Thread by @SaltySicky

Let's talk about #meditation and chronic illness:
1) It's not gonna cure your medical conditions.
2) It might improve your life in some ways, IF you're committed long term and have reasonable expectations for what it should do. 🧵

There are many types of meditation. What I'm talking about here are calming & insight meditations, aka the types @Headspace uses. This involves lots of focusing on bodily sensations, paying attention to breathing, & noticing when thinking or feeling gets in the way of that focus.

This might sound like a nightmare. "Focus on what's happening in my body? When I feel like shit?!" I get it. That's what I said too. I was VERY hesitant, especially bc doctors gaslit me in the past by suggesting meditation & saying my physical health problems were "just anxiety."

And at first, I did feel worse. Meditating made me recognize every little negative sensation inside my body. Nausea, pain, numbness, itchiness, weird breathing, lightheadedness... Not ideal. Not calming.

For months, I meditated & felt worse. But I stuck with it bc I'm stubborn.

I also read a lot about how meditation is a practice, which means you gotta...practice. It's not a magic pill. So I stuck with it. I used Headspace (student discount) daily for ~4 months before seeing any positive changes. Eventually, I noticed things shifting:

1. While meditating, I was able to recognize chronic illness sensations/symptoms in my body, note that they were happening, & return to focus on something else (like breathing). This is a contrast to the fact that when I started, I would fixate on these sensations and feel worse.

2. By forcing myself to "sit in the ick" of those sensations without trying to change anything about the sensations, I got practice in feeling icky without trying to treat it. That made me less anxious in situations where I was symptomatic but didn't have meds or an escape hatch.

3. There's a focus on not labeling sensations or thoughts as good or bad, but rather just acknowledging that they exist. This seems WILD bc chronic illness sucks and is full of "bad" sensations. But by reframing them as neutral parts of life, I'm able to avoid spiraling.

4. I find myself generally less frustrated by negative things--related to chronic illness or the rest of life. Setbacks don't seem as drastic. They're just part of what is, and life moves on no matter what. "Life as it comes," as they say. (Back to that not judging/labeling.)

Now that we covered what meditation DID for my life, here's what it did NOT do:
1. Cure any of my chronic illnesses or diseases.
2. Stop all anxiety.
3. Make me rich and famous.
4. Allow me to stop taking meds or treating my illnesses.

For me, meditation is one tool in a bigger toolkit. It's not a substitution for treatment of any disease.

On that note, you (friends, family, people of the internet) should NEVER ask someone with chronic illness if they've tried meditation. Just don't.

And if you're a healthcare provider, don't ever push meditation as a frontline medical treatment. Meditation *might* help your patient cope with chronic illness (one of many things that could help), but don't sell it as a treatment. It's not one. And it can make things worse.

As always, your mileage may vary. I'm posting this thread so we can have a more nuanced convo about this topic, which is pretty taboo (for a good reason) in chronic illness communities.

No gaslighting in the replies. No being a jerk. But feel free to share experiences or ask que

-stions. Apparently that part of the word didn't make the cut.