When stillness feels worse
If meditation makes you feel worse, you can stop, even in the first minute. This page explains what stillness can stir up, how to bring yourself back to the room, when to tell your doctor, and how to try again more gently if you want to.
Can meditation make you feel worse?
Yes, it can. It happens to some people, the cheerful app ads rarely mention it, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Stillness can bring up anxiety, sadness, old memories, or a strange, far-off feeling. When that happens, you can stop, and stopping is a sensible choice that says nothing bad about you.
You may have heard that when you feel restless, you should keep at it until the restlessness gives up. Maybe it came from a book, a class, or a friend who found that stillness helped and assumes it’ll help you too. This page takes the other side: if stillness feels worse, you can stop, and you don’t owe anyone a finished session.
Perhaps you took a chair because your evenings felt too loud inside your own head, and the stillness made the noise sharper. Or someone promised that a few still minutes would settle you after a hard day, and they brought dread instead. Maybe you closed your eyes and your heart started pounding, or a memory you’d kept folded away for 30 years opened up in the second minute. None of that means you’ve failed or aren’t spiritual enough. Getting up is part of knowing your own mind.
A few ordinary conditions make a hard session more likely. Closing your eyes in a dim room turns your attention inward, and a heartbeat or a twinge you’d never notice while driving to the store can suddenly seem loud. Trying hard to relax can backfire, because watching yourself for signs of calm keeps you on guard. Being very tired, hungry, or upset before you start makes stillness harder, too. Knowing that a bad session often has a plain cause like these can make it less frightening.
What stillness can bring up
Stillness takes away the errands, voices, and noise that were covering a feeling, so whatever was underneath can come up all at once. Grief that was hiding under a shopping list can come out into the open, big and in no hurry to leave.
People describe a range of hard experiences during meditation. Some feel anxious or panicky, with a tight chest or a racing heart. Some feel a sadness that’s deeper than they expected. Some remember a frightening event so clearly that it feels as if it’s happening again. Others feel numb, or far away, as if they’re watching their own life from across the room or the room doesn’t look quite real; doctors call that last feeling dissociation (a sense of being cut off from yourself or your surroundings). A few people notice body sensations that alarm them, such as tingling, heaviness, or a feeling that they can’t breathe deeply enough.
Many of these feelings pass within a minute or two of opening your eyes and moving. They’re still worth taking seriously. Sometimes you can stay near what shows up, especially with your eyes open and your feet on the floor. If it swells past what you can hold, stop.
If you’ve lived through trauma, if you’ve had panic attacks before, or if you’ve been diagnosed with a mental health condition, these reactions can be stronger. That’s a good reason to talk with your doctor or counselor before you keep going on your own.
How to come back to the room
To come back from a hard moment in meditation, use your senses to bring your attention to the room around you. Open your eyes, move your body, and notice ordinary things you can see, hear, and touch.
- Open your eyes wide and look around. Turn on a light if the room is dim.
- Press both feet into the floor and feel the chair under you.
- Name three things you can see, out loud: “the clock, the blue mug, the window.”
- Name two things you can hear: “the fridge, a car outside.”
- Touch one thing with a clear texture, such as the edge of the table, a wool sweater, or cool water from the tap.
- Say where you are and when: “I’m in my kitchen. It’s Tuesday afternoon. I’m safe right now.”
- Stand up and do one ordinary thing with your hands, like rinsing a cup or wiping the counter.
Breathing slowly can help, too, but if focusing on the breath was part of what felt bad, skip it and keep your attention on what you see and touch. Some people find it steadying to hold an ice cube for a moment, or to step outside and feel the air on their face.
If the feeling doesn’t settle, call someone. It can be a friend, a family member, or a neighbor, and you don’t need to explain much. “I had a rough few minutes and I’d like to hear a voice” is enough. If you’re in crisis in the United States, call or text 988.
If a memory comes up that’s too big for the moment, save it for a conversation with your doctor or a counselor, who can help you with it safely.
Signs to stop and tell your doctor
Stop practicing and tell your doctor if a bad reaction lingers after you stop, keeps coming back each time you try, or starts to affect your days. You can mention it at your next appointment, or call sooner if it’s frightening you.
These signs are especially worth reporting:
- panic attacks during or after practice
- a low mood that gets heavier in the days after meditating
- feeling far away from yourself or the world for hours afterward
- memories of a trauma that keep returning, day or night
- seeing or hearing things others don’t, or unusual thoughts that frighten you
- trouble sleeping that began after you started meditating
You don’t need to know what any of it means before you speak up. You might say: “I started meditating about two weeks ago, and since then I’ve felt panicky every evening. It starts during the practice and lasts an hour or so. I’ve stopped for now.” Your doctor can help you sort out what’s happening and what might suit you better.
