Coping With Anxiety: When Meditation Doesn’t Work

Meditation has become a very popular practice for coping with stress and anxiety, and for good reason. There are many benefits to meditation including reducing stress, lowering blood pressure and even helping with sleep. And while these benefits absolutely make meditation worth trying, quiet meditation doesn’t always work for everyone. 

I’ve heard a similar response from many people: “I tried to meditate but I just can’t get my mind to stop. It just doesn’t work for me.” If you’re someone who has tried to meditate but struggled with this practice, what can you do to still be able to get the same benefits that quiet meditation provide? 

Don’t Practice Meditation When You Are Anxious

When I’ve talked with people who have expressed that meditation doesn’t work for them, I ask them when have they tried to practice meditation for the first time, and almost always, they say they turned to meditation when they were feeling extremely anxious.  

I offer this analogy: Let’s say you played soccer and your team made it all the way to the state championship game. The stakes are high and the pressure in this game is beyond that of any other match of the season. You would not go into this game trying to use some new move for the very first time without any kind of practice. You would use techniques and skills that you have practiced over and over. You play in such a way that you feel confident in your ability to execute these moves in this game. This is exactly how it works when it comes to trying to meditate for the first time when your anxiety is running on high. Your body is not familiar with this skill and is going to struggle to utilize this skill in a way that will actually help decrease your anxious feelings. 

Instead, if you want to begin practicing meditation, I recommend doing so when you’re feeling more relaxed and calm. Now, this may feel counterintuitive because you’re wanting to find relief from your anxiety, so why would you be practicing this coping skill when you’re more relaxed? We want your body to begin to get familiar with this practice when your body can take it all in. Just as we want to rehearse that soccer skill over and over when the pressure is low before putting it in the big game, we want to practice meditating in a more relaxed state before we try and utilize that practice when the stakes are high. And as you practice in that more relaxed state, you may find that you still begin to feel the benefits of meditation beyond just that moment.

Try Active Meditation

For some people, myself included, sitting still and quietly meditating is a real challenge, no matter how much they try to practice this skill. But meditation doesn’t have to only be sitting quietly on a mat with your legs crossed and without distraction. Active movements can be meditative practices. A lot of runners describe running as meditative for them. When running, your feet hit the pavement side to side, one by one, creating stimulation on both sides of the body (i.e., bilateral stimulation), which has been shown to help reduce anxious feelings. In addition, runners often practice a breathing pattern where they breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, which is the type of breathing often practiced in meditation or yoga. This breathing helps to calm the body and brings in oxygen directly to the brain and pushes out the carbon dioxide we no longer need and becomes rhythmic and calming. 

 Now, for many people, the idea of running creates more anxiety than there would be benefits from the activity, and running isn’t for everyone, which is okay! You don’t have to actually run to get the same benefits of active meditation. Mindful walking is a practice where you bring your attention to something in particular during that walk – maybe it’s focusing on the rhythm of your feet hitting the pavement, or the back and forth swinging of your arms. Going for a walk can provide the same benefits as running. But if you’re going to try walking (or running) as a meditative practice, it is important to go into this activity with little expectation. Instead of viewing it as “I have to do this to exercise,” look at this activity as simply getting movement. 

Don’t place any expectations on yourself, like distances or pace or calories burned. Instead, set a goal for how long you want to walk, and if you choose to shorten or lengthen your walk while on it, that’s okay. Your intention is simply to get your body moving. Try practicing that same breathing pattern, in through your nose and out through your mouth, as you walk through your neighborhood, park or on the treadmill. Put on your headphones and some music you can lose yourself in and just get moving. 

Try a Meditative Activity

Adult coloring books with mandalas and intricate pictures have become popular the last few years, and one of the reasons is because coloring can be relaxing! It can help us bring our focus to the lines on the pages rather than the anxious thoughts swirling in our heads. But coloring isn’t the only meditative activity you can try. Many people find baking or cooking to be relaxing for them. The process of measuring, sifting and creating helps to bring their attention to the activities of the process and lowers their anxious feelings. 

What might be a meditative activity for you to try? Cross stitching? Knitting? Painting? Pick an activity that won’t create additional stress for you, but instead will allow you to focus on the activity you’re doing and quiet the anxious thoughts of your mind.

Meditation Apps

The ability to sit in total quiet without any kind of sounds, words or guidance and meditate can be really challenging, even for people who have been meditating for years. If quiet meditation doesn’t feel like a good fit for you, guided meditations might be a better fit. Guided meditations help to bring your focus to a certain feeling, thought or mantra. As an anxiety therapist, I have used guided meditation in sessions with clients to help focus on a particular feeling or moment in time. But if you’re at home by yourself, you may wonder how you can practice guided meditation. There are many apps now available for free or low cost that offer hundreds of recorded guided meditations for you to choose from. Calm, Headspace, and The Tapping Solution are some of the more popular ones that I often recommend to clients. Within each app you can choose from meditations that focus on specific topics or feelings (e.g., anxiety about pregnancy, struggling to feel motivated, anxious thoughts affecting sleep), and some even have extra tools like a visual circle to help you practice meditative breathing. Utilizing one of these applications can help you become more comfortable practicing meditation and support you in getting to a place where you can experience the benefits of meditation.

With any of these practices, what is most important to remember is that they require just that: practice! Before you throw away a coping skill for your anxiety and declare, “It just doesn’t work for me,” you have to give it a fair chance. You can’t just try it one time when your anxiety is raging. You need to practice it consistently for a couple weeks to see the benefits of the tool. Between practicing these skills when you aren’t at the peak of your anxiety and practicing them consistently, you will begin to find these meditative practices can indeed help decrease your feelings of anxiety. 

Begin Online Therapy In Louisiana, Colorado, & Hawaii:

I work with women with anxiety that are going through challenging times. In online therapy they learn to cope with these difficulties so they can live a happy and fulfilled life. To start online counseling in Louisiana, Colorado, or Hawaii:

1. Make an appointment for a free, 15-minute consultation with me and learn more about my online therapy services

2. Learn more about my online therapy services and how I can help you cope with anxiety, grief, and loss during online therapy

3. Learn tips to cope with anxiety symptoms so you can get back to living the life you love.

Other Mental Health Services Offered By Ashley Comegys, LCSW

I provide online therapy services for women living in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Colorado. I offer individual counseling for women, online anxiety counseling, online therapy for grief and loss, online depression treatment, online counseling for military spouses, online therapy for moms, and online trauma therapy for women. Get in touch with me and learn more about the ways I can help you overcome anxiety during online therapy.