Prinzka t1_ivr6n35 wrote on November 10, 2022 at 12:27 AM

I did a guided meditation course and I can say that doing meditation makes my anxiety worse.

redditloginfail t1_ivrlv38 wrote on November 10, 2022 at 2:22 AM

I've heard of that happening. Strange how it does that to some people.

Prinzka t1_ivrncxa wrote on November 10, 2022 at 2:33 AM

I guess it's not entirely surprising.
My anxiety is just me not being able to get out of my head and my mind going in to overdrive.
Meditation is specifically removing the distractions so now it's free to just go mental.

ramonycajal88 t1_ivtno2j wrote on November 10, 2022 at 3:08 PM

I believe for a lot of people, meditation brings attention to anxious/traumatic thoughts. It's tough to move through that if you don't have the proper guide or tools. For these people, it could be more helpful to focus on more body centered, bottom up approaches that work with bodily sensations, rather than top down that focuses on cognition. Hiking and biking with noise cancelling earphones have been my go to...people don't think of this as meditation, but it's been great for me because the physical exertion prevents me from dissociating off into mental spirals.

Probably the same reason why talk therapy is not as effective for people diagnosed with ADHD. They need more body centered approaches.

Ur_Perfect_Sub t1_ivsye3s wrote on November 10, 2022 at 11:30 AM

I've had similar experiences. Any guided meditation that focuses on how your body feels in the moment was absolutely terrible for me. It just helped me zone in on the physical manifestations of my anxiety, which then just started a lovely spiral.

iii_o_iii t1_ivt8gir wrote on November 10, 2022 at 1:13 PM

Same here. Meditation and CBT particularly made issues way worse for me.