I can see Melissa’s point that if mindfulness is being used to *disassociate* from emotions, that is not useful.

However, my understanding of mindfulness, and how I practiced it (per the strategies outlined in The Mindful Way through Depression and Jeffry Schwartz’s 4-step process for reframing obsessive-compulsive thoughts and urges in Brain Lock), was the opposite of what Melissa is describing here.

Mindfulness allowed me, for the first time, to feel what there was to be felt in my OCD experience…to acknowledge my pain and anxiety fully (something I had never done before)…and THEN to make constructive, healthy choices about what to do with my feelings, understanding that they were not rational, once I had mindfully observed them.

The non-judgmental aspect was critical. Before, I greeted OCD thoughts with judgments such as, “you’re crazy!”, “you’re so weak to be obsessing again!”, “you’re broken and bad!”, and so on. Mindfulness taught me that I didn’t need to do that. I could love and have compassion for myself and my feelings, even the least rational and most unpleasant ones. Only AFTER I had felt what was there — had acknowledged and witnessed my feelings to myself — did I experience the ability to STOP acting on compulsive urges.

I went from someone who could barely function, due to OCD anxiety, to being able to function at high levels, and having more emotional stability in my mind and relationships than ever. I attribute much of this to mindfulness.

I do not doubt that there are lazy mental health practitioners who use mindfulness in the diassociative, improper, and unhealthy ways that you are describing here. That is wrong, and deserves to be condemned.

Perhaps what concerns me is that your article seems to lack nuance. You seem to decry all mindfulness practice, when it seems to me that your argument might more accurately be phrased, “Some mental health practitioners are unequipped to teach effective mindfulness meditation, and instead use it as a crutch to numb or shove pain away.” I think all of us can agree that this is NOT going to be healthy for anyone.

If I’m understanding the comments correctly, though, it seems that those of us who have benefited from mindfulness practice simply don’t agree with your characterization that the practice itself always requires a disassociative approach, as this has not been my experience, at least. I think a bit more nuance and clarity in your post would be helpful.

Very good article about the harms of mindfulness meditation. I think what the main issue here is addressing how mindfulness is used like you stated. I am not aware of what mindfulness doctrine you have studied, but I have learned quite differently from the way you describe using mindfulness in your article. In reality, it’s an issue of how to properly apply mindful living for a contructive life. Lack of proper guidance can be attributed to mindfulness used for the wrong reasons. In this sense, it is quite important to seek counsel from a spiritual teacher with proper training in mindfulness and meditation.
For example, using mindfulness to supress negative emotions is incorrent. You also mentioned something yourself that is incorrent. You write that by observing negative emotions you supress them. This is not true. Supressing them is forcing yourself not to think about them. This can be very harmful as you have said, but by observing them you build insight, thus being able to discern them for what they really are. You develop an ability to grasp the root of your problem lets say, so that you understand yourself and your emotions. Through understanding, you cease to feel these negative emotions and slowly begin to have different perspectives on that specific problem. Although none of us will probably become “enlightened”, emotional pains tend to occur less and a more centered, harmonious life is rendered by being mindful like this.
Now, with that said, I will offer solutions to the 17 harmful ways stated for people that are practicing incorrectly:

1.You start to judge uncomfortable thoughts and feelings as inferior, unreal, or bad. Which gets in your way of actually learning from them, experiencing and healing them, growing from them, and integrating them.

(This is incorrent right off the bat, to judge your thoughts is already an act of nonmindfulness, objectively, you should observe your negative thoughts so that you heal them and grow from them as you said. Just by the mere thought of them you are already experiencing them.)

2.You get good at stuffing anger and other negative emotions. Which might make them go away — temporarily. But hasn’t shown to be very effective.

(To stuff them would be in reality supressing them, observe your thoughts like watching a movie, but do not become overtaken by them, like all things, they come and go, understanding springs forth the more mindful you are.)

3.If and when a traumatic or emotionally painful experience occurs, you don’t fully process it, and cut your grieving process dangerously short.

(To greive and feel pain is natural, I have never heard of any credible teachers of mindfulness teaching you to cut your grieving short and not allowing yourself to process any of your pain, pain is inevitable, being mindful of it will only help it pass, not supress it.)

4.You have low tolerance for processing old grief. So if a repressed traumatic memory starts to surface, you stuff it down, re-traumatizing yourself.

(In reality, old grief tends to naturally spring forth the further you delve into your meditation and mindfulness practices. This is so because as you begin to understand yourself and your emotions, you realize that in reality many of your lifes woes are attributed to older griefs, though the majority of times subconsciously. This realization in fact serves to be very constructive as you begin to understand you complex self.)

