Bug report: Meditation (all types) is terrifying. I try to accept the slight anxiety… fear… mind-devouring terror, but twitching, jumping up and running away all interfere with practice. I do not become aware of them before they happen. Accepting them after the fact, or going back to my sitting position and starting again, have the same effect.
Whoa. I should preface this by acknowledging that I know nothing about your situation except what you have revealed in your post and am making no assumptions about your mental health. I am not a certified professional, and my advice should not be taken over that of such a person. Everything I say from this point onwards is purely generic opinion, which may or may not be relevant to you.
This sounds like the sort of symptom that should be treated by a professional psychologist. I have experienced mental health problems first-, second- and third-hand, AND I study them, and I can testify that personal treatments like meditation, whilst useful, are no substitute for outside help. If your axe-handle breaks, you can’t use your axe to cut a sapling to make a new axe handle. Not that it sounds like your axe-handle is anything close to broken, but there’s no point complicating the metaphor by trying to fit it more precisely to a situation about which I have no precise knowledge. Point is, it is my unprofessional opinion that you should mention this to your GP if you haven’t already, and ask them explicitly if they think you should speak to a mental health professional about it. Please excuse me for poking my nose into your private business, obviously you’ve done way more thinking about this than me, but your post made it sound like there was a possibility you were attempting to self-medicate with meditation and I would prefer to come across as a nosy dick than risk someone’s health. :) /Meddle
No offense taken, even if you hadn’t inserted all the apologies for nosiness. I am, in fact, completely bananas, hence my handle. I have been through some bad times but am now on meds, functioning just fine, and taking a variety of silly tests because “bonkers-NOS” is apparently not in the DSM. Go forth with thy worries assuaged, o good Samaritan.
So, I don’t know if this will help, but I went through something like this some years ago as a consequence of some post-traumatic stuff, and found that walking meditation was easier than sitting meditation, though finding a safe-feeling spot to do it was challenging. (I ended up taking five or ten minutes in the room I was taking a yoga class in, which was empty afterwards.) In retrospect, I suspect that a still more physical approach… e.g., doing mindful situps, or something like that… might have been even more useful.
I also found that the anxiety itself grew less crippling over time spent attending to it and focusing past it.
What happens when you’re not “meditating”, as such, but just sitting quietly not doing anything in particular? (Which is what some varieties of meditation amount to.)
Try Bikram yoga. For first-timers I think they offer a week of unlimited access for twenty dollars US—a fairly low-cost test. It’s quite physically taxing—in the 90 minutes of the session, for perhaps only ten interspersed minutes, if that, does the sympathetic nervous system even have a chance to give way to the parasympathetic. I assume that those times would be the most risky for you, and of course cannot speak to your experience, but I find it difficult to imagine your imagined stress will be sufficient enough to convince your sympathetic nervous system to activate during those times; it will be quite exhausted already.
Not gonna blow $80 on that. Do you have a watered-down version I can do myself or with an untrained volunteer? Alternately, anyone near Stockholm who is learning it and would charge less in exchange for the practice?
$80 is for a massage by a Rosen-certified therapist. A two-day intro course to the Rosen method is $370 or so. The prices are so high because it’s a recent method, so they can copyright everything and lock down on people who try to learn or teach it outside Rosen method schools.
I have tried relaxing/focusing on breath/mindfulness while in yoga positions; is there more to yoga? I haven’t tried tai chi. Any tips? What I found boiled down to “focus on your breath while doing these moves”.
You get the same sort of anxiety from yoga that you get from sitting(?) meditation?
I don’t have tips, just suggestions of things to try. The reason I don’t have tips is that I don’t share your problem and I haven’t taught meditation, so I’m guessing.
A tai chi class might be useful. The movements are sufficiently complex that that just learning them might be a distraction, perhaps enough that you can meditate a little without going into so much anxiety, and gradually decouple anxiety and meditation.
