Signs of meditation-induced dissociation

[@sobakakustovsky3909]

This is exactly my experience with meditation! So incredibly well described!

[@tractordriver8950]

I actually had a major panic attack and blood pressure stayed high for hours today and my guess is the meditation I recently started.

[@TartempionLampion]

This is precious! Should be shown at the beginning of every meditation teaching or retreat. Thank you so much. 99% of Western teachers have no clue about this, it's scary!

[@Tom_Torres]

Thank you Willoughby! You are the first person I've heard speak about this. ❤

[@tractordriver8950]

True that. I can’t believe no one mentions meditation causing this. I am having really high blood pressure since this morning.

[@jebroe860]

thank you. very eye opening.

[@SnakeAndTurtleQigong]

Thanks so much for sharing these! This style of imbalance is actively discussed within the system I study, and I’m grateful that more people are taking about these symptoms!

[@cavallopazzo340]

Interesting. What's the cure for it? Placing the focus more inside the body than outside perhaps? I had a huge dissociating experience a few days ago after going very deep into a meditation where I imagined leaving my body into the depth of the universe in all directions and then merging with the universe. I was a bit better after half an hour, but I'm not recovered yet. Everything has become flat and surreal. I feel like I'm trapped in some kind of limbo between life and death. What would be the antidote to this state?

[@skintalker1]

@@cavallopazzo340 hey, I just today had a similar experience. Are you feeling better yet? I wish you well.

[@cavallopazzo340]

@@skintalker1 Hey! Yes! I'm feeling fantastic now. Looking back it was a big shift in consciousness, but since I had a lot of childhood trauma in me my ego didn't like to let go of all this control all of a sudden and reacted very fearfully. With me I stopped meditating for a few days and it went away and after that I started again and trusted the process more and more and then it deepened, without the dissociation/fear. But there was still a phase with existential dread for a while. If you also have a lot of trauma and want to make this process go smoother you can look into somatic experiencing maybe, to work a bit more on the trauma. But I believe it's not really necessary usually. Just learning to gradually let go, allowing whatever comes up and trusting it more and more also should work. Fear is normal in this process, especially in the beginning.

[@cavallopazzo340]

By the way: "Enlightenment" feels similar to what I described earlier, except that it's extremely peaceful, joyful and full of love, connection and intimacy, there is no fear whatsoever, but there is also no sense of "me". When this "me" falls away or slips all of a sudden it's very scary, especially if you are used to having a very close grip on yourself and everything around you. But it's the nicest feeling in the world once you manage to let go into it.

[@skintalker1]

@@cavallopazzo340 Thanks for the reply! I'm glad you're doing much better :) Very interesting insights. I'll keep what you said in mind as I continue my journey. I'll probably take a few days off my meditation practice just give my brain a little break haha. I am feeling a lot better today though :)

[@ReinaDido]

12:16 EXACTLY. Thank you!

[@nvb455]

Oh wow 😢 i feel so vindicated! Finally! I have depersonalised after i used a braintraining neurofeedback device called neuroptimal which is sometimes called a meditation device, when having the worst cptsd on the planet and it literally dissociated me so the point where i could’ve jumped off the building with zero fear. All anxiety went away and i felt nothing. Since then i’ve not been able to feel connection to things and people and the worst thing is…to my outside worst i seem fine, i seem better than before! I wanted to die yet i felt totally fine at the same time. Even with people with depersonalisation i felt misunderstood because i felt zero anxiety and after a few months i could pretty much function, but life is without color. I relate to this so much! It’s like it’s me she’s describing and i finally feel seen! Is there a way to get in touch with you? ❤❤ t

[@tractordriver8950]

Were you doing self inquiry meditation too? I felt disconnected since yesterday and this morning I started having compulsive thinking that started to frk out real bad.

[@nvb455]

@@tractordriver8950 No it's neurofeedback, sounds like you have dpdr atm

[@tractordriver8950]

@@nvb455 what’s that?

[@zeppelinman1685]

This is a wonderful resource. Thank you, Dr. Britton!

[@lilcicero77]

These people saved my sanity. I venerate them.

[@cavallopazzo340]

Are you still meditating, just using different techniques perhaps?

[@Luckykumar-l6d]

Why what happened

[@teri838]

Thank you so much for this very helpful information!

[@das3386]

Thank you so much

[@shyamk4257]

Thanks for sharing

[@bobbybisset4103]

so, in the light of the brilliant findings of Dr Britton should meditators be prohibited from driving ?

[@TheLegend-ct6ss]

Are there any treatments available for this?

[@tractordriver8950]

I did the EMDR knee tapping when I started to feel the disassociation.

[@tractordriver8950]

I started doing a meditation called self inquiry and the last couple of days I been doing it more with a fixed gaze or closed eyes and this morning my anxiety and blood pressure went off the roof and started to shake badly and I felt like I was freaking out. Is it the mediation for sure? I had to do the knee and shoulder tapping in order to calm down some right now.

[@AlterAbility]

5:54 to 6:30 “There’s no me that’s moving the body.” Isn’t this true in the sense that we don’t create our thoughts; they’re simply products of our programming (biology + conditioning)? Impressions (value thoughts or judgments of good, bad, and indifferent) appear in consciousness based on our experience and moods.

[@markstrathern2986]

A great talk on dissociation, what I believe in Christian contemplatives is refereed to as acedia (see Aquinas, and especially Cassian). However as so often we have a ‘diagnosis’ but what is the treatment? How should we as practitioners, and more importantly as teachers steer people away from the worst of this, and help them if they get deeply dissociated?

