Article: 'The Dark Side of Mindfulness'

Discussion of some of the negative effects of mindfulness

These paragraphs are particularly interesting:

"I've noticed that people are apt to defend meditation with a zeal I haven’t witnessed since evangelical youth group in my teens. You don’t enjoy meditation? Good, you’re not supposed to enjoy it. You say it doesn’t work for you? Well, you’re just not doing it right. The answer to every problem with meditation seems to be more meditation.

"This touchiness can extend to meditation researchers, most of whom are meditators themselves; academic meetings Britton attended would sometimes kick off with a meditation. Nicholas Van Dam, the University of Melbourne psychologist, told me that meditation communities tend to carry a sense that 'if you say anything bad, you’re negating the good'. Farias mentioned that after he included a chapter about meditation’s risks in his book The Buddha Pill, some of his friends 'were very, very annoyed' and a couple of them told him that 'we could not be publicly seen as associates'.

[...]

"[S]everal meditation teachers I interviewed did seem protective of the practice. Carol Greco, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and an MBSR teacher, once co-authored a paper that aimed to 'dispel the notion' that anxiety, pain, and psychosis 'are adverse events due to mindfulness meditation'. She seemed chagrined that I was working on this story, writing in an email, 'I would rather talk with you about how meditation can be helpful.' "

Article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/meditation-willoughby-britton-downsides/688474/?gift=ZSO8-QoU1-1L0duyI2Sx0pfZ7ROzgGtHClGSm60KGiQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share