Have you tried research? I’ve taken a fast google at “anxiety while meditating” and a good bit came up, though lower levels of anxiety than yours seem to be more common. Still, there might be something useful for you if you poke around.
Is massage something you might like? I believe that a lot of emotional habits like anxiety are entangled with muscle tension.
Feldenkrais Method is a way of learning to move more easily and might be useful for you—it’s got a lot of attention to movement rather than breathing.
Research just turns up “keep at it, it’ll go away” and “avoid specific triggers”, which isn’t super useful since AFAICT the trigger is my mind clearing.
Oooh, I did Feldenkrais once, though I didn’t know it then. When I started panicking I just dropped the relaxation bits and did the movements.
I don’t really want to spend time and money enrolling in a tai chi class since it’s such a shot in the dark.
I’m not sure what you want me to do with a massage—get one and then try to meditate, or try to meditate during one?
I’m hoping that more research would turn up what to do with as severe a reaction as you get—the advice that’s easy to find is about more average levels of anxiety.
My hypothesis is that if you got enough massage to be more relaxed in general, you’d find that you’d be less anxious when you started to meditate. However, this is merely a guess, and would involve a substantial investment of time and money unless you got into self-massage, in which case it would be time but not money. Probably not worth it unless you like massage anyway and/or more evidence that it’s useful turns up.
Tentatively again—if you have problems with anxiety under other circumstances, it could make sense to try anti-anxiety meds. If it’s just meditation, then drugs might not be worth it.
I did find some sources about severe anxiety, but only from traumatic flashbacks or the like.
Turns out I already have data on that: I dropped from having several panic attacks a day to slight nervosity in specific situations. This changed nothing about meditation.
Bug report: Meditation (all types) is terrifying. I try to accept the slight anxiety… fear… mind-devouring terror, but twitching, jumping up and running away all interfere with practice. I do not become aware of them before they happen. Accepting them after the fact, or going back to my sitting position and starting again, have the same effect.
Whoa. I should preface this by acknowledging that I know nothing about your situation except what you have revealed in your post and am making no assumptions about your mental health. I am not a certified professional, and my advice should not be taken over that of such a person. Everything I say from this point onwards is purely generic opinion, which may or may not be relevant to you.
This sounds like the sort of symptom that should be treated by a professional psychologist. I have experienced mental health problems first-, second- and third-hand, AND I study them, and I can testify that personal treatments like meditation, whilst useful, are no substitute for outside help. If your axe-handle breaks, you can’t use your axe to cut a sapling to make a new axe handle. Not that it sounds like your axe-handle is anything close to broken, but there’s no point complicating the metaphor by trying to fit it more precisely to a situation about which I have no precise knowledge. Point is, it is my unprofessional opinion that you should mention this to your GP if you haven’t already, and ask them explicitly if they think you should speak to a mental health professional about it. Please excuse me for poking my nose into your private business, obviously you’ve done way more thinking about this than me, but your post made it sound like there was a possibility you were attempting to self-medicate with meditation and I would prefer to come across as a nosy dick than risk someone’s health. :) /Meddle
No offense taken, even if you hadn’t inserted all the apologies for nosiness. I am, in fact, completely bananas, hence my handle. I have been through some bad times but am now on meds, functioning just fine, and taking a variety of silly tests because “bonkers-NOS” is apparently not in the DSM. Go forth with thy worries assuaged, o good Samaritan.
So, I don’t know if this will help, but I went through something like this some years ago as a consequence of some post-traumatic stuff, and found that walking meditation was easier than sitting meditation, though finding a safe-feeling spot to do it was challenging. (I ended up taking five or ten minutes in the room I was taking a yoga class in, which was empty afterwards.) In retrospect, I suspect that a still more physical approach… e.g., doing mindful situps, or something like that… might have been even more useful.
I also found that the anxiety itself grew less crippling over time spent attending to it and focusing past it.
What happens when you’re not “meditating”, as such, but just sitting quietly not doing anything in particular? (Which is what some varieties of meditation amount to.)