5.You expect meditation to fix your problems for you, resolve your relationship conflicts, and make you happy. Each of those things requires hard work, commitment, and realistically, some discomfort. When you look to meditation to save you, you stop putting in the hard work and commitment, and evade the discomfort. Which makes it harder to effectively work toward your goals.

(Only one taught the wrong way would see it this way. Meditation is not practiced primarily to fix your problems, it is to understand reality and consciousness for what it is. The fact that your problems may cease is apparent, but incidental.)

6.You detach yourself from conflicts in your life, expecting that meditation will get rid of the negative emotions — and fix the problem altogether. The emotions just signal the problem. Even if you ignore the emotions, the problem is still there.

(To detach is good in terms of mindfully observing. Expecting that meditation fix the problem altogether is ignorant. You must fix it or suffer the consequences, but again, be mindful while doing so.)

7.You detach from your partner or loved one when they’re upset or experiencing an emotion you see as undesirable. You wish they’d just meditate it away, calm down, take a walk, get a grip — do whatever it takes to get rid of the emotion. When you invalidate your partner’s negative emotions, you cause serious wounds to both of you, harming trust and intimacy.

(Compassion arises naturally from the right kinds of meditation. To detach yourself from your partner and wish they meditate their problems away indicates to the practitioner that either they have not evolved much yet spiritually, or that they have been taught the wrong way.)

8.You find it difficult to connect to your feelings when you want to be emotionally honest with yourself and others. Because you’ve trained yourself to avoid them. This impairs your ability to be emotionally intimate with anyone.

(Again, never avoid, observe and understand.)

9.Your relationships deteriorate, because you lose touch with what interpersonal conflict really means. After all, no one is really experiencing hurt feelings, right? Those feelings aren’t really real; just dissociate from them. Or, “observe” them.

(Conflict should always be settled, there is nothing wrong with obeserving what’s happening. To be honest, I don’t quite understand what 9 is trying to say.)

10.You struggle to empathize with others, or understand their pain. If you don’t feel your own pain — you can’t expect to have compassion for another’s pain.

(If you dont feel your own pain you are already a buddha among this earth. To not understand another person’s pain indicates that you do not understand your own. Through self understanding much love for yourself is cultivated, other people will naturally be a beneficiary to your love and understanding as compassion will naturally arise.)

11.You lose your ability to naturally feel upset, sad, or concerned when there’s an issue in your life that you need to address. This puts a damper on healthy discernment.

(The fact that you do not feel upset about something does not suggest that you should not address it if it’s a negative force in your life that needs to be taken care of. If there is an issue worth addressing then address it. If it is not addressed and causes a burden to your life this will only interfere in your practices anyway.)

12.Your ability to feel positive emotions is also affected. Because you don’t allow experience of the negative. The positive cannot exist without the negative. Get rid of the negative, the positive has no meaning.

(Both positive and negative emotions should be observed as what they are. To be swept by the current of these emotions would not be wise in order to have a mindful life. There is a harmonious joy that transcends both emotions perceived as good or bad, and this can always be found in your center. There are many ways to describe such phenomenon.)

13.Your passion and drive in life start to fade, or shift away from those things that are truly special to you. Which may be a good thing, if you don’t want to cling to such things. But a bad thing if you give up pursuits that once gave you meaning and reward.

(Passion and suffering go hand in hand. Be mindful of what you really want in life and choose liberation of mind, or clinging and suffering. If it is not your intent to become “awakened” as some might call it, why not have a happy medium between your passions and your mindfulness training. This is a difficult challenge, but if by chance you eventually lean more towards being mindful, you will discover that the rewards of this are more fruitful than the rewards your passions have ever brought you. This is a difficult attainment and only realized through few disciplined practitioners.)

14. You start to feel dissatisfied with your life, and alone. But because of the nature of mindfulness meditation, you compound the problem by meditating, dissociating, and numbing even more.

(This is incorrect. Through proper mindful training you do not feel alone or dissatisfied. To the novice this may be so, but only because of improper technique. It is important to again, be mindful of how you are feeling if this is the case, and eventually it will cease and you will come to realization. Nothing comes easy. Especially in training your mind.)

15.You become fixated, obsessed, attached to abstract, man-made, escapist concepts like enlightenment and transcendence. This distracts you from attending to your actual life, here on Earth, as a mortal human being.

(This actually is correct. The practitioner should always be wary of becoming attached to meditation and the fruits of meditation. It happens often. If you have already reached a stage that you are actually attached so much to the joys of meditation you in fact have progressed quite well. It is up to you now to be mindful of yourself and your clinginess to your meditation and attain higher stages. To do this you are already on your way to becoming a more perfect being.)

