Re:meditation

I apologize for taking this into meditation and out of EMDR.

I think I understand what you mean what you say about dissociation. I have only experienced it once in my life in a frightening situation. I don't know if you have ever come close to fainting, but it's much like that, no control.

I don't really practice meditation for spiritual reasons, but I can't say that it's not at times considered.

I can see where meditation can bring on dissociation. I think that the best meditators who I know are people who found the state (meditation not dissociation but probably that too) when they were children as a means of escape, a healthy one. Therefore, as someone who fights dissociation you have the dual problem of letting go of your normal disfunctioning state and fighting dissociation in meditation. But, in the end, for me, the goal is just finding detachment, no easy task.

Have you tried other forms of meditation? A different form might be less likely to cause dissociation. But, if you are anything like me, you get attached to the familiar. Although I have meditated with a group for many years, I basically don't have a teacher, and although I try to describe my meditative experience in therapy, because the therapist doesn't practice he can only understand from what he's read in books, which is nothing like the actual experience. Therefore, it's sort of a struggle to be understood, finding language that conveys the experience.

Ultimately, I think that meditation brings people to the healthy place that they seek where cognitive and behavioral therapies, and analysis, only lay down another layer of false self on top of a soul already buried. I tend to think that support and meditation are the best combinations for me right now. I'll have to see how my opinion changes over time.

I'm flexible. Maybe there will be a place for EMDR at some time, if there was only an event to connect it to. Without trauma caused by an event, how would EMDR be applied to traumatic distortion of values? A sort of mind bending or mind control?

Replies:

Re:meditation, by missusscarecrow@yahoo.com, 10/25/02

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