Last week, I shared my own unexpected experience with meditation.

I had practiced meditation for years—and I genuinely loved it. It felt peaceful, spiritual, and incredibly good. But over time, I began realizing that I had also experienced some unexpected side effects that I hadn't recognized at first.

And throughout the years, as I've worked with more and more people, I've seen some of these same types of experiences come up again and again.

That's one reason I periodically like to talk about meditation-related side effects.

In my own life, it did not feel good to eventually realize that I had become increasingly detached and disconnected from life. And if sharing my experience and this information can help even one person recognize something sooner than I did, then to me, it's worth talking about.

That does not mean I'm telling people to meditate or not to meditate.

It simply means:

Be aware. Be informed. Pay attention to what your mind is doing.

Last week, I shared some of the unexpected side effects I personally experienced. And interestingly, almost every time I talk publicly about this subject, I hear from some people who teach meditation asking me not to talk about the potential side effects because they're concerned it will scare people away from meditation.

But I see it differently.

I don't believe honesty and transparency should scare people away from something.

I believe transparency empowers people and builds trust.

And I don't want to participate in withholding information simply because somebody may not like hearing it.

To me, the right thing to do is acknowledge both sides:

Yes, meditation and mindfulness practices can have documented benefits.

And yes, meditation-related adverse effects have also been documented and clinically reported.

Both can be true.

That is the heart of today's episode.

I also share some practical examples of why these effects can be surprisingly difficult to recognize—including how something can actually feel good or relieving in the moment while potentially reinforcing a pattern you may not realize is developing.

We explore:

  • Why something that feels beneficial can sometimes have an unintended downside

  • Why relief and genuine transformation are not necessarily the same thing

  • How I personally began to recognize a pattern of "checking out"

  • Why the timing of meditation may matter for some people

  • How meditation may affect presence and connection in everyday life

  • The difference I see between checking out through meditation and intentionally visualizing the life and emotional state you want to create

  • Why understanding what your mind is repeatedly practicing can be so important

  • And why I believe the goal is not simply to escape stress, but to identify what is creating it and genuinely transform it

One of the biggest questions I encourage you to ask is:

"What is this repeatedly training my mind to do?"

Because ultimately, my hope is not to tell you what to think about meditation.

My hope is to help you become even more informed and empowered with your own mind.

Below, I've included a research-based list of potential benefits associated with meditation and mindfulness, as well as documented or clinically reported adverse effects, so you can see both sides and explore the information for yourself.



Medically documented potential benefits of meditation/mindfulness

The evidence is strongest for some psychological and symptom-management outcomes, and weaker or mixed for others.

  • Reduced anxiety symptoms. Mindfulness-based interventions have performed better than no treatment in multiple studies and, in some analyses, comparably to established treatments, although results vary by intervention and study quality. NCCIH

  • Reduced depressive symptoms. This is one of the better-supported clinical uses of mindfulness-based approaches. NCCIH

  • Reduced psychological stress/distress. Evidence supports improvements in perceived stress and psychological distress in a variety of populations, although effect sizes and study quality differ substantially. NCCIH

  • Improved sleep quality / reduced insomnia symptoms. Meta-analyses of randomized trials have found improvements in sleep quality and some measures of insomnia. PubMed

  • Chronic-pain management. Meditation may produce small improvements in chronic pain, pain-related depression, quality of life, and sometimes pain tolerance. Evidence is considerably less consistent for acute pain. PubMed

  • Improved quality of life in some chronic-pain populations. PubMed

  • Possible reduction in blood pressure. Recent reviews of adults with elevated blood pressure or hypertension report reductions in systolic and, in several trials, diastolic blood pressure, though methodological limitations remain. PubMed

  • Reduced PTSD symptoms in some populations. NCCIH notes evidence of benefit, including trials in veterans, although this does not establish that meditation is appropriate for every trauma survivor. NCCIH

  • Help with substance-use recovery/craving management. Mindfulness-based programs may help people recognize cravings and reduce automatic responses to them. NCCIH

  • Improved eating behavior. Studies have reported improvements in binge eating, emotional eating, and restrained eating patterns. NCCIH

  • Possible modest assistance with weight management when meditation is included within broader mindfulness programs. NCCIH

  • Reduced anxiety/depression and improved mental well-being in some people with cancer. NCCIH

  • Some cognitive benefits. A large meta-analysis of 111 randomized trials found small-to-moderate improvements in several outcomes, including global cognition, executive attention, working-memory accuracy, inhibition, cognitive shifting, sustained attention, and subjective cognitive functioning. PubMed

  • However, another meta-analysis found no significant overall improvement in attention, working memory, or long-term memory, with only a small executive-function benefit. So the cognitive literature is not entirely consistent. PubMed

 

 

Medically documented or clinically reported adverse effects

A 2020 systematic review examined 83 studies involving 6,703 meditators. Fifty-five of the 83 studies reported at least one meditation-related adverse event. The pooled estimate was 8.3%, although prevalence differed dramatically by study design. The most commonly reported categories were anxiety, depression, and cognitive anomalies. PubMed

NCCIH now explicitly acknowledges this review and says there are too few harm studies to make definitive statements about meditation's safety. NCCIH

The documented/reported adverse experiences include:

