The Side Effects of Meditation No One Talks About
Do you have any stressful unresolved events, memories from past ( that you are aware of or not) ?
Meditation will bring all those unresolved memories into the open. You would be overwhelmed by emotions, thoughts, sensations, pain without knowing how to deal with them. It would be like somebody physically open your wounded heart and then leave it to heal on its own.
Can mindfulness and meditation be harmful?
I was introduced to meditation 25 years ago via Maharishi transcendental meditation. Even thought I experienced some benefits at first, at some point I just knew that is not working for me any more. It was just a strange feelings inside me and I didn’t know why. It took me years to find out the real reasons. I am not against meditation. But you need to do some groundwork before you start.
3 reasons why meditation didn’t work for me
1) The benefits were just temporary
2) At some point I just couldn’t sit still for more than 2 minutes before fidgeting and deciding something else was more important.
3) I have been doing it for years, and I was still struggling with my “angry, fearful and depressing thoughts” that keep coming back.
Let’s look closer to these 3 reasons Why I gave up meditation
Why were the benefits just temporary?
Because of my childhood trauma experience I got triggered a lot by random events in my life and I have trouble with calming down quickly. At first meditation was like a huge relief because at least
two times per day while I was meditating I experience some peace and calm regulatory. At the beginning the calm stayed with me the whole day. Even my friends notice that I was
more calm. The need for occasionally using alcohol to ease my anxiety and upset was gone. But that was just temporary. Because with meditation I was just calming down the triggers.
With time I was even more upset after meditating and my anxiety increased. Focusing on the inside get me in touch with the painful emotions and trauma. Without tools to handle that,
I was feeling worse instead of better. I was more anxious without even knowing why.
Why at some point I just couldn’t sit still from more than 2 minutes?
Without people and stuff around me to distract me from anger and sadness that I get in contact with while meditating I was just overwhelmed with them. It was just like opening
the Pandora box and being overflowed with the ugliness of my childhood memories. It was too much and too soon. Focusing on the inside and closing my eyes triggered all my protective
mechanism. Sitting still evoke all the terror of being helpless victim and just waiting for being punished or attacked verbally again.
Since then I learned that focusing on the inside without first feeling safe in my environment will triggered all unresolved memories from the past.
Doing it for years and still struggling with “angry, fearful and depressing thoughts” that keep coming back.
All the meditation was just like a band-aid or a cup of coffee.
You know the feeling after a first few seep of strong coffee, when you feel full of energy for an hour but after that you feel even more tired and low of energy then before.
Feeling calm and then feeling even more depressed or upset than before.
Meditation Is a Powerful Mental Tool—and For Some People It Goes Terribly Wrong
I later find out that I used meditation (without knowing that) as a sort of escape from reality and as a way to avoid some painful aspect of my like. Such as unresolved pain from
my childhood, unhappy relationships and codependent friendships.
Meditations together with spiritual teaching of the organizations that I took course in meditation (starting with transcendental meditation and Deepak Chopra teaching) lead me to see negative emotions as bad
and something that prevent me on my spiritual path. So I also used meditation to avoid or push away my anger, believing such negative emotions to be “lower” or “less spiritual”.
Robert Musters talks about how we use spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.