For people living with conditions like generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, or OCD, traditional meditation techniques are often a source of additional stress, not relaxation. Tech career coach and mental health advocate Dr. Kyle Elliott offers guidance for those whose minds don’t settle when they try to meditate.
The first time I meditated, I did it for the extra credit. My professor at my undergraduate university offered bonus points to anyone who took a meditation class at the campus health center, so I added my name to the sign-up sheet. Before the class started, we each rated our stress on a scale of one to ten. Afterward, we went around the room and shared how we felt.
Everyone’s stress number went down, except mine. I walked in a six and walked out an eight
I spent the half hour in silence ruminating on my to-do list. I had an essay to write for philosophy. I had history and chemistry exams to study for. I had to study for the very class that had sent me here. Around and around it went. Why was I sitting still when there was so much to do?
Meditation, I decided, wasn’t helpful, at least not for me. Meanwhile, my classmates described how relaxed they were after the experience. I sat there embarrassed, apparently the only person who failed at relaxing.
That class came with the instruction I would hear for the next sixteen years: Notice the thought, then just let it go.
When The Thoughts Don’t Slow
That guidance assumes the thoughts will leave. Mine usually don’t. I live with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which means my mind produces thoughts the way a fire hydrant produces water: fast, constant, and not easy to shut off. You can tell me to let a thought go, but the water keeps coming.
For years, I assumed I was failing meditation. Every class left me with the same conclusion: this works for everyone but me. The apps were even worse. They all lean on the same images: watch the cloud drift by, let the leaf float down the stream. Nobody says what to do when the leaf stays put, so you sit there, leaf refusing to move, quietly concluding you’re meditating wrong.
That shame followed me through years of trying, and it’s the first thing I now tell new meditators to drop. There is no meditating wrong. There is no meditating right. There is only practicing being present.
Getting the Instructions Right
My coaching clients, busy tech executives, tell me the same thing. When I suggest meditation, the most common response is some version of, “I’ve tried it, and it doesn’t work for me.” They don’t have quiet minds. They have problematically loud brains, and the people writing meditation instructions likely never had them in mind.