Meditation is widely promoted as a stress reliever, but a significant number of practitioners experience genuine negative effects. In one study of regular meditators, 58% reported at least one adverse effect, and 37% said those effects negatively impacted their daily functioning. These aren’t rare edge cases. The downsides of meditation are real, well-documented, and worth understanding before you sit down on the cushion.
How Common Are Negative Effects?
The idea that meditation is universally safe has taken a hit in recent years as researchers have started asking practitioners directly about their experiences. A 2022 study of 953 regular meditators in the U.S. found that over 10% experienced adverse effects significant enough to disrupt their everyday lives for at least a month or longer. Research from Brown University put the numbers even higher: in a sample of 96 meditators, 6% reported lasting impairments in functioning that persisted beyond one month.
A review covering more than 40 years of research found that the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression, followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation, and intense fear or terror. These aren’t just mild discomforts. For some people, meditation makes existing mental health problems worse or creates entirely new ones.
Anxiety and Emotional Dysregulation
One of the most frequently reported problems is a state researchers call “dysregulated arousal.” Instead of feeling calm after meditating, some people feel anxious, overstimulated, or emotionally numb and disconnected. This can happen because meditation asks you to sit with your internal experience without distraction, and for some people, what surfaces is overwhelming.
The mechanism is straightforward: when you quiet external stimulation and turn attention inward, your nervous system doesn’t always respond by settling down. It can ramp up. People report racing hearts, difficulty sleeping, heightened emotional reactivity, or a flatness where emotions used to be. If you already tend toward anxiety, the sustained inward focus of meditation can amplify it rather than relieve it.
Dissociation and Losing Your Sense of Self
Some meditation techniques deliberately work to loosen your sense of being a separate, bounded self. For experienced practitioners in supportive contexts, this can feel liberating. For others, it triggers depersonalization or derealization, where you feel detached from your own body, thoughts, or surroundings. The world starts to feel unreal, or you feel like you’re watching yourself from the outside.
This isn’t a new discovery. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience project at Brown University catalogued more than 50 types of meditation-related experiences across seven categories: physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, perception, motivation, sense of self, and social functioning. Changes to the sense of self were among the most disorienting for participants. Some described feeling like they no longer recognized themselves or couldn’t connect with other people the way they used to.
Depersonalization can be particularly frightening because it doesn’t always resolve when you stop meditating. It can linger for weeks or months, and people who experience it often struggle to find therapists who understand it as a meditation-related side effect rather than a standalone psychiatric condition.
Risks for Trauma Survivors
Mindfulness meditation is sometimes recommended for people with PTSD, but it carries specific risks for this group. Sitting quietly with closed eyes and turning attention toward bodily sensations can trigger flashbacks, traumatic re-experiencing, or intense physiological responses. Researchers at the VA noted concerns about dissociation in veterans practicing mindfulness, and reports in the medical literature have documented patients whose mental state worsened after meditation.
The problem is that trauma lives in the body. Techniques that increase body awareness can bring suppressed traumatic material to the surface faster than a person can process it. Without proper guidance, this isn’t healing. It’s re-traumatization. For trauma survivors, meditation is not inherently therapeutic, and in some cases it’s the opposite.
Physical Side Effects
The risks aren’t only psychological. Common physical complaints include back, neck, and knee pain from sustained sitting postures. But more unusual symptoms also appear, particularly during intensive practice. People report dizziness, nausea, headaches, and sleep disruption. One practitioner described being unable to close their eyes without the room spinning, leading to persistent nausea.
Historical Buddhist texts describe these physical effects in striking detail. The 18th-century Zen master Hakuin documented his own bout of what he called “Zen sickness” after intensive meditation. His symptoms included a burning sensation in his head, ice-cold legs and feet, constant ringing in his ears, excessive sweating, watery eyes, difficulty digesting food, persistent bad dreams, and an overwhelming sense of weakness and fear. His biographer listed twelve distinct symptoms. Hakuin himself noted that this condition was “extremely difficult to cure by medical means” because it originated from meditation itself.
This Isn’t a Modern Discovery
Western wellness culture tends to treat meditation’s downsides as surprising, but contemplative traditions have known about them for centuries. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, an ancient Buddhist text, includes reports of depression, anxiety, cognitive disturbances, and episodes resembling psychosis and dissociation that can follow meditation practice. Zen Buddhism has a specific term for it: “zen-byo,” or Zen sickness. Hakuin described it as a state where “the four constituent elements of the body are in a state of disharmony,” leaving the practitioner exhausted in body and mind.
In Western psychology, the warnings go back decades. In 1976, the psychologist Arnold Lazarus cautioned that meditation used indiscriminately could induce serious psychiatric problems including depression, agitation, and psychotic episodes. The difference now is that researchers are finally collecting systematic data on how often these problems occur and who is most vulnerable.
Who Is Most at Risk
Not everyone who meditates will experience negative effects, and certain factors increase the likelihood. People with a history of trauma, anxiety disorders, depression, or psychotic episodes are more vulnerable. Intensive practice, like multi-day silent retreats, carries higher risk than short daily sessions. Practicing without experienced guidance, or using techniques that aren’t well-matched to your psychological profile, also raises the odds of problems.
The type of meditation matters too. Techniques that involve sustained concentration, prolonged body scanning, or deliberate dissolution of the sense of self tend to produce more adverse effects than gentle, short practices focused on relaxation. The dose-response relationship is real: more hours of practice generally correlate with a higher chance of encountering difficult experiences.
If you notice persistent anxiety, emotional numbness, a feeling of unreality, intrusive disturbing thoughts, or sleep disruption that worsens with practice, those are signals to stop and reassess. Meditation is a tool with real power, and like any powerful tool, it can cause harm when applied without understanding the risks.