3 ms·

Your ire is misplaced. This article is talking about the minority of people for whom meditation does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. This reminds me

Your ire is misplaced. This article is talking about the minority of people for whom meditation does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. This reminds me of study done where, again, a small percentage of people who were exposed to sounds that are typically used to reduce anxiety had the opposite effect to. I am trying to dig up this study but it was posted to HN close to a decade ago, so who knows what happened to it. I think a number of HNers expressed the issues they faced listening to these samples as well.

NoOneNew 6y ago
Okay, but it's not a minority of people. If you do mindfulness right, you will feel even more depressed at times. Part of the point. You are now in control of said depression. This helps to teach you have to control it. When I started years ago, I became super depressed after realizing I should have left my ex after about 1 year instead of staying with her for 6 years. I became more depressed than when I found out she cheated on me. However, I learned a valuable lesson from it. I got rid of people in my life that brought me down and valued the people who were a positive in my life. It's not supposed to be a feel good, heroin injection process. It's a mental surgery to better understand your life. If you take the painful part away from the process, you might as well not even bother doing it. Because then it's more like masturbating with zero payoff.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
I mean I've known people who took LSD and instead of a fun trippy experience they had a really bad time. Totally shook them up. In the long run it was good for them, spooked them enough to stay away from drugs permanently and, ultimately, turn their life around. Meditation, like LSD, is only going to get you to a place -- what you find there is on you. If you blot out all distractions and look deep inside yourself... you may not like what you see. If you get someone with deep seated, repressed anxiety and make them bring it to the fore via meditation it's not going to make them less anxious, it's just going to make it more noticeable.

NoOneNew 6y ago

Okay, but it's not a minority of people. If you do mindfulness right, you will feel even more depressed at times. Part of the point. You are now in control of said depression. This helps to teach you have to control it. When I started years ago, I became super depressed after realizing I should have left my ex after about 1 year instead of staying with her for 6 years. I became more depressed than when I found out she cheated on me. However, I learned a valuable lesson from it. I got rid of people in my life that brought me down and valued the people who were a positive in my life. It's not supposed to be a feel good, heroin injection process. It's a mental surgery to better understand your life. If you take the painful part away from the process, you might as well not even bother doing it. Because then it's more like masturbating with zero payoff.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

I mean I've known people who took LSD and instead of a fun trippy experience they had a really bad time. Totally shook them up. In the long run it was good for them, spooked them enough to stay away from drugs permanently and, ultimately, turn their life around. Meditation, like LSD, is only going to get you to a place -- what you find there is on you. If you blot out all distractions and look deep inside yourself... you may not like what you see. If you get someone with deep seated, repressed anxiety and make them bring it to the fore via meditation it's not going to make them less anxious, it's just going to make it more noticeable.