There is no doubt that my starting a mindfulness meditation practice helped to get me finally moving in a direction of healing, after searching for answers for decades. I noticed the difference in my mindset, and I knew right away that this was a tool that was going to improve my life. I still meditate daily, and the ability to simply remember to bring my mind into the present is a complete game-changer.
Having said that, I think that the philosophical underpinnings of many meditation practices, and the beliefs that are often pushed during meditation instruction may be actively harmful. I’m very dubious about some of the premises that underlie the original notions of meditation. And, some of the explicit premises involved in the actual instruction by Sam Harris are premises that I strongly disagree with, to put it mildly.
So it occurred to me pretty early on in this meditation experiment, that there’s something razor’s edge dangerous about letting a voice into my mind at a very basic level that is sending messages that I consider antithetical to mental health.
And this is even more true when I recognize that my mind is ill and off. Anyone affected by trauma is particularly vulnerable to unhealthy ideas and influences. Maybe attempting to heal with the influences we have in our lives is walking a very fine line–the psychological version of extreme sports. Ultimately, for me, it’s worth it, because the method of functioning I developed prior to learning about trauma simply wasn’t working.
What is beneficial, and what I desperately need, is the ability to sit with the here and now. To be focused and aware in the present. That is where life is really lived, and yet I learned from day one to somehow wrench my mind out of reality, away from the present moment.
What’s dangerous are many underlying notions. My experience is with Sam Harris and the Waking Up app, but I think his premises are shared with many religions and philosophies that have long gone hand in hand with meditation practices. But, if I were able to actually fully experience the beliefs that I “should” (according to the guided meditations and the underlying philosophy) during meditation, I would duplicate the psychopathological effects of severe trauma.
In particular, the most traumatizing beliefs are:
1. The self is an illusion. There is no ego.
According to Sam Harris and many other schools of thought, somehow there’s just awareness without one who’s aware. But this mimics the most core and devastating symptom of complex PTSD: a loss of a sense of self. On a neurobiological level, Bessel VanDerKolk describes in The Body Keeps the Score that the effects of trauma actually cut off the areas of the brain linked to self-awareness, self-esteem, and a sense of identity.
2. We should try to be aware of some sensations only and to divorce those from other sensations, and from perceptions.
The guided meditations frequently instruct the meditator to “let your body dissolve into a cloud of sensations”. We are supposed to “lose the shape” of our bodies by paying close enough attention to sensations. Furthermore, we are often instructed to notice if we feel like we are “located somewhere” (i.e. in our heads rather than “inside” other sensations like those of the breath, for example). We are then gently guided to “correct” this notion, as if somehow it makes no sense to have the perspective that consciousness is located in the head. I often think, “You know, Sam, proprioception is a legitimate basic brain function. Aren’t you a neuroscientist?”
The effects of trauma mean that disorder sufferers stay frequently trapped in a level of heightened arousal and awareness of danger. This means that the integrating mechanism in our brains is suspended, muffled, or suppressed. Often, memories are extremely fragmented due to the way we process information when we are in a flight/fight/freeze/faun state. During states of dysregulation (flashbacks or heightened emotional states common among trauma sufferers), disconnected sensations are felt as a disintegrated series of of flashes. The mind whirls and writhes like a panicked animal. and that the brain is unable to connect information that goes to different neural regions to form a whole picture.
Often, we don’t quite feel connected to reality. We just feel heigtened emotions, and vague physical numbness, or conversely, pain or areas of sensitivity so acute that we can’t concentrate on anything else. Something like the “cloud of sensations” that Sam is always trying to tell us to feel, instead of the actual shape of our bodies.
3. Concepts should be ignored or marginalized, as if they are illegitimate mental clutter.
A big part of guided meditation is noticing when we are “captured” by thought, or distracted, and then simply being aware of them, as they fade. Watching thoughts unravel. This is a tricky one. Because we do need to examine and not grab on to the whims and random arbitrary thoughts that float up from our subconscious. In particular, rumination is an extremely common symptom of C-PTSD, and we need to be able to break away from intrusive and persistent maladaptive thought patterns.
However, actual thinking (as in, the process of taking data from our senses and prior knowledge and reasoning to draw a conclusion) doesn’t seem to exist in this notion of thought. The word “thought” is only used to refer to the random whims that get kicked up into your head from your subconscious. The mindfulness series ignores deliberate consciously driven thoughts, like chains of logic, there is a very big net harmful effect.
