In his recent article, Enlightenment Therapy, Chip Brown writes about a real life story that conveys the pitfalls of meditation, the importance of therapy and personal narrative, and the potential benefits of a combined approach. The story is of Zen master, professor, poet, and essayist, Louis Nordstrom. For the purposes of this blog I’m not going to get into the differences between the various different approaches to meditation (e.g., Zen, Vipassana, etc..), but explore Brown’s illustration of the importance in being aware of the subtle motives we may have to engage in meditation and how we might be using as a form of escaping our pain.
Many of us have experienced much wounding in our lives and some of us have even cultivated defensive coping styles as children to disengage or disassociate from these feelings in order to not be overwhelmed by them. Nordstrom experienced his own trauma and abandonment as a child and said:
“The Zen experience of forgetting the self was very natural to me,” he told me last fall. “I had already been engaged in forgetting and abandoning the self in my childhood, which was filled with the fear of how unreal things seemed.”
For Nordstrom, meditation felt like a natural fit as there was a familiarity and calmness that came from detaching from thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It was attractive. However, his own depression and challenges continually arose throughout his life. He decided to go back to therapy. In therapy he came to understand a subtle, yet subversive motive he had to engage in meditation. In one way he was using meditation to cover up the pain he felt from the past, and by detaching from his thoughts, feelings, and emotions, so there was no self, he was saving himself from the possibility of his “self” ever getting abandoned again as he had by his mother in childhood. In other words, by using meditation to abandon himself, he saved himself from feeling the overwhelming pain of being abandoned by another in relationship. In doing this, he remained walled off and alone even in his relationships, which can be an instigator for depression.
In returning to therapy he recognized something vital to his healing:
“One of the most important insights I got from therapy with Jeffrey [the therapist] is that subconsciously I want the depth of my suffering to be witnessed by someone.”
So many of us, deep down, just want to be seen and acknowledged. Therapy and authentic friendships (which can be hard to come by since so many of us are unaware of our emotional triggers), can be a great source of having our pain understood, validated, and accepted.
Practicing mindfulness meditation is not about detaching and forgetting ourselves. It is about “being with” whatever is arising in the moment. We are attempting to pay attention to ourselves, on purpose, and when judgments arise (e.g., this is good/bad, right/wrong, fair/unfair), seeing if we can notice those, let them be and just bring ourselves back to the experience of connecting with ourselves, not disconnecting. Practicing mindfulness meditation in service of connection can be a wonderful source of healing.
From a mindfulness psychotherapeutic perspective we are not trying disconnect from ourselves, but instead, become aware of all the history and experience that influences us today, remembering our life so we can cultivate insight into how it affects us intrapersonally and interpersonally in our relationships. We can learn to hold our past wounds in a nonjudgmental way, cultivating compassion and love for ourselves.
In the end, Louis Nordstrom was able to integrate the insights from therapy with his Zen practice. His journey of insight through his practice and therapy can be a great teacher to us all as we continue on our own paths through mindfulness and mental health.
As always, please take time to interact below. Your thoughts and comments provide a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.
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From Psych Central's Dr. Elisha Goldstein:
Top 10 Mindfulness & Psychotherapy Blog Posts | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy (July 20, 2009)
oh, so he was meditation to escape the pain! quite a dangerous application
One of the real payoffs for me with working at mindfulness was eliminating being upset about being upset. The non-judgmental observing has allowed me to realize that my thoughts and emotions are just that and not an indication of my mental health. As I accept ALL of those thoughts and feelings, I find I accept more of me; warts and all.
I read that article too-strikes me that in trying to use “eastern” practices we in the west get confused about ego-in the west we value a strong ego in order to establish ourselves in the world- then many of us see this as bad and that we have to get rid of our ego-women especially need to build a stong ego because our tendency is to give ourselves away. The writer in the article never had a chance to build his ego before he started giving himself away. Seems we need both in our culture-mindfulness meditation allows you to recognize the needs of your ego and if necessary to let them go- not disregard them.
I have been practicing Zen for a number of years and it seems to me that there is something specific to the Zen approach, particularly of the Rinzai school, that feeds into a preexisting desire for self-annihilation. Taken in small doses, being instructed to “slice” and “cut away” the ego probably aren’t too harmful, and are a helpful balance to the “Me”-centered lives most of us lead! However, in an intensive context, when you pursue Pure Experience for weeks at a time as a way of life, the more pedestrian sides of the self languish, suffer, and eventually act out.