16. You subconsciously seek a guru or teacher to show you the way to “better” enlightenment and transcendence. You have no idea how this person deals with their interpersonal relationships, not to mention conflict. You have no idea if this person could manage the mundane responsibilities you struggle to balance in life. Yet you put this person on a pedestal, and potentially take a advice that’s really not suited for your lifestyle.

(This is a difficult one. There are many phony gurus out there. It is hard to choose one if you are actively searching for one. My advice would be to listen to youself. All of us inherently have an inner guru. I have heard of meditations where you seek out your guru mentally and he will eventually come to you somehow by chance. It’s up to you to believe that one or not. A guru should point you in the right direction and that’s all. Use your good judgement on this one.)

17.You get it in your head that humans are so imperfect. This may come from the spiritual beliefs surrounding the practice, or just hanging around others who practice. (“Perfect” is a human construct by the way.) You then judge your human-ness. And seek to quiet (or kill) your ego, or self concept. Which puts you in ultimate conflict with yourself.

(Perfect is indeed a human contruct as everything else we have defined in our history of being. Ego is man’s ultimate illusion. To completely dissolve your ego is impossible for most of us. Jesus and Buddha are two good examples of human beings that did. They manifested this in their selflessness. It is safe to say that almost none of us will ever achieve this state of being. With that said I would not concentrate too much on killing the ego, but again living a mindful life so that this illusion will naturally be dismantled.)

..speaking of ego, I wrote this little exerpt awhile ago for anyone interested.

Like a cancer men work against each other instead of with each other. Our cells work collectively to maintain the integrity of our bodies. To not do so would mean illness, then death. Like a fool, we are quick to strike upon when stricken, to hurt others when hurt ourselves. In the society we live in, strength is defined by context such as this. Survival of the fittest, with no consideration of the ones we trample over in the process. What an ignorant paradigm. It is quick to delude us because it is manifested all around us. True strength lies in the individual who selflessly breaks this cycle of pain and affliction. It is easy to beat and batter your fellow brother because you feel that you have been affronted, yet it is difficult to hold your tongue, or to unclench your fist because your pride has been wounded. Withdraw your ego. Like a mirage it will slowly bring you closer to the death of your true essence.

Thanks Melissa!
And goodluck on your mindfulness everyone!

Well, I’ve been lucky to have met such a couple – they’re both polyamorous and very devoted to each other, occasionally, they both sleep with other people. So there, when meeting them, my perspective on polyamory went out the window. When I first the first gay man who was a real person to me, my stereotypes on gays went out the window as well.

I know that what one cannot understand or wrap their mind around might make them say such things as you said, I do that as well.. but ..maybe, the reason you’re thinking those things is that you haven’t met somebody who, by their example, will show you that another way of acting is possible without it being the mark of a problem. And because you are not inclined to act that way yourself, you think that nobody could possibly be.

Melissa, I think this is the type of mindfulness you and some other people here are against, if I’m understanding correctly.

On the other hand, I also find many literature that focuses on that concept of being mindful of your feelings and thoughts, feel them, acknowledge them for what they are, and decide what to do about it. Their main concept is to feel your emotion fully, and not trying to get away from them. This one makes more sense to me and is also the one that I practice and find helpful. I know my emotion is very much real, and to deny it does not contribute anything to my well-being. By not pushing it away or judging it, I can fully feel and acknowledge the extend that emotion has on me, and thus become more aware of what matters to me and how I can go about working on it.

The way I see mindfulness is basically boiling down to self-awareness. And I think most of here would agree there’re benefits for being aware of your emotions and know how it affects you and your judgment. If anyone here is familiar with the concept of emotional intelligent, the first very important skill is to be self-aware. I find mindfulness the perfect tool for this.

Therefore, I think it would be more fair to advise people AGAINST being “mindful” by telling themselves their emotions are not real ( a form of denial and suppressing), rather than making claim about how harmful mindfulness in general is.

9.Relationships come into a clearer perspective because those who mind are not worth it and those who understand will not mind.

10.With the assistance of meditation, one can truly understand why anyone feels his/her pain from objective observation and understanding of the thoughts and events that would lead to such “pain”. This leads to a better connection to the individual going through the “pain” because meditation allows one to put his/her-self in the individual’s shoes.

11. These emotions are an illusion of the mind based of off an upset ego. Ex: What I expected to happen didn’t so I’m sad.
What I wanted I didn’t get so I’m angry.
What this person is doing is not how I’d live his/her life so I’m concerned.
(Ego)
It’s not wrong to experience these emotions or express them. It’s just ego. Of course the emotional reaction varies because there are many different types of ego.

12.Why do you assume that any emotion is negative or positive? The way that one deals with emotions is affected by how one views them in his/her mind. Perhaps you associate negative events (to you) with negative emotions (your response to these events).

