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.
CarfireOnTheHighway | 2 hours ago
My wife has OCD and when her new OCD specialist heard that she’d been using meditation/mindfulness practices like “sitting in her feelings” with her previous therapist she was horrified. It had made her rumination significantly worse.
Wide-Pop6050 | 2 hours ago
Right there are just some feelings that no one needs to be sitting in and they just should not be advised
adaramontan | an hour ago
Ugh, that is so awful! I am so glad she has an expert now. Nothing like some misapplied mindfulness to ensure you never escape your rituals
The day I realized that I can ignore my OCD, as it has absolutely nothing of value to offer me, was a good day. Still get stuck in the hole sometimes but I have a way out now. My OCD wants me to think it's the best of me, it's really the worst of every voice that ever tried to name me.
BeagleButler | an hour ago
This is SOOO validating for me as someone with OCD who kept being told to sit with my feelings. Mindfulness was really unpleasant for me and frankly harmful. I felt like I was failing doing what I needed to do. My current therapist was also horrified.
Most_Comparison50 | 19 minutes ago
Fuck it's very odd to read these statements bc seems it happened to alot of us? Did this trend started 2010's with therapists using all these tools and techniques that weren't tested or valid 🤔
clevercalamity | 55 minutes ago
I have OCD and my nightmare MIL told me I should stop taking my migraines medication and just meditate away my migraines.
I didn’t do that, because that’s insane, but it did make me spiral into thinking I was faking my migraines and if I tried harder they would just go away. (Tried harder at what? 🤷🏻♀️ OCD isn’t logical.)
Most_Comparison50 | 22 minutes ago
That's awful. How is she now?
Funny bc I've been in a similar boat - neurodivergent (un diagnosed at the time) & my therapist introduced me to all this. Definitely wasn't helpful and glad I was able to come out not super damaged.
bannana | 15 minutes ago
> “sitting in her feelings”
not sure where this came from but this isn't what you are supposed to be doing at all while meditating, it's mostly the exact opposite of this - focus on your breath or counting - 'feelings' and thoughts that arise will distract you but then you come back to your breath or counting or body check, or whatever it is you are focusing on during your meditation. the whole point is to understand your feelings, thoughts, and ideas are not you, not permanent, and do not form you as a person - they are transitory. rumination is not meditation.
jenandabollywood | 3 hours ago
Really important for anyone with a psychotic disorder (including schizophrenia spectrum disorders, bipolar 1, etc) to be aware of the risks of meditation. I was warned by my own doctor to stay away from it, as I have one of those conditions. I wonder how many people mentioned in this article already had a preexisting condition like this, or a predisposition through genetics.
ForwardCulture | 17 minutes ago
I have an acquaintance with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. He followed a lot of bad advice and went down the “spiritual” path. It destroyed him and he’s now done several stays in a mental health facility and he’s getting worse.
SravBlu | 3 hours ago
This is a great read. I’ve meditated semi regularly for 25 years now, and would consider myself a pretty serious practitioner (I have meditated on average for more than a half hour per day, every day, for years now). I haven’t had many (any?) adverse effects - certainly no serious ones - but I appreciate so much what Cheetah House is doing and think it’s so vitally beneficial to, frankly, the world of serious meditation practitioners. I’ve been a subscriber to their newsletter for quite a while now, and I love reading what they put out. The reality is that there’s a lot of crap out there. More all the time. And there’s also a lot of… not crap, but systems that give people rather powerful tools and then don’t teach them how to use them safely, or responsibly, or for good. This sort of ecosystem really needs a surplus of transparency and critical self-reflection to live up to its own goals.
metamorphotits | 3 hours ago
pretty damn terrified about how the mindset of mindfulness/meditation experts described here intersects with the desire of for-profit insurers to "treat" mental health in the cheapest way imaginable, efficacy and appropriateness be damned.
mindfulness classes for teens are pretty common. also common at that age: the onset of schizophrenia, body image disorders, anxiety, and depression, all things certain forms of mindfulness/meditation can worsen. i know the majority are vastly better off learning some tools for emotional regulation, but it's not hard to imagine a few groups of kids that could get themselves into more trouble than anyone around them is prepared for.
ForwardCulture | 7 minutes ago
Mindfulness is also being normalized in corporate settings to shift the blame from toxic work environments to turn individual employees. Instead of addressing company culture, they encourages mindfulness.
Wide-Pop6050 | 3 hours ago
It totally makes sense that the long retreats aren’t good. Everything in moderation after all
I don’t think meditating for hours at a time is good. No wonder that can lead to disassociation.
It seems like it’s just shouldn’t sold as a solve all, and there should always be room for “it doesn’t work for me”. Insisting that “you must be doing it wrong” always rubs me the wrong way.
I was surprised by the effects some people had even from short practices
It seems like there are so many things that people acted that I was the devil on earth for disagreeing with that have now been shown to be worth the skepticism at least
OptimisticOctopus8 | an hour ago
With very little knowledge or practice, I once meditated myself into an extremely intense sensory experience. I'm not saying that I imagined the sensations really well. I felt them. Whatever parts of my brain make me feel those sensations were apparently firing away with abandon - all triggered by my own thoughts.
I never detected any negative side effects from that experience, but what I did take away was an understanding that meditation has the potential to be as cognitively impactful as the most intense psychotropic drugs. Literally. With the real, literal meaning of "literally."
