My advice: stay faaar away from meditation

you can do it… nice… just be careful…

Certain kinds of meditation can cause problems for people with psychotic disorders. Everyone should be careful when trying meditation. I personally enjoy guided meditation, but the free-form ones make me stressed out and agitated.

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I can’t meditate either.
It makes things worse for me.

guided is just as bad for me now… but the only guided one ive tried they only guided you into meditation they didn’t direct you when you got past that… I had to excuse myself… I can hit meditation status in 5 breaths…that makes it hard to avoid…

Meditation requires too much focus for me.

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I have been meditating recently and i like it a lot. It clears my mind and helps me focus. I also do breathing exercises. I do mindfulness meditation and stress reliever or positive energy

It helps with my ocd, if there’s ever a day i feel like skipping or stopping i worry my ocd will return. I can only pay attention to breathing for 15 minutes so that’s how long my sessions are.

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my therapist recommended meditation but i’m scared to try it since I once tried it and I became anxious afterwards.

Seems like some people feel fine doing it while others get anxious too…

I feel that helpful internal movement is spontaneous and is more like reflection - it happens on its own and is supposed to get us to let go from trying too hard in different ways. But meditation, the way it’s taught, is not spontaneous, but forceful, and ultimately not helpful. I guess it depends on a lot of factors whether your experience of meditation will be helpful, but when I hear “you’re not doing it right” and “you’re supposed to feel scared, that’s good, just keep going” I call BS, though I fell for it before.

I feel better today though, I wanted to share my experience so others with the illness can stop themselves if it starts to be bad and not be fooled by proponents of meditation.

Not taking our minds seriously is good advice, but doing meditation within itself means we are taking it seriously.

Well depends on the type of meditation. The type I’ve practiced the whole point of it is to NOT think. You observe thoughts when they come and let them drift away.

I’ve had some pretty weird experiences with meditation in the past though so I guess I can’t talk.

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It works for me better the more psychotic I am and for me it’s become a real game changer.

I think the key is who taught you. When I did a 8 week mindfulness course we’d sit in the group and discuss our experiences with our instructor clinical psychologist and she would troubleshoot our practice after each guided meditation.

I think without that I’d struggle to meditate!

Found this warning us that meditation isn’t all bliss and tranquility.

" Among the experiences described to them were feelings of anxiety and fear, involuntary twitching, insomnia, a sense of complete detachment from one’s emotions, hypersensitivity to light or sound, distortion in time and space, nausea, hallucinations, irritability, and the re-experiencing of past traumas. The associated levels of distress and impairment ranged from “mild and transient to severe and lasting,” according to the study."

hi, had many a psychotic episode due to meditation, i feel you…

I meditate, but I don’t sit on the floor in a lotus position and hum (though there’s nothing wrong with that). The main reason I don’t do that is because I’ll never be able to get up.

I listen, through headphones, to CDs. My CDs are from eocinstitute.org
Each CD causes different brainwaves: Alpha, Theta and Delta.
My chess ability improves when I’m listening to Alpha

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I tried a form of meditation recently and I would get really anxious after doing it. I didn’t see any benefits.

I agree that it is impossible to meditate when you have side effects from meds like akithesia. I know, I tried it this morning. Couldn’t do it.