Meditation for Complex PTSD or PTSD Isn’t Always a Good Thing

Meditation for Complex PTSD or PTSD isn't always a good thing.

When you suffer from PTSD, being hypervigilant and "on alert" is built into your system as a survival mechanism.

Relaxation through meditation will likely feel as though you are letting your guard down. And, you will internally perceive that as vulnerable and possibly even dangerous.

Meditation can become, then, an act filled with conflict. There is a part of you that sees that being under stress wears down your health on various levels and wants to relieve the pressure; there is another part of you that stays on "high guard" and "high energy charged" because of an uncompleted fight-flight survival activation due to the particular traumatic incidence or period you went through.

Meditation for Complex PTSD and The Counter Productive "Effort" to Overcome your Condition

When suffering is persistent you tend to project towards its opposite-- towards wanting to find a way to overcome it, to get rid of it, to forget about it, to relax, to let go, to understand it cognitively in the hope that the suffering will lessen-- to feel better through seeking temporary pleasures and continuous occupations, and so forth.

Unfortunately, none of this works in the long run. 

Real meditation for Complex PTSD and PTSD is about meeting the present as it is, be it dissociation, anger, hurt, shame, anxiety, self-righteousness, grief and sadness, hopelessness and despair, disconnection, vulnerability, defensiveness, collapse, or blame.

There are tools for going about this. If you go too quickly and too soon into any overwhelming emotion or feeling, you will soon feel overwhelmed again.

To meet PTSD on many different levels requires that the process is done with care. By going slowly into uncomfortable territory and managing your level of activation consciously.

How is PTSD meditation for you? Leave your comments here below.

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