[electriclizard]

Yes. All my therapists have referred me to meditation and explained to me that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy takes some influence from it.

There are tons of articles published in journals on it.

As for the quackery, that comes from attempts to discern objective truths. Traditional medicine is terrible for objective truths. But it shines in subjective experience.

[graemep]

I once told a CBT therapist that it sounded very similar to religious ideas an quoted something from the Bible that matched it. He agreed. Really the follow up to that is another Biblical quote: "there is nothing new under the sun".

> As for the quackery, that comes from attempts to discern objective truths. Traditional medicine is terrible for objective truths. But it shines in subjective experience.

If it works it should be testable. A lot of traditional medicine does work, but then it can be incorporated in to medicine. If alternative medicine (traditional or otherwise) works we call it "medicine". If it shines in subjective experience but is not testable, it just sounds like it provides a temporary feel good experience.

[electriclizard]

>it just sounds like it provides a temporary feel good experience.

I think you're missing the point of optimizing for subjective experience over objective knowledge. The feel good experience is the point. Subjectively, life is like playing a video game; you do what _works_ to have good mental health. Sure it's fun to wonder what the video game's code looks like, but that's not the point of playing the game.

You will never experience the BackEnd of your brain. We can affect it of course, with medication and surgery etc. I take medication for anxiety myself, but I also meditate, and it's the union of FrontEnd behaviors and BackEnd modification that gives you wellbeing.

Also, subjective experience is testable, it's just not testable by anyone but YOU. You try things out and you see how your subjective experience changes.

There are tests we've done (MRIs on meditators) that show the neural correlates of meditation etc, but again that's not the point: You are going to die and all your knowledge will be annihilated, so play the game to have the best life by optimizing your subjective experience of every moment of life.

[mewpmewp2]

I don't know, it seems everyone has different idea of what meditation is and if it doesn't work for me I will be told I am doing it wrong in some way. At least CBT seems to have a clear enough definition and instructions.

[electriclizard]

Yeah, it's these "different ideas" of contemplative studies that gives it a bad name. There are especially a lot of grifters in the west selling snakeoil "eastern medicine."

Ultimately, you have to try things out and see what affects your subjective experience. You will know by direct experience what is transforming your experience.

If something doesn't work, throw it out.

There are a lot of different ways of meditating, because the brain is complex enough that every person has different predispositions. But ultimately meditation begins by watching your mind so that you can know how it behaves and then testing different things to see how the behavior changes.

But I do like CBT and agree is has the strength you're talking about; it has the rigorousness of scientific research behind it, so its solutions tend to be applicable for larger categories of people.

Science usually throws out anomalies where something only works or doesn't work for a few individuals.

[mewpmewp2]

Yeah, meditation as a practice seems kind of this "holier than thou" thing that I seem to not get. I get annoyed, impatient, frustrated trying to follow the guidelines. I have tried different things such as Mindspace, guided meditation, random YouTube videos and other things. They all just feel so boring and frustrating. Is it a flaw with me that I find them so boring? That I can't handle it?

However what I think has helped me is actually observing my negative thoughts or someone questioning those thoughts - in the "so what?" sense. I am worried or having negative thoughts - and there's this idea of "so what?" and reframing it.

I'm scared of failing at something or saying the wrong thing. So what if I fail? This will continue in to further ideas of how the failure might impact my life and "so what's" after that until I can't complain anymore. At certain point I am forced to find my negative thoughts ridiculous.