Anxiety and emotional effects

  • Anxiety
  • Increased fear
  • Panic attacks
  • Paranoia
  • Depression
  • Dysphoria
  • Grief
  • Agitation
  • Irritability
  • Rage
  • Anger
  • Aggression
  • Emotional instability/lability
  • Increased emotional sensitivity/reactivity
  • Emotional flattening
  • Emotional detachment
  • Alexithymia-like difficulty accessing emotions
  • Increased guilt or shame
  • Other intensified self-conscious emotions
  • Uncontrollable crying or laughing
  • Re-emergence of emotionally charged psychological material
  • Re-experiencing traumatic memories
  • Traumatic flashbacks
  • Suicidal thoughts/behaviors in some reports

These categories appear in systematic reviews and Brown's detailed phenomenological work. PLOS

Cognitive effects

Documented/reported changes include:

  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Impairment in executive functioning
  • Memory problems
  • Increased or racing thoughts
  • Unusually accelerated cognitive processing
  • Vivid or intrusive imagery
  • Confusion
  • Changes in worldview that become destabilizing
  • Disintegration of conceptual meaning—things or ideas no longer seeming to connect normally
  • Obsessive ethical/religious thinking or scrupulosity
  • Altered metacognition
  • Excessive mental stillness that can become impairing rather than beneficial
  • Changes in clarity of thought, sometimes experienced negatively
  • Delusional beliefs
  • Irrational beliefs
  • Paranormal interpretations associated with impaired reality testing

Brown's study specifically describes executive-function difficulties as including inability to sustain concentration and problems with memory. PLOS

Perceptual effects

Reported effects include:

  • Hallucinations
  • Visual hallucinations
  • Auditory or other hallucinations
  • Visions
  • Illusions
  • Seeing lights
  • Heightened visual vividness
  • Sensory hypersensitivity
  • Increased sensitivity to sound
  • Increased sensitivity to light
  • Increased sensitivity to bodily sensations
  • Changes in body perception
  • Distorted perception of body parts
  • Distortions of time
  • Distortions of space
  • Objects appearing to dissolve
  • Temporary loss/cessation of ordinary visual perception in some meditation states
  • Derealization—the world feeling unreal, dreamlike, flat, foggy, or altered PLOS

Depersonalization and sense-of-self effects

Reported changes include:

  • Depersonalization
  • Altered self-world boundaries
  • Altered self-other boundaries
  • Loss of ordinary sense of self
  • Loss of a basic sense of self
  • Loss or alteration of sense of agency
  • Feeling that actions/thoughts are no longer fully one's own
  • Altered embodiment
  • Feeling disconnected from the body
  • Loss of sense of ownership over thoughts, sensations, or experiences
  • Changes in one's personal narrative or identity

Clinical literature has reported meditation-related depersonalization serious enough to require treatment. PLOS

Motivation and behavioral effects

  • Loss of motivation
  • Avolition
  • Loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities
  • Anhedonia
  • Changes in personal goals
  • Changes in motivation toward work or ordinary life
  • Excessive striving around meditation
  • Difficulty reintegrating into ordinary life following intensive practice PubMed Central (PMC)

Sleep-related effects

  • Insomnia
  • Reduced sleep
  • Dramatic changes in perceived need for sleep
  • Sleep disruption
  • Nightmares
  • Vivid dreams
  • Lucid dreams
  • Other parasomnias PLOS

Physical/somatic effects

Reported physical experiences include:

  • Headaches
  • Head pressure
  • Dizziness
  • Fainting/syncope
  • Nausea
  • Gastrointestinal distress
  • Abdominal discomfort
  • Muscular pain
  • Back/neck/shoulder pain
  • Other bodily pain
  • Pressure or tension sensations
  • Sudden release of bodily tension
  • Unusual sensations described as electrical currents or energy
  • Uncontrolled/involuntary body movements
  • Altered breathing
  • Breathing irregularities
  • Cardiac sensations or irregularities
  • Heat sensations
  • Cold sensations
  • Changes in appetite
  • Reduced food intake
  • Weight changes
  • Fatigue
  • Weakness
  • Changes in sexuality or sexual functioning PLOS

Social and occupational effects

  • Social withdrawal
  • Social impairment
  • Difficulties maintaining relationships
  • Changes in relationships with family or friends
  • Changes in relationship with one's meditation community
  • Difficulty functioning at work
  • Occupational impairment
  • Difficulty reintegrating after intensive meditation or retreats
  • In some cases, increased sociality—which is not inherently adverse but can accompany broader destabilizing changes PubMed Central (PMC)

Severe psychiatric outcomes documented in case literature

These are much less common, and causation is harder to establish, but they are medically documented:

  • Acute psychosis
  • Psychotic symptoms
  • Mania
  • Mania with psychotic features
  • Exacerbation of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders
  • Schizoaffective presentations
  • Severe depersonalization/derealization
  • Psychiatric hospitalization
  • Severe functional deterioration
  • Suicidality

A review by psychiatrists from India, Nepal, and the U.S. identified 28 cases across 19 reports of psychotic disorders occurring in association with meditation. The authors were careful to say that case reports alone cannot prove causation, and some cases included contributing factors such as insomnia, fasting, previous mental illness, stress, or psychoactive-drug use. PubMed

Recent Indian case series have also reported psychiatric illness following meditation, including psychosis and mania. PubMed

Additional Research Mentioned in This Episode

A PET study examining Yoga Nidra meditation found increased endogenous dopamine release in the ventral striatum during meditation, corresponding to a reported 65% increase in endogenous dopamine release.

PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11958969/



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