[DrThunder]

I feel like you did the wrong sort of meditation for anxiety. Mindfulness and breathing where you see the thought come and let it go is preferred for anxiety sufferers. You should not be following your anxious thoughts.

I could see how it would affect you negatively if you tried to follow all your anxious thoughts and delve into their "meaning". The goal for some with high anxiety ought to be lessening its meaning. You should just see it as another emotion with a neutral (or even helpful at times) stance. You don't lessen anxiety by giving it MORE attention. That seems like it would train your brain to think it's way too important and you'd get stuck in an anxiety loop.

[jossclimb]

> Mindfulness and breathing where you see the thought come and let it go is preferred for anxiety sufferers

That was exactly the approach I was doing.

> If you tried to follow all your anxious thoughts and delve into their "meaning"

That is the opposite of meditation, I've never heard of that being described anywhere as meditation, that sounds like daily rumination / churn.

[jules22]

The thing is, these "No true Scotsman" justifications only come out later.

Despite significant literature on meditation psychosis, meditation is promoted as a completely safe practice and risks are almost never mentioned to new practitioners.

[uoaei]

TBH all I'm seeing are straw man arguments from you. It sounds like you have not given any time to a truly good-faith exploration of these methods, instead leaning on vague impressions based on only the most incidental and bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.

[jules22]

> sounds like you have not given any time to a truly good-faith exploration of these methods

To me, this is just a variation of "never mind the science, why don't you try for yourself" argument you find in quackery. I found a disconnect between what people were reporting and actual behavior in meditators.

> only the most incidental and bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.

Are scholarly reports of psychosis bottom of the barrel or are testimonials from meditators the bottom of the barrel? Perhaps next, you want to make an argument from popularity?

You might just be completely unfamiliar with the emerging scholarly literature on the topic.

Lambert, D., N. H. van den Berg, and A. Mendrek. "Adverse effects of meditation: A review of observational, experimental and case studies." Current Psychology (2021): 1-14.

[uoaei]

Ah, the old "you're criticizing me, ergo you believe everything I am criticizing unconditionally" fallacy. What fun...

Disengaging because of the amazing amount of bad faith in your responses.

[jules22]

> Ah, the old "you're criticizing me, ergo you believe everything I am criticizing unconditionally" fallacy. What fun...

I don't believe that you do. I said you used a familiar argument that quacks use. I do not believe that you believe in quackery. This isn't facebook. On hacker news, I assume people are generally critically minded.

> Disengaging because of the amazing amount of bad faith in your responses.

I don't know what you mean by bad faith here. I have no need to deceive you and don't feel anyone here is trying to deceive me either. I am not refusing facts unreasonably. I do have an unpopular position based on considerable thought on the matter. I am citing literature on the topic that is not dubious. You can't ground arguments any better than that. This is not bad faith.

Taylor, Greenberry B., et al. "The adverse effects of meditation-interventions and mind–body practices: A systematic review." Mindfulness 13.8 (2022): 1839-1856.

Britton, Willoughby B., et al. "Defining and measuring meditation-related adverse effects in mindfulness-based programs." Clinical Psychological Science 9.6 (2021): 1185-1204.

Shapiro Jr, Deane H. "Adverse Effects ofMeditation: A Preliminary Investigation ofLong-Term Meditators." International Journal of Psychosomatics 39.1-4 (1992): 63.

In any case, I do also agree that further exchange with you on this topic is not productive.