At the appointment, your doctor may ask how long it has been happening, what the feelings are like, and whether anything else in your life has changed lately, such as sleep, a new medicine, a loss, or a move. It helps to bring a few notes written on a good day, when it’s easier to remember the details. If the first doctor you mention it to brushes it off, you’re allowed to bring it up again, or to ask for a referral to a counselor.
If you’ve had psychosis (a loss of touch with what’s real), bipolar disorder, or a severe depression, ask your doctor before you try meditation again, and work out together whether and how to do it.
Trying again, more gently
If you’d like to try again after a hard session, make the practice smaller, safer, and easier to leave. Many people do better with a few changes.
- Keep your eyes open. Rest them on one ordinary object, such as a plant or a cup, so the room stays in view.
- Shorten it. Try one or two minutes instead of five or 10.
- Change the anchor. If the breath felt bad, use the sounds in the room, the feel of your feet on the floor, or the weight of your hands.
- Move. Walk slowly around the kitchen, or down the driveway and back, feeling each step.
- Choose daytime. Practice in daylight, after a meal, rather than late at night when you’re tired.
- Have company nearby. Practice while someone you trust is in the house, or with a teacher or group that knows how to help when things get hard.
- Decide your exit ahead of time. Tell yourself before you start: “If I feel panicky, I’ll open my eyes, stand up, and go put the kettle on.”
A first gentle session might go like this. It’s two in the afternoon, the kitchen is bright, and someone is reading in the next room. You set a timer for two minutes, keep your eyes on the fern by the window, and listen to the sounds of the house. When the old tightness starts in your chest, you press your feet into the floor and look at the fern’s edges. If the tightness passes, you finish the two minutes. If it doesn’t, you get up and fill the kettle, as you planned. Either way, you’ve learned something about what your mind needs.
Give the gentler version a few days. If it still feels worse, that’s useful information, and it’s fine to stop for good. Five minutes in a chair walks through the basic practice step by step, and grief and the chair is written for a stillness that keeps bringing up a loss.
Getting up is a good choice
People who love meditation sometimes talk as if difficulty were a sign of depth and leaving were a sign of weakness. You can let that idea go. A sore hip has nothing to do with your spirit, and a mind that races harder in silence hasn’t failed anything. Some nights the better choice is a lamp, the dishes, a letter, or a walk to the door.
Please don’t scold yourself for having tried, either. You wanted to take better care of your attention, which is a good thing to want, and this method didn’t suit that hour. When a tool hurts your hand, you put it down. You can try again another day with your eyes open, or let it go for good, and either choice is fine.
There are plenty of other ways to rest your attention. Gardening, knitting, baking bread, doing a crossword, listening to one whole piece of music with your eyes open, or walking the same loop around the block each morning all ask you to notice what’s in front of you. Many people find what they were looking for in one of those. The practice on this site is for your own mind only, so if other people want you calmer for their own comfort, that’s theirs to sort out.
A good week after stopping can look like this. You leave the timer in the drawer and take a slow walk on two afternoons. You notice the sounds of the street while you wait for the bus, and you mention the hard session to your doctor at a routine visit. Your attention still gets a few calm minutes, in a form that suits you better.
If the hard part is the small hours, racing thoughts at three covers those. Hypnosis on this site is something you do only with your own mind, and closing the practice in the hypnosis room shows how to end a session gently. The depression and loneliness rooms go alongside care from your doctor, and both rooms are not yet medically reviewed.
Your medicine stays with your doctor
If you take an antidepressant or any other prescribed medicine, keep taking it as prescribed, even after a hard session. A bad experience with meditation is a reason to talk with your doctor, and it’s never a reason to change a medicine on your own.
Questions about your medicine are welcome, and the place to take them is the doctor who prescribed it. Write them down if that helps. You might ask: “Could my medicine be making me more anxious when I try to relax?” or “Is it safe for me to keep trying meditation with my condition?” Decide any changes together.
If distress grows while you’re still, or after you’ve stopped, talk with your doctor. If stillness keeps bringing you back to pain you can’t hold, take that as a reason to get care, and put the practice aside for now.
Learn more from trusted sources
These public health agencies explain the research on meditation and the medical side of mood in more detail than this site does.
- Meditation and mindfulness from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health sums up what research has found so far.
- Depression from the National Institute of Mental Health covers the signs, the causes, and the treatments that help.
If you need care
If you’re in crisis in the United States, call or text 988 right now, before you finish this page. You don’t need to decide whether a bad session counts. Outside the United States, call your local emergency number or a local crisis line. A real person can stay on the line with you.
If you’re not in crisis but the distress keeps hanging around, tell your doctor what stillness does to you. If you’re already in care, stay with your plan, including any prescribed medicine, until your doctor changes it with you. There’s more in the meditation room, a short definition in the glossary, answers to common questions in the meditation FAQ, and quick answers in the FAQ.