Try Bikram yoga. For first-timers I think they offer a week of unlimited access for twenty dollars US—a fairly low-cost test. It’s quite physically taxing—in the 90 minutes of the session, for perhaps only ten interspersed minutes, if that, does the sympathetic nervous system even have a chance to give way to the parasympathetic. I assume that those times would be the most risky for you, and of course cannot speak to your experience, but I find it difficult to imagine your imagined stress will be sufficient enough to convince your sympathetic nervous system to activate during those times; it will be quite exhausted already.
I found a place that offers 90-minutes classes for $30, which sounds worth a try.
The sort of sounds like the kind of thing Rosen-method bodywork is really good at addressing.
Not gonna blow $80 on that. Do you have a watered-down version I can do myself or with an untrained volunteer? Alternately, anyone near Stockholm who is learning it and would charge less in exchange for the practice?
Wow, $80 sure is a lot. Personally it’s too rich for my blood.
Why do you think it’s worth that much to be trained in Rosen-method bodywork? (As opposed to trying to learn it on your own or with a volunteer.)
$80 is for a massage by a Rosen-certified therapist. A two-day intro course to the Rosen method is $370 or so. The prices are so high because it’s a recent method, so they can copyright everything and lock down on people who try to learn or teach it outside Rosen method schools.
Needs a trained bodyworker.
Have you tried tai chi and/or yoga?
I have tried relaxing/focusing on breath/mindfulness while in yoga positions; is there more to yoga? I haven’t tried tai chi. Any tips? What I found boiled down to “focus on your breath while doing these moves”.
You get the same sort of anxiety from yoga that you get from sitting(?) meditation?
I don’t have tips, just suggestions of things to try. The reason I don’t have tips is that I don’t share your problem and I haven’t taught meditation, so I’m guessing.
A tai chi class might be useful. The movements are sufficiently complex that that just learning them might be a distraction, perhaps enough that you can meditate a little without going into so much anxiety, and gradually decouple anxiety and meditation.
Have you tried research? I’ve taken a fast google at “anxiety while meditating” and a good bit came up, though lower levels of anxiety than yours seem to be more common. Still, there might be something useful for you if you poke around.
Is massage something you might like? I believe that a lot of emotional habits like anxiety are entangled with muscle tension.
Feldenkrais Method is a way of learning to move more easily and might be useful for you—it’s got a lot of attention to movement rather than breathing.
Research just turns up “keep at it, it’ll go away” and “avoid specific triggers”, which isn’t super useful since AFAICT the trigger is my mind clearing.
Oooh, I did Feldenkrais once, though I didn’t know it then. When I started panicking I just dropped the relaxation bits and did the movements.
I don’t really want to spend time and money enrolling in a tai chi class since it’s such a shot in the dark.
I’m not sure what you want me to do with a massage—get one and then try to meditate, or try to meditate during one?
I’m hoping that more research would turn up what to do with as severe a reaction as you get—the advice that’s easy to find is about more average levels of anxiety.
My hypothesis is that if you got enough massage to be more relaxed in general, you’d find that you’d be less anxious when you started to meditate. However, this is merely a guess, and would involve a substantial investment of time and money unless you got into self-massage, in which case it would be time but not money. Probably not worth it unless you like massage anyway and/or more evidence that it’s useful turns up.
Tentatively again—if you have problems with anxiety under other circumstances, it could make sense to try anti-anxiety meds. If it’s just meditation, then drugs might not be worth it.
I did find some sources about severe anxiety, but only from traumatic flashbacks or the like.
Turns out I already have data on that: I dropped from having several panic attacks a day to slight nervosity in specific situations. This changed nothing about meditation.
How did your panic attacks go away?
They faded away on their own accord over five years. Moving/changing schools helped more often than it hurt. Why do you ask?
I thought it might give a clue about how to lower meditation-related anxiety, but apparently not.