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Why I stopped meditating
This is more like a plea (or maybe just simple encouragement?) and less of an explanation. Please know that I am very new to both meditating and Buddhism.
Earlier this year I had begun to meditate on a regular basis. I would start with a brief body scan meditation, and then a guided (an audio file) meditation. I started to have flashes of my childhood. Overwhelming, frightening flashes. My life as a child was filled with abuse and these images caused a lot of anxiety. I was unable to let them go throughout the rest of my day.
I am in therapy (have been for a year), and I would like to attempt meditation again. It has been beneficial in my life before and know it's a true need in my life now.
I do not have a support system for meditation and Buddhism in 3D land and therefore know of no one else who has experienced this. Is it something I am meant to go through? Is there a way of experiencing it with reduced anxiety after the meditation session? It's a real psychological barrier and I haven't meditated in months as a result.
Advice, thoughts, or similar experiences out there?
Earlier this year I had begun to meditate on a regular basis. I would start with a brief body scan meditation, and then a guided (an audio file) meditation. I started to have flashes of my childhood. Overwhelming, frightening flashes. My life as a child was filled with abuse and these images caused a lot of anxiety. I was unable to let them go throughout the rest of my day.
I am in therapy (have been for a year), and I would like to attempt meditation again. It has been beneficial in my life before and know it's a true need in my life now.
I do not have a support system for meditation and Buddhism in 3D land and therefore know of no one else who has experienced this. Is it something I am meant to go through? Is there a way of experiencing it with reduced anxiety after the meditation session? It's a real psychological barrier and I haven't meditated in months as a result.
Advice, thoughts, or similar experiences out there?
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Comments
If you can get away on an extended retreat with others around for some support that would be the best. The problem with just a short daily meditation session and painful experiences is that the meditation will bring them to the surface but then you have to go about the rest of your day and can't really focus on processing the feelings.
Cognitive behavioral therapy works by experiencing painful and traumatic experiences in a safe environment so that you can slowly lay down new memories of the experiences without the painful emotions attached to them. Meditation works in much the same way.
I don't think there's anyway to process and overcome the negative experiences you've had without having to relive them and reprocess them in some way. The best advice I think I can give is to get as much support as possible. Maybe you could just focus on meditating before your therapy sessions so you can have some help processing the emotions that come up?
with metta
I am sorry the younger version of you went through abuses. It is a sad part of our world, I wish all children were safe and nurtured. You deserved better.
For me, it would arise as a potent emotion with images attached, almost like I was being forced to see the grit and grime of who and where I've been. No where to hide, no defense... just me and the truth of the crud. It was terrifying at first, but I was given help to get through it, and now, they never stay for more than a moment or two.
Imagine those abuses are essentially solid knots of pain that you carry with you like stones in a backpack. Meditation can be like opening that pack, and you see into the nature of your coiled pains. It isn't that meditation causes this, but you are seeing what has been there ever since. The anxiety that arises is much like taking the old pain out of your pack, where it was hidden and repressed. Now, as a woman, you have the mind that can settle the pain, heal it, where the little girl couldn't.
As the anxiety comes up, consider telling yourself that it is normal. The senses are remembering, and you are strong enough to heal. It is the healing process. The anxiety is the energy of healing, like the itching when a cut knits.
Breathe in, embrace the sense of anxiety, feel it, where in your body is it? The heart races, the mind flows, the woman lives on. Beautiful, healing, awake.
Breathe out, that girl has gone, grown up, the conditions for the pain and confusion no longer really present, it was not her fault, its safe to let it go. Safe, alert, empty.
Perhaps flex some of the muscles in your body, stretch, and breathe in again.
It takes a lot of work at first, but the more practice you get with it, the more easily that anxious flowing mental pain does just that... flows out, never to return.
Good luck!
With warmth,
Matt
But may be you can try analytical meditation instead of meditation for relaxation. If you do a relaxation meditation then your mind brings bad memories to the surface from your subconsciouss mind. Try to keep your mind focused and busy with a big question like "who am I" and then go as deep as possible with this question-so slowly you may learn how to be comfortable in meditation.
I'm wondering what kind of meditation you have been practicing. My main practice is samatha, calm abiding. I place my focus on the breath, and if it wanders, I bring it back. When I have had things similar happen to me, ie anxiety / panic inducing thoughts, images, or feelings, I have been working to simply observe them and let them go. One thing I know for sure is that it's not the fault of meditation that these things arise in my mind. In fact the more I have practiced the easier it becomes to be aware of these feelings and makes it easier to deal with.
