices. Many that help a person to get more in touch with their body. Now- I guess I’ll read the article

treesarealive777 | 13 hours ago

Mindfulness means you are more likely to be able to confront those feelings.

The mind is a strange thing, and once you can become aware of it, you cant really hide the things you've repressed

This to me just strikes me as somebody who either doesnt want to do the hard work that continues with mindfulness, or doesnt want people being able to become resilient to their problems, because then they arent going to just accept doomerist mindsets.

This article just feels like a psy-op to me at this point.

cajolinghail | 12 hours ago

It strikes you that way…? So you didn’t read the article. The researcher it’s talking about was actually a very devoted meditator for many years; she studied meditation and mindfulness and initially didn’t even publish the first study she did that showed that meditation could have harmful effects, because she didn’t want people to think negatively about meditation. It’s a pretty interesting article, why not give it a read?

Plasmelon | 10 hours ago

Someone can meditate for many years and still be wrong about it.

treesarealive777 | 5 hours ago

Im going to be straight up, why would I engage any further behind the title of the post?

It says mindfulness and meditation cause those things.

Although they hide it behind a "some times, some people". As if that means anything; Some is an extremely vague descriptor to be using.

Blame that on the irresponsible post title, then.

The Atlantic lost any trust I have in them. They havent done anything to earn it back.

You dont reward bad behavior by ignoring those issues and clicking on a link anyway.

You can be upset I dont want to engage the material all you want, the title of the post is intentionally meant to sell this idea that theres some kind of risk for being mindful.

The title uses loaded language like "severe and lasting side effects" like its a pharmaceutical and not just learning how to accept your thoughts.

I see the framing of it and I reject it.

cajolinghail | 5 hours ago

Because this is a subreddit called “in-depth stories“, not “kneejerk reactions to post titles“?

It’s an interesting article with a lot of nuance, both about the good and potential bad (for SOME people) of mindfulness and meditation. If you read the article you’d know that studies have shown that meditation can have similar effects on the brain as certain drugs. You’d also know that there have been multiple examples of people experiencing psychosis for the first time at meditation retreats, and occasionally they never get better; seems fair to say meditation caused that, since if they hadn’t attended those retreats that may possibly never have occurred? But the article is very clear that other people (even the majority of people who practice) do have only positive experiences.

Again I really question the cult-like refusal that many people in this thread have to even entertaining the idea that meditation may have negative effects for some small number of people.

GunkyMirl4444 | 43 minutes ago

Agreed. I was doing a meditation from ACIM book, when suddenly I felt a crushing pressure on my chest and saw a white flash of light. I stopped the meditation and started reading a New Age book and the words suddenly changed. They were very dark and disturbing.

When I went out, I noticed that people were staring at me and they looked very angry-like they wanted to kill me. It was frightening and I became so stressed out that I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat either because the food tasted like rotting flesh. I was hallucinating but didn't know what was happening to me. I thought that perhaps I had died and was in hell.

I ended up going to hospital and was diagnosed with depressive psychosis. The psychiatrist felt it was just a one off thing but it happened again and again. I was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and have been taking antipsychotics ever since.

treesarealive777 | 5 hours ago

Then you can take that up with the OP who posted the title.

I am responding to the post authentically. Im not going to give views to a publisher that actively posts skewed narratives to read their weird ass critique.

You're free to disagree.

But Ive read about the dark side of mediation before, and that dark side is your own mind.

That makes people uncomfortable, but that doesnt mean it causes depression or anxiety.

I have an issue with the title.

I have an issue with the fact the narrative of this post is making it seem like mindfulness can have "severe" side effects like its medication.

Even in your own post trying to defend the claim you say "May possibly" that would never have happened if they didnt go to the retreat. No. It isnt fair to say Mindfulness caused that.

Id expect this subreddit to be the first to say "correlation isnt causation"

May possibly, it would have happened elsewhere. May possibly, they were already on some other kind of drug. May possibly they were already struggling but had been hiding it a long time

Meditation isnt a pharmaceutical. Mindfulness isnt a drug.

Its the ability to recognize your thoughts.

cajolinghail | 5 hours ago

You don’t know the narratives are skewed, you didn’t read the article.

: treesarealive777 | 4 hours ago
Okay, well the summary of it in the post title makes the whole thing immediately suspect to start, is what Im saying.

The Atlantic does not have enough credibility to overcome how horrible the post title is.

In addition, your responses also summarized from it further demonstrates that skew.

People will read that title, and they'll repeat the headline without understanding the nuance and just saying "Meditation makes you crazy. It doesn't work."

I am responding to the fundamental reality of the post as it exists. This includes the fact that I don't trust the Atlantic.

This does not repair trust, and actually makes me more weary.