Is Mindfulness Risky or Even Dangerous?
From time to time, stories appear in the media about the supposed dangers of meditation. It is a legitimate area of concern. Nobody teaches meditation with the aim of hurting their clients but are they doing so unwittingly? Research indicates that mindfulness can, rarely, enhance existing unpleasant states of mind but, overall, it is a very powerful way of treating anxiety, stress, depression and exhaustion. In fact, numerous clinical trials show that it is at least as powerful as medicine or therapy for treating these conditions.
In psychology, there is an old adage that a treatment with no side effects is inert. Indeed, between three and ten per cent of people undergoing any psychological treatment may find that they feel worse afterwards than they did before they started[1]. Active ingredients make a difference, and sometimes the results won’t be pleasant. Newspaper columnist Oliver Burkeman expressed it by saying that if you are using a hammer with enough strength to drive a nail into a wall, then if you hit your thumb, it will hurt.
In our experience, meditating can very occasionally make people feel worse in two contexts. The first is when a difficult or traumatic memory pops into the mind during meditation and it begins to feel overwhelming. If this happens, it is important to acknowledge it, to open your eyes and reground yourself, and perhaps even pause the practice for a while. The second is when someone has gained so much from their mindfulness practice that they start to practise too much, sometimes for several hours a day, and then find themselves ‘crashing’. The same advice applies: let it go for a while, seeking help from a meditation teacher if you need to.
Meditation, in common with many other psychological approaches works, at least in part, by encouraging practitioners to approach their difficulties. Sometimes this will not be pleasant, which is why in our books we emphasise the importance of progressing at your own pace. If a state of mind starts to become too unpleasant, then it is important to stop until you once again feel comfortable with your practice. The aim of mindfulness is to heal your most unpleasant states of mind, not to punish yourself. There really is never a need to rush through your practice, to grin and bear it, to bulldoze your way to recovery. Kindness and gentility are paramount.
Some meditations may encourage you to gently approach your most difficult states of mind. If that becomes too uncomfortable then you should simply stop, be kind to yourself, and return to your practice when you feel comfortable doing so. This pause in your practice may only be for a few moments or perhaps for a number of minutes, or days, or perhaps far longer. This will often be a delicate balancing act between the need to approach a difficult state of mind while not being overwhelmed by it. It takes practice; there is never a rush.
If you still find a particular practice overwhelming, then perhaps you should try a different meditation with the guidance of a trained teacher or counsellor. We cannot emphasis enough the importance of kindness in your practice – kindness to yourself – and this includes giving yourself permission to pause your practice or even to stop it entirely.
A small minority of people who ignore this advice can enhance their suffering but it tends to arise in two scenarios. The first is when their existing suffering becomes so intense that they seek help in a meditation retreat or on an intensive course. Neither of these are ideal for beginners. Retreats can be very austere places dedicated to intensive practice, and are often not ideal for beginners, especially ones with pre-existing conditions, unless the courses have been specifically designed for them. However, meditation teachers in such retreats or those leading mindfulness courses will normally carry out a thorough psychological assessment of prospective clients. The idea is to identify those who may experience an adverse reaction and to then refer them on to an experienced psychologist or on to a more appropriate course. This minimises the potential for harm.
An ideal way to learn mindfulness is on an accredited course, most of which use our books Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World. Follow-on courses often use our book Deeper Mindfulness: The New Way to Rediscover Calm in a Chaotic World. Both books have been proven to work in clinical trials carried out at Oxford University and other institutions around the world. And crucially, both were designed for home use and were only later adopted for use on meditation courses.
Mindfulness can be seen as analogous to physical fitness training, which can sometimes injure you – especially if you overdo it when your body is unused to it, but also even when you have taken every precaution or are very experienced. You do not then conclude, however, that physical fitness and exercise are bad for you – rather, that you simply need to pace yourself. The same is true for mindfulness meditation.
And finally, it is important to remember that mindfulness is not an extreme sport. To the best of our knowledge, nobody has been killed or seriously injured whilst sitting on a cushion, meditating.
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[1] Baer, R., Crane, C., Miller, E., & Kuyken, W. (2019). Doing no harm in mindfulness-based programs: Conceptual issues and empirical findings. Clinical psychology review, 71, 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2019.01.001
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