It is not easy to deal with the images.
It is not easy to process the images into a recognizable whole picture.
It is not easy to release the images.
But this is the natural healing process by which the mind, body, and emotions naturally heal from old traumatic injuries... the images come up into consciousness to be processed and released and healed.
Meditation aids this natural healing process.
Drugs, drinking, and all manner of addictions are attempts to suppress this natural healing process, generally because the individual is not yet ready to face and process the old traumatic wounds. One must have compassion for such behaviors, as one never knows the extent nor horror of anyone's wounds, particularly wounds sustained in childhood that were denied and buried because there was no validation, no compassion, no help, and no other recourse.
It is important to keep a journal and to write down whatever comes up.
You may not even have words for the images and feelings that come up, in which case write them down as colors, as scrawls, as screams, as pictures...
Sometimes using your non-dominant hand to record them can help you access them better if you have difficulty recording them.
Each one is a piece of the puzzle, simply gather and record them into a journal.
Over time, the pieces of the puzzle recorded in the journal will slowly come together to form a complete picture....
and that complete picture will provide the means by which you will be able to finally process and release those old wounds, and they will heal...
at which point you will see for yourself that your scars healed will become your greatest strengths.
If you ever get stuck in a particularly difficult scene and find yourself reliving it down to the smell....consciously take a step back and sit and watch the scene replay in your head, but this time from just a little further away...
each time it replays, just keep mindfully taking one step back and watch it from across the room, the doorway, down the hall...each time just take another step back, another step back, another step back. It is how one detaches from the pain when the image arises to be processed.
These past images are not here and now, they are like watching movies. You can process and learn from them. If you take a step back and re-frame them from a slightly more distant vantage point, you will defuse their otherwise potentially devastating emotional impact, you won't be so entrenched in the scene reliving it as you will be simply observing it as a movie.
Be sure to cry whenever you feel the need, crying releases an enormous amount of bodily toxins and helps the healing process immensely. It is very cleansing.
Also be sure to drink plenty of water; it also flushes out bodily toxins and helps the healing process immensely. The hormones involved in stress reactions (even buried stress reactions) produce a whole lot of bodily toxins to be cleared.
What is the basic issue underlying it all? It is the great horrible universal issue, the great horrific wound of this earth....
that children are born into a world that has not yet learned compassion.
You were a child, an innocent.
Were you born into this world to be punished and to suffer?
No child is born into this world to be punished and to suffer.
All children are born to help this sorry suffering world learn compassion.
I'm feeling a little emotional from the responses. There is a lot of love, compassion, and sincerity in this forum. I'm so grateful to have found it and glad I posted. Not only was it an uncomfortable experience, it was also a lonely one. I no longer feel that way.
I've been doing a lot of reading tonight (I didn't even know what mala beads were!) and signed up for the home study course posted in a different thread.
I know now I will be able to work through the flashbacks and I am less afraid to try.
Thanks again for your advice, different techniques and encouraging/loving words.
You are the beautiful lotuses that bloom from the swamp!
...and I also well know and have paddled my way through this same swamp!
Om Mani Padme Hum
with metta,
Aura
It is hard but I will tell you that a rich practice is possible on the other side.
Having a meditation or buddhist teacher who can help you in person is very important for someone who has anxiety in approaching it. A good teacher can help guide you while providing a sense of security that will be crucial in returning to your meditation practice.
Also, it may be inspiring to think about how once you become aware of how this manifests in yourself, you can see this suffering in others, and send out openness and compassion and help them feel less alone, perhaps give them tools if they ask, or an accepting space to exist in that helps them give voice to this kind of suffering that they carry with them.
Good luck, I hope it gets less painful.
"True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chan put it 'If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun'."
Sounds like you would greatly benefit from an experienced meditation teacher who has experience with therapy too. They're hard to find but are out there. I worry if you're embarking on this without the right support - meditation can bring up various shades of dark stuff for lots of people and you may really need support and guidance at times. Probably best to find it in the 3D world but if you can't come here ok? Best of luck and thinking of you
Look up Tara Brach and especially her book Radical Acceptance.
Also look up Dialectical Behavioral Therapy- if I understand it correctly, it adds mindfulness to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and helps with modulation of mood.
I myself have Panic Disorder/Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I once discussed it with a very very high Gelug Tibetan lama and he told me not to meditate too much.
Sometimes it's better to do something else. If you are experiencing a lot of distress, you should probably (in my opinion) find a qualified teacher or master before continuing.