[@lilcicero77]

I think in her other videos and writings she generally recommends reducing meditation for a while (she calls it "de-challenge"), or choosing different "anchors" i.e. changing the focus from breath counting to an external focus like looking at a point on the wall or listening to environmental sounds. In my case, just opening my eyes with or without concentrating on a point almost instantly fixed this for me a few months ago. I was getting in an awful state. Breath counting has always made me crazy, and listening to environmental sounds works but if I do it too long I kind of panic. So I went back to the method that my teacher gave me, which is concentrating on the lower abdomen (Dan Tian in Chinese). That also gives rise to sensation in the different parts of the body, sometimes referred to as the "Microcosmic Orbit" in Taoism, though for me this is not as obvious as the sensations described in Mantak Chia's book, even though I have maintained a heavy Taichi and Qigong practice for over a decade. I therefore hypothesise that the case studies given in Chia's book might suffer slightly from deviant case sampling i.e. those are unusually sensitive people

[@lilcicero77]

I listened to this one 4 or 5 times. It's the best general resource out there :

[@lilcicero77]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKCViHxnndh4ns0

[@bluedragonacupuncture8425]

My personal prescription is: 1. Have a physical hobby - I have oil painting, bookbinding, tailoring and especially carpentry. The rationale behind this is that the physical sensations are "grounding". 2. Listen to the radio or watch the TV News at regular times (unless you also suffer from acute anxiety or serious depression). The news is mostly nonsense, but the regular times and the apparent connection to outside events are helpful. 3. Go for a walk in a shopping mall. Shopping malls are designed to draw your attention out of yourself and towards the physical things that they want you to buy. Also they are often pleasantly lit, reassuringly full of other people etc etc.

[@thankyouthankyousomuch]

@@bluedragonacupuncture8425 Thanks for sharing your tips. I did try many times. I pretended. But I have no more desires towards them.

[@bobbybisset4103]

Dr Britton , in the light of this important information should meditation retreats such as Spirit Rock be made to include warnings of the dangers proceeding from the practise of the foolhardy, supernatural-based techniques they practise and promote there ? Should details of the suicides be included in those warnings ? Should there perhaps be a plaque or statue, honoring those poor people, placed prominently somewhere in that retreat and in other retreats which, surely, will have had their own suicides, breakdowns and ruined lives ? What do you think ?

[@gonnabapro]

wow. I've never heard of so many of these. So validating and revelatory! I've been experiencing so many of these chronically for the last few years since meditation experience. I feel this way all the time though, so it doesn't feel temporary. Is that still considered temporary with potential to heal even though it's been so many years? Is this normal?

[@cheetahhouse2125]

Hello! Thank you for your comment. The feeling that these effects are permanent is quite common among meditators-in-distress. There are numerous stories of folks in varying states of dysregulation finding healing and change even after years of adverse experiences. We've found the story of "I broke my brain" to not be accurate. Feel free to head over to our website for more info on the adverse effects of meditation or to seek further help. - Scott

[@dominikondriseje5347]

This signs of Dissociation is normal after meditation? This is state we would like to get in after meditation? Or it is bad effect o mediatation? Thank you

[@anidadron]

Definitely BAD!

[@billypilgrim8903]

I think a big problem is this practise of self-inquiry, where practitioners are encourage to look at whatever is arising in their field of consciousness and ask 'is that me'? To which the answer is supposed to be 'no' as how can you be the thing that is being observed, right? This is problematic I think, it disconnects people with the things that makes them human - body sensations, sense data, thoughts, memories etc. I feel like this is a teaching that is particularly dangerous, as it encourages disconnection and apathy - rather than the sense of interconnectedness and equanimity that should be arising from spiritual practise. There's a world of difference between feeling like you and the world don't exist, and feeling like you and the world are the same single entity.

[@bobbybisset4103]

Dr Britton , could you explain reincarnation to us now ?

[@bobbybisset4103]

the most difficult part is giving up on the idea of meditation as some sort of " spiritual path" . It's nothing of the sort. Being a kind and decent human being is the only" spiritual path" there is. Once you get away from this dangerous ideation of altered states means some sort of " progress" then it's just a ( long slow ) matter of building up your ability to think again. Contrary to what this woman says, meditation does not " strengthen your pre-frontal cortex" . It atrophies it , or at least your ability to use it. Good luck.

[@bobbybisset4103]

" 12 years " ? so not so " not permanent " then doctor. Wouldn't you say ?

[@bobbybisset4103]

so Dr Britton .....what " intense fear " are you talking about ? It's true that you do seem " cartoonish " though .......

[@Captainofmysoul-z9j]

I am sorry but what you describe looks like side effects or a bad trip under drugs or psychotrops mixed or not with meditation ! I practice meditation since 8 years never had what you describe except feeling very relaxed and mindful nothing bad and I think that the problem is not the person who answer slowly it's the one who speaks so fast that it cuts your breath just listening to them !!

[@tractordriver8950]

It’s the meditation

[@TartempionLampion]

So, if you never had a stroke or cancer, strokes and cancer do not exist? Meditation anihilated your neurones, obviously... 🥲

[@bobbybisset4103]

here's the answer to your " big question " doctor : NONE . Zee-Roe. Just that people who believe a lot of nonsense are gonna dress up the damage they are doing to themselves with a lot of self-aggrandising mystobabble. Happy to have been of some help 👍