Mindfulness for people who hate mindfulness
Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash
Modern mindfulness meditation practices often aren’t trauma-informed. So, it’s no wonder that a lot of people have trouble finding a practice that works for them.
Especially troubling is that mindfulness teachers will often frame negative or even traumatic mindfulness experiences as something to be accepted, which only further drives away a lot of folks who might otherwise benefit from mindfulness-based practices when those negative experiences are overwhelmingly triggering.
And that’s unfortunate because when done well, mindfulness can offer so many benefits to your everyday experience of the world that research often has a tough time keeping up with all the wonderful things that mindfulness can do: it’s been shown to help smokers quit, reduce social anxiety, decrease chronic pain, improve memory, and so much more.
So here are some tips, from one person who used to absolutely hate meditation and all things mindfulness-related (and who now actually enjoys them), about how to make meditation and mindfulness work for you.
If at any point, things start feeling bad for you, whether emotionally or physically, take a moment to ask yourself if you’d like to sit through it or change up what you’re doing. This is a trick I developed because I often experience physical pain when I’m meditating.
Some meditation teachers will tell you to sit through the pain, but for people who experience an overwhelming amount of pain in their lives (be it physical or emotional) and for trauma survivors, that can be problematic advice. So, it can be helpful to let yourself be the judge of whether you want to sit through any particular painful experience or if you want to do something to reduce your pain. It can be a much more empowering and much less triggering approach than making yourself sit through pain no matter what.Hunt for pleasant or neutral sensations/thoughts instead of just noticing what thoughts or sensations naturally come up for you. If you’re experiencing depression or other mental health problems, taking a survey of your thoughts can just further dig you into your depression. And if you experience chronic pain, feeling your pain fully can sometimes be overwhelming. For some, digging into those negative thoughts and sensations are helpful, but if that doesn’t apply to you, you can give yourself permission to do mindfulness activities that are more about focusing on pleasant or neutral things.
One example is that instead of focusing on whatever physical experience in my body is capturing my attention in the moment, and instead of traditional body-scan meditations, I’ll sometimes rest one hand on another and focus on the sensation I feel where they meet. Other times, I’ll actively search my body for pleasant or neutral sensations. And if you’re looking for more neutral exercises, you can always just focus on your breath, and bring your attention back to your breath whenever your mind wanders if that feels feasible for you.
Focusing on pleasant thoughts can work well, too: loving-kindness meditations can be a great option, as can immersing yourself in a positive memory you have, and there’s a ton of research out there backing up the benefits of loving-kindness meditations in particular (there’s so much research on it, I won’t list it all here, but a quick Google Scholar search will bring up relevant articles).Strive for 20 minutes of meditation a day, and re-evaluate how you feel after two months. The eight-week mark is often when the benefits of meditation kicks in, and they seem to happen when you either meditate for twenty minutes uninterrupted a day, or ten minute twice a day.
It’s totally reasonable if you would rather start off with just a few minutes of meditating at a time and ramp up to 20 minutes a day, but I’ve heard frustration from folks who dedicate small chunks of time to their practice and don’t see mood improvements, greater self-awareness, pain reduction, etc. So, I think a helpful way to set yourself up for success with meditation is to put off any final judgments about whether you’re seeing benefits from your practice for about eight weeks when you’re doing your practice consistently every day for about a total of 20 minutes. That way, you’re less likely to get discouraged, and you’re likeliest to see positive results.
Another way to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday experience is to add “mindfulness reminders” in different spots throughout your living space. For more info on how to do that in addition to other meditation space tips, you can check out the Redfin blogpost where we were featured.
Know that you might spend the majority of your mindfulness meditation time wrangling irrelevant thoughts. This might be a no-brainer for some, but I mention it because a lot of folks start a mindfulness practice thinking that they’ll spend most of their session doing whatever they intend to do, whether it’s focusing on breath or thinking of loving thoughts, and then those folks feel discouraged when focusing is more difficult than they’d expected.
For a lot of folks, the majority of your session may consist of noticing you’re thinking of irrelevant stuff, and then gently guiding yourself back to thinking about whatever you intended to think about, just to have your mind drift off again.
That’s completely normal, and I think it can blindside a lot of folks who start mindfulness not realizing that it can be really, really challenging to focus on something for more than a few minutes. It doesn’t mean you’re “bad” at it, and the great news is that even if you’re having a tough time focusing, you can still get the benefits of mindfulness practices.So hang in there— this all gets easier with time. And in the meantime, as you come across any hiccups, some self-compassion can help you make it through long enough to see the benefits. If you have other questions or have other mindfulness/meditation issues, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help!