Depending on one's circumstances; however, such a thing as a healthy relationship with healthy boundaries with an experienced meditation teacher/therapist may be difficult or impossible to come by, and one's resources may be limited to books.
HHDL (His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama) and Thich Nhat Hahn have written many wonderful helpful books in English. I would particularly recommend the writings of Charlotte Joko Beck and Lama Surya Das, as they are particularly grounding.
Warnings about not attempting meditation without an experienced teacher’s help may sound ominous, particularly if no experienced teacher is available. In such case, please note the following:
#1 For centuries, the meditation teacher/student relationship was restricted, difficult, or impossible for women to obtain. This issue still is not unusual.
#2. Women who have been abused tend to lack sufficiently developed healthy boundaries, which may be exploited by unscrupulous teachers/therapists. Having no teacher/therapist is much preferable to having an unskilled/unscrupulous one!
#3 The ominous-sounding warnings about meditation without an experienced teacher’s help are largely about the issue of grounding.
Health (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) is dependent on good functioning of all the chakras/nadis in the body. Ideally, they should all be well functioning, and well balanced, and with a nice solid root from the root chakra down into the earth to balance and support the growth of consciousness upward and outward. People are just like trees (or electromagnetic antennas)… they need good solid deep roots (just as electromagnetic antennas need good grounding!) to function properly.
The thing about abuse, all abuse, is that it weakens one’s root, one’s connection to the ground. In the worst case scenario, the abuse completely severs one’s connection to the ground and one’s consciousness floats up and out through the back of one’s head, abandoning the body entirely, and the body dies. Short of this worst case scenario, abuse in childhood easily causes erosion of one's connection to one's body and anchoring to the ground. Anorexia, bulimia, obesity, and overwork/perfection/compulsion issues very commonly affect people who were abused as children, who very often end up barely able to sense and discern the authentic needs of their own bodies at all.
Meditation encourages energy to flow upward in the body, expanding growth and connection to higher consciousness. This is essentially a very good thing which aids the natural and necessary movement of old wound issues coming up into consciousness for processing, eventual release, and healing.
But you see….. in cases where the roots, one’s connection to the ground and one’s body, have been very severely damaged by abuse...
a too much, too fast upward energy flow can pull much too hard on roots that are already weak and damaged, compromising them further, which is not a good thing.
People are like trees, they need a good solid root to support their upward outward growth. People are like electromagnetic antennas, they need a good solid grounding connection to resonate properly.
An excellent meditation teacher/therapist will observe and warn you when you are running too much energy up in your head and not enough down in your root to support it properly and therefore need to back off on your meditation and take up with your gardening for a while.
Without an excellent meditation teacher/therapist, you will need to take careful journal notes and mindfully observe and warn yourself when you are beginning to feel overwhelmed or ungrounded by what is running around in your head and need to back off with the meditation and take up with your gardening for a while.
Traditional meditation centers are always associated with gardens, not only because gardens are good for contemplation of nature, but because digging in the earth and tending a garden is one of very best activities for strengthening one’s root connection to the earth. A tree growing taller needs roots growing deeper and stronger to support its growth; likewise, a monastery of meditating monks seeking healing and higher consciousness need to attend to their grounding to support that growth, and working in the garden strengthens their own roots.
So you see, if an excellent meditation teacher/therapist/facilitator is not available to you and you have only good books as your teachers, you will need to be mindful and vigilant that you supplement your meditation activity with sufficient grounding activity to support your meditation and growth and keep you anchored and balanced.
Gardening is the traditional grounding method, but not always available. Qi Gong and Taijiquan (Tai Chi) are also traditional, but a good teacher may not be available. Of particular and specific benefit to women when it comes to grounding and centering and healing the damage done by abuse is traditional Middle Eastern belly dance. (I'm kidding, right?) Not at all. It tremendously strengthens the core and the hara and the root/grounding of and within the body, and it has been clinically proven to be of particular benefit to helping women who have been abused reclaim their center, strength, and power. Not all therapists have heard of it, it is considered very cutting-edge. It is also not supported by a pharmaceutical industry very heavily invested in promoting the sale of pharmaceuticals. Many therapists are sufficiently ignorant that they prescribe abused women medications that unground them even further, such that their consciousness ends up lost on the astral, where they may re-experience past life issues and personalities or create multiple thoughtform personalities, dis-integrating them and rendering them increasingly dysfunctional in their daily lives in the real world. It is also something to be aware of.
with metta
Aura