If you get upset or angry while meditating, you're on the right track
Illustration by Sonny Ross.
by Carly Newberg
All over, we’ve heard how meditation can lead to better health and wellbeing. A regular practice can potentially deliver benefits like improved sleep and cognition, decreased anxiety, and an overall better outlook on life.
There’s no denying that meditation can have a great effect on many people, but in some ways, it has become a catch-all for every problem we face as humans. This made me confused as a beginner meditator when I wasn’t experiencing the positive benefits I had previously heard about. Instead, I often felt frustrated, upset, and angry after meditating.
There’s a plethora of information about how meditation can help diffuse anger. But what if the quest to achieve calm is what’s making you angry? A teacher of mine said this is actually a sign you’re on the right track. Although I was unsure of what she meant at the time, her words stuck with me. I decided to look into the topic more.
So, why do you get upset when you meditate?
Sonny Ross
The goal of meditation is mindfulness. When we meditate, we’re becoming more mindful of our thoughts, senses, and surroundings. In Harvard Business Review, Amy Jen Su said, “While mindfulness can lead us to experience the good things in life more fully, this only tells half of the mindfulness story. Becoming truly mindful and aware means that we are also able to see, name, and more fully experience things when we are angry, sad, jealous, anxious, vulnerable, or lonely — this, too, is mindfulness.”
Meditation, then, is about noticing all types of feelings — not just the positive ones.
Luke McLeod, a meditation teacher, echoed this by reassuring beginner meditators that frustrating moments are what make us more conscious and aware. Without them, we are still on autopilot mode. So, in some ways, you can think of upset feelings or anger as a healthy response to meditation. Be gentle with yourself when these feelings rise to the surface. Take it as an opportunity to acknowledge your frustration in a nonjudgmental way, and when you are ready, kindly let the feelings pass.
What happens in the brain while learning to meditate?
In one study, they found practitioners with a regular meditation practice to have a thicker cortical thickness than non-meditators. Specifically, they noticed this increased thickness in the anterior parts of the brain, which includes the medial prefrontal cortex. Some have concluded this type of increased thickness makes us more resilient to trauma and allows for better control over our amygdala.
Sonny Ross
Similarly, as explored in this article on the Headspace site, the gray matter of our brain also increases from consistent meditation, leading to better emotional regulation and problem-solving. Taking into consideration the long-term effects of meditation can help us understand why a beginner meditator might struggle. Their brain chemistry is quite literally being altered, and that might mean there is some resistance in the gradual progression to improved emotional regulation.
After talking with Katie Koniakowsky, meditation teacher and breath coach, she offered some advice for those new to meditation. Keep a towel close by and when you start to feel anger, pick it up and squeeze and twist it as hard as you can. Imagine yourself wringing out water from the towel and, after several seconds, take a few deep breaths and notice if there is any difference in how you feel.
You may also want to keep a pillow close by to use as a punching bag. Both tools give a physical outlet for releasing anger and learning to regulate emotions healthily. Koniakowsky concludes with, “Many of us suppress emotions in our everyday lives since it’s not always socially acceptable or appropriate to act on or show them. That doesn’t mean our emotions disappear. When not able to be expressed, our emotions get stored in the body as energy. Meditation is a perfect place to practice feeling.”
Meditation won’t always make you joyous, but that’s not a reason to fear or avoid it.
A statistic that might put some beginner meditators at ease involves 81 well-versed Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts from the Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. When interviewed about their meditation-related experiences, 30% reported feelings of rage, anger, or aggression from meditating, while 23% reported feelings associated with agitation or irritability.
The truth many will find is meditation is not always a pleasurable experience, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. To open ourselves up to the many benefits to come from being more mindful, we first have to commit to acknowledging our pain and mental turmoil.
I love the words from meditation teacher and author Rajshree Patel on this topic. She says, “Meditating is kind of like cleaning out your closet. But instead of looking through your clothes and finding things that are old, ill-fitting, and outdated to free up some more space, you’re looking through the storehouse of memory. The only way to create space in the closet is to first become conscious of what you don’t need and what isn’t working for you. Then you simply pick it up and let it go. That’s exactly what we do in meditation. We’re becoming conscious of what we’re holding on to so we can make room for the peace, the calm, and the happiness we seek.”
Patel encourages us to notice what we have outgrown with compassion, and to appreciate our anger, so that we can release it and move forward.
Stay strong and don’t give up
We all battle negative thought patterns and they’re going to come up if you’re being truly mindful. This doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you, but it’s a good sign you are on the right track to being able to manage your emotions more skillfully.
At last, I understand what my teacher meant. This brings me ease, and I hope it brings you some, too. As Koniakowsky says, meditation is a practice, and the brain is a muscle that needs exercise to become stronger.
If aiming to develop a regular meditation practice, here are a few resources you might find useful on the journey:
The Insight Timer app: This is a useful app for timing your meditations and completing daily check-ins on your mood and spiritual well-being. They have several guided meditations, as well as free options to customize your practice to your liking.
The Headspace YouTube channel: Headspace has an app with paid features, but their Youtube channel is completely free and has various guided meditations, informational videos, and more to learn from.
The book Stay Woke by Justin Michael Williams: This is an approachable book for beginner meditators wanting to learn more about the practice of meditation.
The Calm app: This app is a free tool for guided meditations, sleep stories, soothing music, and more. Calm offers a paid version of their app, but the free version is extensive for beginners.