Nordstrom’s story really touched me because it contains elements of my own experience with Zen practice. My sense these days is that any spiritual or psychological undertaking can be coopted in an unproductive way by someone seeking to salve their pain. Psychology professionals are trained to detect when a client is trying to twist the therapeutic experience to further their own neurosis, and they do occasionally fail at this. Zen teachers are usually not trained to detect comparable behavior in their students, and may not recognize “loss of self” that is actually damaging to the student’s life.
In the end, each of us must ask if our meditation practice (or therapy) is helping us. Are we better able to engage with our lives? Does it afford some measure of comfort, spaciousness, and joy? If we are gritting our teeth and putting up with it in order to be “good”–if the experience is deepening our suffering, or substituting one pain for another, we need to move on.
I agree with previous commenters that the cultural aspect of things is confounding. For most of its history Zen flourished in societies (China, Japan) where individual identity was not nearly so prominent as in our culture. Polishing away your ego and living out your life in service to a temple, a teacher, or “The Dharma” was unremarkable, even a privilege, in a context where most people were in some form of servitude and individual self-expression was pretty much a non-issue.
I continue to ask myself to what extent the traditional Zen approach is grounded in a psychosocial reality that isn’t so relevant to this particular time and place. No answer yet.
One time, I used meditation to keep myself from freaking out during a time of high anxiety that lasted 24/7 until I got myself to my psychiatrist and on an anti-anxiety medication. I was so terrified after finding out that I could end up having my brain lesion biopsied. I had been told that I have tiny holes in the brain in the area of my brain lesion after it shrunk. It was like a month or so before I was diagnosed of having had a stroke. After that diagnosis, I “bolted” from that neurologist because I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Hehe. I pray it is the right diagnosis, even though my current neurologist believes it is the right diagnosis. It’s just too strange to have had a stroke at the young age of 33 when I have no blood clotting issues or any family history of that. I have no family history of strokes, either.
At that time of high anxiety, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to live and my neurologist was freaking me out with this or that. Everything just seemed so unreal. It was as if I had one foot in this life and the other foot in the afterlife. The sunset was weirdly beautiful. It was as if my back yard was the afterlife. It was not scary. Death was/is not scary. It was just too weird. Reality seemed too brutal and harsh. Meditation offered me safety. So into meditation I went. When I was done meditating, reality would just pounce on me like a monster pouncing on me. I couldn’t stand it, so back into meditation I went. This lasted for weeks. Of course, I knew that it wasn’t healthy at all. So, I at my appointment with my psychiatrist, I told him about it and he told me that my adrenaline was stuck on overdrive. I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. It really made a difference and “brought me back onto Earth.” I was on that medication for a few months. I left that neurologist and dropped that medical mystery case because I knew I couldn’t stay on that anti-anxiety medication forever.
A very prescient observation. I personally am struck by this article because I am just about to embark on therapy. I have been practising Vipassana meditation since the last few years. Though central to my self-managemnet, I felt that yet there are things that remain to be addressed. Yet, I think that Vipassana meditation is a very empowering tool but in life there is an importance verbalising one;s concerns and have someone objective and wise to hear us out… that is where therapy comes in.
I really want to acknowledge the really insightful comments drawn from such rich experience in this group. This is a powerful teaching of how we can really use this tool of blogging to cultivate this living wisdom. The wisdom is in each of us and your comments really help enrich all of us, thank you.
I am glad you mentioned this article. I was stunned by this one; it explained so much to me about the process and inner workings of someone I am very close to whom I have seen struggle more and more as he works harder and harder on meditation. The denial level, the ability to expose the disengagement that this therapist exposed and his manner of doing so were highly insightful.
Not that I do not meditate myself, but I always keep in mind Joseph Campbell’s statement about sitting; “It’s like being constipated.” He said (at Esalen I think) that he would rather spend his time reading. I personally believe that as I grow the non-attachment to all expectation and ritual is an important part of my living joyfully.
If we want real wisdom and knowledge maybe we should stop using magical thinking and tricks to try to fix things.
We live in a real world, analogies and myths can only take you so far.
And no amount of thinking will turn salt into sugar, or make it taste sweet.
