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Meditation-Related Challenges: When Practice Makes You Feel Worse

Steadying, practical steps for when meditation leaves you shaken, and where to find people who understand

Is it normal to feel worse when you meditate?

It is not rare, and it is not a sign you have failed. Researchers who interviewed practitioners and teachers from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions documented fear, panic, feeling unreal, changes in perception and sense of self, sleep loss and the return of old memories, some brief and some lasting. What tends to help is steadying rather than more practice: stepping back from long sittings, grounding in the senses and the body, sleep, food, people and routine, and talking to a teacher or clinician who knows these experiences. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

Most writing about meditation describes calm, focus and insight. Less of it says plainly that practice can also leave people frightened, disoriented, unable to sleep, or feeling that they or the world are not quite real — sometimes during an intensive retreat, sometimes after months of daily sitting. The Buddhist traditions have long known this, and since 2017 a research group led by Jared Lindahl and Willoughby Britton has documented it carefully across Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan practitioners. This page is for the moment after something has shifted and you are not sure whether it is progress, a problem, or both. It does not offer more technique. Every practice below is about steadying: easing off formal sitting, coming back into the senses and ordinary life, looking after sleep, food and people, and finding a teacher or clinician who knows this territory. If at any point you have thoughts of harming yourself, or you feel out of touch with reality, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

Practices

How these practices connect

Every practice on this page works by steadying rather than by going deeper: when meditation has left someone shaken, the things practitioners and teachers most often describe as helping are reducing what may be driving the difficulty (long or intensive inward practice), adding what stabilises (the senses, movement, sleep, food, routine and people), and bringing in informed human support (a teacher or clinician who knows these experiences). Holding the meaning of the experience open, and returning to practice only gradually and with guidance, protect those gains instead of reversing them.

Is it normal to feel worse after a meditation retreat?

It is not rare. Researchers who interviewed 60 practitioners from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions, plus 32 teachers and clinicians, documented 59 kinds of meditation-related experience across seven domains, including fear, perceptual changes, sleep changes and shifts in the sense of self, with distress ranging from minimal and transient to severe and enduring. Feeling raw or disoriented after intensive practice does not mean you did it wrong, and it does not mean you must push through. The most commonly described responses are steadying ones: easing off formal sitting, grounding in the senses and ordinary activity, looking after sleep, food and people, and talking to a teacher or clinician who knows these experiences. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

What is the dark night in meditation, and does everyone go through it?

Some insight-meditation teachers use the phrase “dark night” for a difficult stretch of practice marked by fear, misery or disorientation. The phrase originally comes from the Spanish Catholic mystic St John of the Cross, where it refers to a period of felt absence from the presence of God; researchers note that modern Buddhists, including the Theravāda teacher Jack Kornfield, adopted the term. The two are not the same thing, and it is not established that every meditator passes through such a stage. Whatever name it is given, what helps in the moment is the same: steadying, not pushing harder — easing off, grounding, and talking to an experienced teacher, or a clinician if it affects daily life.

Should I keep meditating if meditation is making me feel worse?

Not at the same intensity, and not alone. Research on Western Buddhist practitioners identified the amount and intensity of practice as a risk factor when it coincided with other factors, and found that distress more often led people to change or stop practice, use grounding activities, or seek therapy. Willoughby Britton’s review argues that more mindfulness is not always better. A reasonable approach is to pause or sharply shorten formal sitting, replace it with grounding and ordinary activity, and decide about returning later with a teacher — gradually, with a stop rule agreed in advance.

How do I know if I need a meditation teacher or a therapist?

Often both help, for different things. A teacher who knows these experiences can help you adjust practice and make sense of it within the tradition; in the research, supportive teachers acted as a remedy and unsympathetic or absent ones as a risk factor, and good teachers referred students on when an experience was beyond them. A doctor or therapist is the right call when fear, low mood, sleeplessness, feeling unreal or intrusive memories persist or affect work, relationships or self-care. Lasting bad effects in one mindfulness program study were linked to hyperarousal and dissociation, which clinicians can help with. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

Why does grounding help more than more meditation when practice has destabilised me?

Because the difficulty usually arose under conditions of long stillness and attention turned inward, and grounding changes those conditions. Opening the eyes, feeling the floor, naming objects and sounds, moving at a normal pace and doing ordinary tasks all direct attention outward to stable, neutral things. Practitioners in the Lindahl study described activities they called grounding, calming or embodying — along with sleep, food and exercise — as remedies. More sitting, by contrast, keeps the conditions the same. This is drawn from practitioner reports rather than trials, so the test is personal: if something makes you feel more here, continue; if it makes things stranger, stop it.

How long do difficult meditation experiences usually last?

It varies a great deal, and nobody can tell you in advance how long yours will last. In the Lindahl study, impairment lasted from days to more than a decade, with a median symptom duration of one to three years — but those participants were deliberately recruited because they had had challenging experiences, so the figure describes that group, not meditators in general. In a study of an 8-week mindfulness program, lasting bad effects occurred in 6–14% of participants. What the research supports is not a timeline but a direction: steadying, support, and getting help early if daily life is affected, rather than waiting for it to pass.