GiantLesbian | 3 hours ago
I found this very interesting as someone who was sent into a 2 year long spiral thru EMDR. While I’m not sure if EMDR counts as meditation (it might?), it certainly shares many characteristics with many types of meditation. And I have heard from many EMDR fans (including medical professionals) that this merely meant I wasn’t prepped enough or properly, which sounds so much like the defensive meditators in this article (“it wasn’t done right!”). But I was emotionally stable and had healthy coping mechanisms before the EMDR, I’d been in therapy a long time and was doing good overall, but EMDR involved the body scans noted in this article as specifically not being good for anxious people (which I am), and it also involved remembering things I hadn’t before, bad things. And it’s like, I don’t have to be a genius to understand that making people remember bad things that happened could be bad for them. Like you know? I was already in therapy for bad memories. We were trying to deal with those with EMDR. WHY would the solution be to add MORE bad memories?? I think the second I started remembering NEW trauma, the therapy should have been shut down. Your FEELINGS getting worse during therapy, when you know they often get worse before they get better, is one thing. But that is not on the same plane as your MEMORIES getting worse, your TRAUMA getting worse. I’m still on beta blockers 6 years later because of this shit because I’m still too in tune with my adrenaline and heart now (I’m otherwise back to baseline though). I can’t wait to read the version of this article that deals with EMDR one day.
storyofohno | 2 hours ago
Omg!! I also had a horrible reaction to EMDR and am dying for the same article to come out. If you are a podcast person, If Books Could Kill did an episode on The Body Keeps the Score and they do address a little of the criticism around EMDR.
Most_Comparison50 | 13 minutes ago
Ohhhhh the subreddit lost their shit when that came out lol I loved it bc I had a teacher (who means well) bring in TBKTS, Gabor Mate & others in that space to what we were learning (community services) I was getting really frustrated bc these theories although not absolutely bs, are being repeated as fact and sort of like, everyone else will catch up eventually.
tenzindrolma | an hour ago
EMDR is not mediation or mindfulness. It is a psychotherapeutic approach. I have done it with positive results and I’m sorry this happened to you.
Bright_Ices | an hour ago
I’ve also had very good results with EMDR. But it did take me quite a long time, plus a very strong therapeutic relationship with my therapist, to be ready for it.
Coincidentally, meditation was awful for me, pretty much right away. I’ve tried it twice and both times it triggered a rapid descent into very dark places I never want to experience again. No psychosis, thankfully, but just horrible mh effects.
cat_at_the_keyboard | an hour ago
I have CPTSD and EMDR was horrific for me, caused a lot of suicidal ideation
sifaka2 | an hour ago
Without paywall:
https://archive.ph/ndavi
Most_Comparison50 | 38 minutes ago
Bless 🙌
some_one_thereDC | an hour ago
I really enjoyed the podcast Astray about the adjacent topic of "spiritual awakening/enlightenment", and the Westerners going to India to seek it. [TW: discussion of suicide, and other sensitive topics]
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-astray-78114211/about
Most_Comparison50 | 28 minutes ago
Ohhh thank you for sharing!
some_one_thereDC | 10 minutes ago
Enjoy!
(your cats look adorable from the pics on your profile!)
Dubs9448 | an hour ago
How to get the non paywall version?
sifaka2 | an hour ago
Archive link:
https://archive.ph/ndavi
Dubs9448 | an hour ago
Thank you!!
some_one_thereDC | an hour ago
It is a gift article, should be able to read it. If not, try: https://web.archive.org/web/20260904152531/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/meditation-willoughby-britton-downsides/688474/
ehco | 55 minutes ago
I found that learning how to dissociate from my feelings was the best thing that ever happened to me. Instead of spiraling down and obsessing
Most_Comparison50 | 28 minutes ago
Exactly! I'll always have to be mindful bc I'm prone to spiralling/obsessing but I got caught up in all this mindfulness hype (through a therapist 😒) and it made me way worse. When I look back I actually have no idea how I was actually functioning.
I also find these practices that are supposed to be enlightening (bc the original foundations come from religion) actually turn people inward and self obsessed? Bc if you think of monks, nuns, holy people ect they do these practices along with alot of others, as part of a bigger theology.
WinterMedical | 3 hours ago
Daily 15 min Meditation has completely changed my life in the very best way.
mrsbergstrom | 2 hours ago
That is not really a response to the article, did you read it? Or just the title of the link?
metamorphotits | 3 hours ago
that's great! that doesn't mean that others don't experience things differently, or that their experiences aren't worth discussing.
rerouting every conversation about the risks or downsides of meditation to discussing just the benefits is not respectful or appropriate. even the best treatments are contraindicated and come with risks, and it doesn't invalidate the efficacy to recognize them.
WinterMedical | 3 hours ago
You read an awful lot into that one sentence that wasn’t there. Simply my experience.
metamorphotits | 2 hours ago
what i "read into" was the article you are commenting in response to. did you? or do you think we should just abandon the premise of comments being relevant to the post altogether?
ID2691 | 2 hours ago
Me too. I wouldn't know how I would have survived without meditation. It is about experiencing the present moment, which is constantly changing.
metamorphotits | 2 hours ago
do you intend to read this article or was this a brief comment-only detour from posting the same meditation promoting studies over and over?
ID2691 | 2 hours ago
People who write negatively about meditation are those who do not understand what exactly mindfulness is. Mindfulness is not about mechanically doing "something" (some "mental exercise") to get some result. It is about getting to know our thoughts and how they come and go in the present moment, etc.,..and a whole lot more.
cajolinghail | 2 hours ago
Guess you didn't read the article...
zipiddydooda | an hour ago
Or anything else.
Sea-Barnacle-9576 | 2 hours ago
All