I agree with Shugetsu that the test of any practice is whether one’s life – one’s daily life – is enhanced with vibrancy, relationship and joy. There is no mystery to it, no myth, and nothing cultural. Let’s not confuse the appearance of meditation with the actualization of living practice. Sitting and thinking is indeed constipating. Sitting and practicing, on the other hand, is liberating oneself and all sentient beings from suffering. Nordstrom’s meditation may have further confused him, but we do not need to use his story to confuse ourselves. In that way, it is a teaching.
I wonder how much meditation do i really need? Because i noticed that mindfulness did allow me to concentrate better, but it also turned me into a kinda blank dull slate. Which is odd since I usually have a very active and engaging personality. I thought mindfulness meditation was supposed to strengthen your natural personality, but the more i practice it, the duller i become. I’ve even noticed a lot of people just walking over, something they would never do before.
The real problem is, it’s difficult to find some real useful information about the difficulties concerning meditation, most of what i can find assumes there are no side-effects. And everything else was written by some new-age hippies who keep talking about seeds at bottom of wells, harmony, love, peace, loving kindness, and the beauty in a single drop of water. I’d really prefer to have some practical advise from people who at least know that there are no magical energies in your body etc. As far as the being duller concerned, what am i doing wrong?
Hi Anon,
One of the paradoxes of meditation is that while we’re doing it, we want to not expect some special feeling state. When we do that we set ourselves up for a mind trap where if we don’t get that state, we immediately become disappointed and think we are doing something wrong. See if you can just do the practice for its own sake. This is like planting seeds and sowing them. Research and experience tells us that in doing it this way, the fruits will come.
This post and the discussion following is so great. I want to support and thank everyone.
In my opinion and experience, east and west not only use different lanuages, but come from a differing kinds of philosophical experience in the world. When we use the same words we often don’t mean the same thing.
I’ve met meditation and Buddhist study beginners who believe that being unattached and in a meditative state means they are in some other place, not connected to anything or anyone and perhaps even a rather emotionally cold place. For some, such a place means safety.
But over time I’ve learned that being unattached means being unattached to my own personal sense of ego and the way things are as I see them from my limited POV. When I meditate I am more here, not less. Even that’s not quite right because my “I” sense fades as I get nearer to more (if you can elaborate metaphysically on what “more” can mean.)
I almost used the word, “connected” but the word connected is an issue because it implies a two dimensional linkage, more than linear but less than the enormity of universal presence.
I’m a psychotherapist. I’m also a student of Buddhism. I also have taken the Mind Brain Stress Reduction course which has as its focus, various meditation practices.
I see no conflict between these approaches to self understanding and healthy presence in the world. world? Cosmos? ….. in what is.
In terms of therapy, when we hide, deny, numb ourselves to what is we build up internal pressures and/or develop self protective measures that can harm us and others.
When we can get closer to what is we can heal and grow.
The great news is that even getting near gives us many benefits. We don’t have to become Buddha. We do have to become ourselves.
Thank you again for this all aspects of this valuable discussion.
Excellent article, I found insight from both perspectives. The Patient commenting on what he recognized his own issues to be; and the Therapist finding insight within his own patient. It sounds like a rewarding, if not sometimes confusing set of circumstances!
This is an excellent article. Would be nice if more people were made aware of the dangers.
I did some research into the dangers of meditation after hearing about it from some teachers. dr. lois vanderkooi did her doctoral on Meditation-Related Psychosis, and she allowed me to post it on my blog. A long read.
Nordstrom’s insight seems so spot-on.
If you have sustained yourself with techniques that take you away from connections with other people - which may have made sense as a child in a crazy family situation - as an adult you do need validation of your experience (the witness)and, I believe, some aid in overcoming the tendency to withdraw(maybe dissociate) from life. Mindfulness meditation - as I see it now - might actually help one to be quiet enough to acknowledge past hurts, to accept who and where you are, and not get caught behavior cycles which are all about avoiding what you fear. To me the detachment sought is from the snare of all-consuming emotions, not from relationships and life at large.
Whoops - I guess I just paraphrased you, Dr. Goldstein! Thanks for this post.
http://jessaka-downthecrookedpath.blogspot.com/2009/07/great-websites-and-books-on-this.html
Here is a link to my blog if it is permitted.
I find meditation to be a returning to the self, and it allows us to come into contact with who we really are, instead of who we think we are or who we have been taught/trained to be. The ego attachment is something to explore and get better at each moment, you don’t have to kill ego to be a better person, you just need to be aware of your ego and how it operates in your life.
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