Essentially, concepts are conflated with either irrational whims, or with an inability to prioritize and get to essentials. Sam Harris has referred to concepts as ideas that “fragment” reality. But, in fact, concepts are the only means we have to make put together our sensations and perceptions into a big picture view of the world. Without concepts, we cannot make sense of anything. Jumping from one thought to another and never putting coherent ideas together is NOT an example of conceptual thinking. It is the opposite.
Trauma survivors often have great trouble prioritizing and thinking clearly. Being neurologically and emotionally dysregulated interferes with concept-formation and with network thinking. We often don’t connect cause and effect, or put the past in its perspective place. During a flashback, a sufferer will re-experience sensations and impressions from a traumatic event over and over and over and over again. It doesn’t feel like a memory. It feels like it’s happening all over again.
Even flashbacks that do not involve visual or auditory hallucinations make it hard to connect sensations and perceptions to form concepts and a clear-headed view of the world. In complex PTSD, where the effects of long periods of repeated stress lead to maladaptive responses (instead of a single traumatic event), the stereotypical hallucinatory flashbacks are rare. There often isn’t a single event to flash back to. Instead, we are subject to frequent, sometimes even constant, states of dysregulation. Pete Walker perceptively describes these as “emotional flashbacks”.
During these chronic fight-or-flight responses, we cannot think like someone in a calm state. We can’t function like someone who is clear headed. Dismissing concepts as problematic and considering any whims as the equivalent of “thinking”, if someone were to consistently practice this, would lead to the exact pathological existence that CPTSD sufferers are trying to escape from and heal from.
4. There is no free will; we don’t control anything
Finally, there is the notion that volition is an illusion. This of course shouldn’t be surprising coming from a philosophy that dictates that the self is an illusion. During meditation practice, we are guided to, concentrate on sensations and free-floating whims until we “notice” that we have no will at all.
The notion of complete and total passivity, that we don’t make anything happen, seems to be a driving force behind this meditation practice. This isn’t merely noticing that we don’t have control over outside events or involuntary functions: things happening around us, bodily sensations, sounds, even our own emotions – those things that you legitimately have no direct conscious control over, but ultimately thoughts. Ideas, intentions, your sense of identity, your plans, — none of that idea that we are volitional beings is really real, or in our control.
Trauma survivors, because we are often walled off from our ability to detect our own moods, sense of self, etc, have lost our motivations, and their sense of agency. We feel trapped, as victims of sensations, feelings, and our own behaviors, which do often feel out of control. We often feel disconnected from our wishes and intentions. We feel and operate like we’re not really part of the world, and don’t have any control over our own lives.
If we really followed the premises behind meditation in a fully consistent way, the result would not be a being that is able to be present. We wouldn’t be able to connect with an authentic self, or discover and honor our true feelings, purpose, or intention. We would not be able to, as the serenity prayer says “accept the things I cannot change, and have courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”. We would simply to “accept” that we have no control over anything, and try to find peace in the notion that we are merely playthings of the universe, buffeted by forces beyond our control. Those forces being, or including, pain, misery, and shame. To fully practice what the guidance preaches would mean delving into my dysfunction.
I am using the meditation practice, when these premises arise, in the opposite of what’s intended. I want, contrary to the premises being taught, to strengthen my sense of self. For example, I practice this every time I’m told to “look for the looker”. Apparently, that’s supposed to show me nothing; it’s supposed to make me realize that there is no actual self. Hoever, I feel exactly the opposite; those are the moments of peak clarity of my own ego as a whole being.
If I am correct, and the premises being taught in guided meditation are actually the false premises that make me suffer from CPTSD. The obvious next question then, is: why wouldn’t practitioners of meditation develop trauma symptoms?
I am not sure of the answer. I have some ideas which I won’t develop in this already-long blog post. The main one is that, meditators aren’t more consistent practitioners of a fully developed philosophy than most people. Therefore, they are not focusing deeply enough (ironically) to notice the contradiction between their professed beliefs and the self-assurance in many areas of life.
As I said before, I practice daily and notice benefits from meditation. However, I went into this knowing that the Eastern philosophies that they are based on include many premises that I think are untrue, and therefore harmful to human life and health. I try to remain fully conscious of the differences between the beliefs of most practitioners and my own beliefs. The value of meditation is in practicing being thoughtful and aware of where I am, what I’m doing, and what my intentions are in the present moment. “I”. Me. Myself. My will. No amount of meditation will change the fact that the self and the will do exist, and are at the root of who we are as human beings and of everything we do.