How do you choose between these?

If you are in the middle of it right now, start with stepping back from formal sitting and grounding through the senses with your eyes open; if stillness itself feels bad, go straight to moving and doing ordinary things. Over the following days, sleep, food, routine and people are the foundation everything else rests on. Talk to a teacher when practice has changed in ways you do not understand, and to a clinician when the difficulty lingers or gets in the way of daily life — and to a crisis line or emergency services at once if you have thoughts of harming yourself. Holding off on deciding what it means helps throughout, and returning to practice comes last, only once you are steady and with guidance.

What these approaches do not settle

The research behind this page is mostly qualitative: the main study recruited people precisely because they had had challenging experiences, so it describes the range of what can happen and what people found helpful, not how often it happens or what works best. Prevalence estimates differ widely — from 3.7% in experimental studies to 33.2% in observational ones in one systematic review — depending on how adverse effects are defined and asked about. None of the steadying practices here has been tested in a controlled trial for meditation-related difficulty specifically. Teachers also genuinely disagree: some encourage steady practice through difficulties they expect to pass, which is a judgement for a teacher who knows you, not something to decide alone in a hard moment.

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Frequently asked questions

Is it normal to feel worse when you meditate?

It is not rare, and it is not a sign you have failed. Researchers who interviewed practitioners and teachers from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions documented fear, panic, feeling unreal, changes in perception and sense of self, sleep loss and the return of old memories, some brief and some lasting. What tends to help is steadying rather than more practice: stepping back from long sittings, grounding in the senses and the body, sleep, food, people and routine, and talking to a teacher or clinician who knows these experiences. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

How do you step back from formal sitting for now?

In the Lindahl study, the amount, intensity or consistency of practice was identified as a risk factor when intensive periods coincided with other factors, and one of the causality criteria the researchers used was whether an experience decreased when practice was reduced. Britton’s review argues that mindfulness-related processes can follow an inverted-U course, helpful up to a point and then not. If practice is feeding the difficulty, reducing the dose removes a driver while you steady — which is why many practitioners and teachers in the 2020 follow-up study responded to distress by changing or stopping practice.

How do you ground through the senses, with your eyes open?

Many meditation-related difficulties involve attention turned sharply inward — toward breath, sensation or the sense of self — and practitioners in the Lindahl study described activities they called grounding, calming or embodying as remedies. Keeping the eyes open and directing attention to concrete, external, neutral things (objects in the room, sounds, the floor under your feet, a cup in your hands) gives the mind something stable and ordinary to rest on. Trauma-sensitive mindfulness teaches the same move for the same reason: an external anchor is often steadier than an internal one when the inner world feels overwhelming.

How do you move your body and do ordinary things?

Long periods of stillness and inward attention are part of what intensive practice consists of, so ordinary movement is one of the most direct ways to change the conditions. Practitioners in the Lindahl study named lack of exercise as associated with destabilising experiences and getting exercise as a remedy. Physical, purposeful activity also fills attention with the outside world — where your feet go, what the onions need — rather than leaving it free to circle inward.

How do you lean on sleep, food, routine and people?

In the Lindahl study, health behaviours were described as risk factors when absent or out of balance and as remedies when present: lack of sleep, inadequate diet and lack of exercise tended to precede destabilising experiences, and increasing sleep or changing diet were described as correcting them. The same study found that stable, supportive relationships outside the meditation community could act as a remedy. Ordinary structure — meals at regular times, getting up and going to bed at similar times, seeing people — gives the nervous system predictable cues at a moment when experience feels unpredictable.

How do you talk to a teacher who knows these experiences?

Relationships with teachers and communities appeared in the Lindahl study as both a risk factor (when absent, unhelpful or unsympathetic) and a remedy (when supportive and understanding). A teacher who knows these experiences can help you adjust practice, and can tell when something is beyond their expertise — in the 2020 follow-up, practitioners described teachers recommending other kinds of help when they lacked knowledge of a particular challenge. Saying it out loud also breaks the isolation that tends to amplify fear.

How do you find a clinician who understands meditation-related difficulties?

Some meditation-related difficulties are brief; others last and affect work, relationships and self-care. In a study of an 8-week mindfulness program, lasting bad effects were associated with signs of dysregulated arousal, hyperarousal and dissociation, which clinicians can help with. A clinician who understands meditation is less likely either to dismiss what you describe or to pathologise all of it, and organisations now exist specifically to support people with these experiences.

How do you stop noting when things start dissolving and fear takes over?

Some insight maps describe a stretch where experience seems to break apart and fear follows, and practitioners are sometimes told it is a stage to note through. Lindahl and colleagues found that this kind of interpretive framework played an “influential—and often confusing” role, and that practitioners commonly eased distress by changing or stopping practice and by grounding, calming or embodying activities rather than by intensifying. Close noting keeps attention turned inward onto the very experience that is frightening; moving attention outward to the senses, the body’s contact with the ground and ordinary activity gives the nervous system something stable to settle on.