13.Passion and drive are associated with some sort of end. A personal status quo. Ex: I won’t be happy until I do this and that…. What’s going on here is that this persons ego is not satisfied with what they have. Being grateful for the breath in your lungs and enjoying life for the moment of living is what meditation has also taught me. Once I realized how selfish I was thinking in terms of the above example I became satisfied with anything that happened to me because I was still alive to experience it. Anything that doesn’t kill you only makes you better because you can learn from your mistake or triumph. Having a grateful mindset to live is a lasting happiness until death. Placing high value in things that constantly change will lead to frequent emotional reactions related to the changes. You only live once and die once.

14.Refer to number 13 in counter argument to your 14th claim.

15.How can one become fixated and attached to doing nothing? Meditation is not the practice of being lazy, it’s the practice of awareness. If meditation teaches detachment then how can one become obsessed with becoming non obsessed?

16.If one has his/her-self as a master they are a fool. One has to learn from someone or somewhere. If not a teacher in person then a book or the internet. If the teacher does not practice what he/she teaches then leave him/her to his/her confusion and seek a valid source of knowledge. The advise the teacher would gives (if they practice what they teach) is still only advise. Observe the advise with what you know and if you don’t agree with valid cause then don’t do it, but don’t let skepticism with no valid cause (fear-ego) hinder you from experiencing something different.

17.Perfection is a construct of the ego. Nothing is perfect because judgement can always find flaws. Judgement is the ego expressing itself (an opinion). Is imperfection negative? If so then why? Once one accepts that everything and everyone is different, but the same, judgement and perfection will die with ego. (Brain twister XD)

1.Seeing everything from an objective point of view is not the same a judging everything. Uncomfortable thoughts are included in everything

2.Anger is not stuffed away. It is observed and and seen for what it is, an illusion of the mind. (A hurt ego)

3.When something “tragic” happens the grieving process is cut dangerously short because the event is accepted as a part of life.

4.The “tragic” memory will only resurface if one thinks about it. You imply that one has no control over associative thought. Meditation is about awareness of the moment. When one’s senses are affected, one will associate that with some event from the past and begin to judge it. Meditation teaches one to observe this process and stop it from hindering focus.

5.Meditation does make one happy. It’s hard work. Constantly pulling one’s attention back to focus is quite troublesome in the beginning. Goals are pointless. One will reach that point of skill if they concentrate on something long enough so what’s the purpose of writing down what one knows is going to happen?
Ex: I have a goal of becoming more muscular. However, I enjoy exercise already, so what’s the point of setting this goal when I know that if I continue on this path that I will become more muscular anyway?
Setting goals sounds like reassuring the ego to me.

6.Conflict is a two person process. Meditation allows one to observe emotion and thought, so one can observe these ego reactions for what they are; illusions. Once one realizes these observations one can walk away and allow the other individual to stew in his/her folly. Emotions don’t signal problems, they cause them (when we can’t understand them). All wars are the result of poor human relations. Hurt ego.

7.If one has chosen a partner based off of understanding and not emotion this problem will not occur. Emotions come and go at will. Understanding someone is a solid foundation for acceptance. Picking a partner based off of how they think and not how they make you feel will result in a much more balanced relationship and not egocentric give and take. Ex: You give me a compliment that I could do without (stating the obvious) so I feel obligated to do the same to you because if I don’t your feelings(ego) will be hurt and the relationship will be in trouble. <—- This will occur if the relationship is based on emotions alone.
Ex2: You give me a compliment that I could do without and I don't not feel obligated to give you one back. You understand that I don't care for your opinion, but love you all the same. emotion. We cannot change the past. We cannot predict the future. We can only live in the moment and accept it. We cannot control anyone else’s destiny. That’s his/her life to live. Just look at nature. If we all left the planet then nature wouldn’t care. The animals would keep on living. The seasons would keep changing. The sun will continue to set and rise. We are no better or worse than anything on the planet. Just live and do the right thing. Stop trying to control the lives of others and control your own.

This explanation has holes in it and I accept that fact. I know that I have a lot to learn. Sometimes it just makes me emotional because I cannot accept the fact that other people cannot let go of what makes us different, especially when they take foolish action because of it. I get emotional when I am judged. I don’t care if it’s a compliment or not. I get emotional when I feel good from getting a compliment because I know that it will not change anything. My ego is being stroked and that’s all that’s happening. I get emotional when I realize how shallow our society is. But, it’s just my ego, which cannot accept the way things are. My emotions clearly have not died. I don’t suppress them. I have a better understanding of them. Emotions do in fact pass. They come and go like the thoughts in our minds (perhaps they are related). How else would we know that there are different emotions?