Why Mindfulness Backfires for Some People
Here’s how to manage it if you experience an adverse reaction
One February night a few years ago, I sat on my bed and began taking deep breaths. Determined to finally get my escalating anxiety under control, I’d asked my therapist for the simplest path to mindfulness. She told me to start small, and that it was part of a practice. Which meant that it wasn’t an instant cure, but something that got stronger the more time you spent with it.
So I set my timer for about five minutes and vowed to stay in the moment. Eventually — whether over the next hundred seconds or several hundred weeks — my anxiety would melt away, and I would be all better. I told myself this while checking the clock.
I carried on like this for a little over a week. But cruelly, no matter how present I tried to stay in increments of five or 10 minutes, by bedtime I’d find myself wide awake and worrying about whether I’d ever fall asleep. Or how I’d get my work done the next day if I pulled an involuntary all-nighter. I’d calculate the greater impact of my inability to reel in my fears and doubts, and prepare to be excommunicated from my therapist when she learned how bad at meditating I was. And it only got worse. Finally, after a particularly painful meltdown, I opened up to my mom who urged me to speak with my…