How do you come back to solid ground when awareness practice makes things feel unreal?

Practices that turn attention onto awareness itself — looking for where the mind is, or resting in open, objectless awareness — deliberately loosen the usual sense of a solid observer and solid objects. For some people this tips into what Lindahl and colleagues describe as derealization, “where phenomena appear dreamlike, unreal, two-dimensional or as if in a fog”. Continuing to widen or examine awareness keeps attention on exactly what feels unstable; narrowing it onto concrete, external, physical things — and onto ordinary activity — gives perception something definite to rest on while the feeling settles.

How do you hold off on deciding what it means?

Lindahl and colleagues found that interpretations of similar experiences differed considerably between practitioners, and that practitioners holding or offered multiple, conflicting worldviews reported the “influential—and often confusing” role of interpretive frameworks. The 2020 study found that Buddhist teachers and practitioners weigh many factors — distress, functioning, context — when deciding whether an experience needs intervention. Rushing to a single label can add fear (“I’m broken”) or pressure (“this is awakening, keep going”); leaving the question open lets you attend to what actually helps today.

How do you return to practice gradually, with guidance?

One of the criteria the Lindahl study used for whether an experience was linked to meditation was whether it re-appeared when practice was repeated, which is a reason to return in small, observable steps. Britton’s “middle way” argues that dose and fit decide whether mindfulness helps, so the aim is to find a level that supports you rather than to get back to the previous intensity. A plan made while steady, with a teacher, keeps the decision from being made in the middle of a difficult moment.

Is it normal to feel worse after a meditation retreat?

It is not rare. Researchers who interviewed 60 practitioners from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions, plus 32 teachers and clinicians, documented 59 kinds of meditation-related experience across seven domains, including fear, perceptual changes, sleep changes and shifts in the sense of self, with distress ranging from minimal and transient to severe and enduring. Feeling raw or disoriented after intensive practice does not mean you did it wrong, and it does not mean you must push through. The most commonly described responses are steadying ones: easing off formal sitting, grounding in the senses and ordinary activity, looking after sleep, food and people, and talking to a teacher or clinician who knows these experiences. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

What is the dark night in meditation, and does everyone go through it?

Some insight-meditation teachers use the phrase “dark night” for a difficult stretch of practice marked by fear, misery or disorientation. The phrase originally comes from the Spanish Catholic mystic St John of the Cross, where it refers to a period of felt absence from the presence of God; researchers note that modern Buddhists, including the Theravāda teacher Jack Kornfield, adopted the term. The two are not the same thing, and it is not established that every meditator passes through such a stage. Whatever name it is given, what helps in the moment is the same: steadying, not pushing harder — easing off, grounding, and talking to an experienced teacher, or a clinician if it affects daily life.

Should I keep meditating if meditation is making me feel worse?

Not at the same intensity, and not alone. Research on Western Buddhist practitioners identified the amount and intensity of practice as a risk factor when it coincided with other factors, and found that distress more often led people to change or stop practice, use grounding activities, or seek therapy. Willoughby Britton’s review argues that more mindfulness is not always better. A reasonable approach is to pause or sharply shorten formal sitting, replace it with grounding and ordinary activity, and decide about returning later with a teacher — gradually, with a stop rule agreed in advance.

How do I know if I need a meditation teacher or a therapist?

Often both help, for different things. A teacher who knows these experiences can help you adjust practice and make sense of it within the tradition; in the research, supportive teachers acted as a remedy and unsympathetic or absent ones as a risk factor, and good teachers referred students on when an experience was beyond them. A doctor or therapist is the right call when fear, low mood, sleeplessness, feeling unreal or intrusive memories persist or affect work, relationships or self-care. Lasting bad effects in one mindfulness program study were linked to hyperarousal and dissociation, which clinicians can help with. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), find a line in your country at findahelpline.com, or call your local emergency number now.

Why does grounding help more than more meditation when practice has destabilised me?

Because the difficulty usually arose under conditions of long stillness and attention turned inward, and grounding changes those conditions. Opening the eyes, feeling the floor, naming objects and sounds, moving at a normal pace and doing ordinary tasks all direct attention outward to stable, neutral things. Practitioners in the Lindahl study described activities they called grounding, calming or embodying — along with sleep, food and exercise — as remedies. More sitting, by contrast, keeps the conditions the same. This is drawn from practitioner reports rather than trials, so the test is personal: if something makes you feel more here, continue; if it makes things stranger, stop it.

How long do difficult meditation experiences usually last?

It varies a great deal, and nobody can tell you in advance how long yours will last. In the Lindahl study, impairment lasted from days to more than a decade, with a median symptom duration of one to three years — but those participants were deliberately recruited because they had had challenging experiences, so the figure describes that group, not meditators in general. In a study of an 8-week mindfulness program, lasting bad effects occurred in 6–14% of participants. What the research supports is not a timeline but a direction: steadying, support, and getting help early if daily life is affected, rather than waiting for it to pass.

Research

Related concepts