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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 doctor. And from there, I accepted a prescription for Zoloft while being assured that I wasn’t a lost cause or broken person. Sometimes, you just need a little more than what mindfulness or meditation can do on their own. But now I would almost rather do anything than either.
And I’m not alone. A recent study concluded that upwards of 8% of people can experience unwanted negative effects after practicing meditation. Anxiety and depression symptoms can worsen as the brain “rebels,” attempting to regain control of the mind. And reading this, I felt vindicated. Maybe — as I battled anxiety attacks and tears while meditating — I wasn’t a doomed soul unable to find peace. Maybe my brain was just looking out for me in its own way.
Or I just misunderstood mindfulness. It turns out, meditating with the specific goal of controlling and reducing anxiety can sometimes backfire. Because that’s just not how it works.
